[Alex Heartnet]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/us/politics/latest-word-on-the-campaign-trail-i-take-it-back.html

I had to re-read this article a few times myself to make sure that it is, indeed, saying what I think it is.

According to the article, news agencies allow campaign officials to 'approve' or 'disapprove' of quotes before they go in.  Define 'censorship', please?

[NGTM-1R]

This isn't recent news, IIRC. I've seen stuff about it for a week or so?

And it's born of the fact that you need sources to make news and they aren't willing to give up official sources, and eventually the official sources caught on that they had power.

[Klaustrophobia]

given the media's tendency to spin ****ing everything with selective, misleading and out of context quotes, this does not surprise or concern me.

[Ghostavo]

From what I got, the campaign officials only allow interviews if and only if they can "check" the quoted content in those interviews, but not from other sources.

While I can understand that this process could help prevent misunderstandings, it can also prevent a critical review from the reader about politician stances that they'd rather go unpublished.

The news agencies got themselves into a prisoner's dilemma type of situation. While they would profit more from cooperating between themselves by refusing to publish any interviews in such conditions, they cannot do so without risk being left out of the loop by every other consenting news agency.

[Aardwolf]

Or they could record the whole interview anyway (if necessary, including "we're recording this, is that ok?" "yes" *recording start sound*), and quote them anyway.

[Mikes]

Or they could record the whole interview anyway (if necessary, including "we're recording this, is that ok?" "yes" *recording start sound*), and quote them anyway.

Only once - and then they would be locked out.

[Aardwolf]

Oh right. Sounded too obvious. Durrrrr.

[Alex Heartnet]

Only once - and then they would be locked out.

Then you just pay a bunch of reporters to follow the politicians around and write down everything they say, probably forcing the politicians to run away from the muckraking journalists who want more and more juicy details for their big stories.  Stories have been done that way in the past.