A few weeks back I took down a post about an evening I’d had in New York (including hearing Israelis talking Hebrew on West End Avenue and feeling anger that they could move easily between societies) because it offended a friend. I still plan to put it back up, with some slight changes.
Yesterday I took down a post by Rob Browne about his cousin’s decision to move to Israel and join the IDF after Rob changed his mind about discussing his upset about family members publicly. Rob asked me to take it down, I did. It was his call. I think he might revisit the subject before long, but it’s his call.
Back in newspaper days, once something was printed, you couldn’t pull it back. Though sometimes newspapers would pulp an entire run when they had misgivings about an article!
On the internet, you can always take something back. So we’ve done it twice. Neither story was a classic news story, they were taken down because they revealed intimate moments that hurt people. Still: let’s be clear, we censored ourselves.
I’ve erred by not explaining this to readers. I’m sorry for that. I can’t promise it won’t happen again. It seems to come with the territory. Next time I’ll try and explain the decision more promptly.
