AYLMER, QUEBEC | I recently received a letter from a reader whose e-mail messages had not been answered or published because he was using the wrong address: "I had come to think my mail was subject to some Soviet-type censorship."

Soviet-type censorship? Was this an attempt at humour, and, if so, what's so funny? "Soviet-type censorship" doesn't crack me up. It may be tolerable -- during war, legal, or business difficulties, or in the midst of political imbroglios -- but hardly funny.

When censorship is done well, it is impossible to notice. How would we know if a new novel by Margaret Atwood was censored or not, especially if the author didn't comment? If we can't tell whether our information sources are being censored, assuming they'd be censored by the best in the business, how can we be sure of what we're told about everything from romance and marriage to Afghanistan and natural gas pipelines?

As we age we hit enough brick walls, low beams, and swinging chandeliers that we wise up a bit; some realize the world is much different than they've been led to believe. This moves censorship to manipulation.

Maybe they're the same thing -- what else is censorship but an attempt to manipulate? Yes, there are probably more examples of manipulation, more ways it's practiced than censorship.

If the love story in a Russian movie seems to lack an edge, we might assume it's missing a political or police subplot that may have been embarrassing to the censoring regime. If the dialogue in a novel has too many inexplicable gaps, someone's done a poor job with a black felt pen. The worst censorship is the best.

This isn't true of manipulation.

A lot of censorship is brazen -- a freedom of information request comes back, whole pages blackened, without apology. But manipulation would be totally ineffective if it is too brazen, as when a US politician says different things to businessmen and evangelicals trying to get their votes.

Canada has its censorships and has world records in some types of manipulation. Forget China and Somalia, they're crude. We're in contention for gold in media manipulation.

For example, a week ago The Globe & Mail, 'Canada's National Newspaper', headlined, front-page, Dion's Green Plan to Wreak Economy or something close. That day Harper had said this in a speech, but Harper wasn't mentioned in the headline.

Inside the paper is a longer story headlined Economists Say Green Plan May Be Good For Business, or something like that. The editors knew what the economists had said, but they put the opposite view, with basically no evidence, headlining the front page.

People read headlines -- is this manipulation? This happens in such steady flow, in all media, we don't have a clue it's happening (except when the Globe messes up).

This election is a great example; any chance that the issues and real plans of the parties are censored, or that the truth is being manipulated?

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Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/09.08