Free Speech and Censorship on the Internet

This year I began submitting writing to a literary site called Helium.com. At first, I thought it was a good idea putting my work in print there for anyone who would like to read my writing. Everything seemed fine, the honeymoon was on, and I was enjoying the rewards from posting my work on that site. Then it started to go south the relationship between Helium and myself.

I kept getting emails from them that one thing then another was wrong with my writing. I couldn’t understand the problem. In light of the information I was getting from the people who were judging my work; I decided to modify some of the political writings to fit their criterion. That worked a little, but still I was getting emails saying that Helium had deleted some of my articles. One by one, they attacked the more critical articles that dealt with really serious world issues. This then aggravated me to the point of explosion.

One article in particular on Weapons of Mass Destruction was deleted for a reason, which was, at the time, vague to me. They said it was off topic. This set me to thinking and I began to analyze the problem from a critical point of view. I discovered that the articles that were being deleted were in reality articles that dealt with serious world issues. Articles on topics such as Sex Selection Abortion, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and several articles on Government Accountability had to be modified or were just deleted for what seemed to be arbitrary reasons. The list of deleted articles grew everyday and they were all important social and world issues in their content. I was even informed that some of my articles had been modified to fit their idea of what was acceptable. How rude is that?

I was being censored. The excuses and reasons, as Helium noted, was for articles that were off topic and for promotion. I checked the stats on my deleted articles and very few of the deleted articles were 'off topic' or promotional (what ever that means).

I work very hard trying to get the facts to the people of the world about things that are important to our lives. Things like war and the destruction of our planet need to be addressed along with how our government in America is doing business and spending our money. The people need to know and if the censors at Helium.com are watching to make sure that people like me aren't making waves, then this violates all the tenets of free speech in America. As a journalist, I cannot allow this to happen and I will strike out at these enemies of our constitutional rights no matter how well they disguise their violations of our civil liberties.