Gym chain bans cable news - is that censorship?

I totally get it. Gyms are all about health promotion. Cable news channels send a constant stream of high drama and negativity into the airwaves. Absorbing all that results in stress, which in turn adversely affects a person's health. 

So when the executives of Life Time Fitness decided to ban CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNBC from TVs in their 128 gyms, they did so with the stated goal of health promotion. USA, A&E, Discovery, HGTV, ESPN and local over-the-air stations remain. 
  

As I said, I get it. The philosophy of minimizing negativity as a way of health is my philosophy as well. It's the driving force behind this blog and the articles and books I write. 

But banning a news outlet, even one with dubious credulity, is censorship. Period. Whatever their intention, this action removes choice from the hands of individual members and places it in the hands of a corporation. It's a slippery slope. 

As a nation which prides itself on freedoms including a free press, we need to keep our eyes open to the insidious creep of censorship. 

LOC research day

In an effort to accurately portray era events in my novel-in-progress, I spent Wednesday conducting research at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. What a treasure trove we Americans have at our disposal - all open and free for the asking.

Beginning a couple weeks ago, I spent hours on the LOC website, scouring their archive. Some documents and images I was interested in were readily available on their website, while others were identified as 'available on site' at the LOC. For those items, I jotted down LOT numbers and contacted librarians in the Photographs room and Newspapers room by email and gave them the date of my planned visit. Within 24 hours, they responded to let me know the items were available and would be waiting for me upon arrival. And they were.

In one (very) long day, I saved over 300 images and newspaper articles onto my memory stick. Obviously I haven't had time to sift through them all, but some of my amazing preliminary finds include:

1. A private photo album of a Lebensborn home in Steinhoring, near Munich;

2. Two full-sized Nazi propaganda posters;

3. The apparent lack of any mention of the events of Kristallnacht in the Munich newspaper in the days following the violence.

In contrast, the New York Times was chock full of articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor for days.

Talk about the value of free press. Wow.

After I sift through the overwhelming volume of material obtained, I'll integrate relevant details and facts into my story's backdrop. My hope is to accurately portray what it must have been like to be 15 years old in Munich in 1938.