The story: Officials in Orange County, North Carolina reported on Sunday that the local Republican Party headquarters had been firebombed. Police said a bottle filled with flammable liquid was thrown through the building's front window, and the words "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else" were spray painted on a nearby building.
Censorship
It was first reported on reddit in /r/The_Donald, the Donald J. Trump for President subreddit, at 19:12 UTC. The news appears to have been first posted to /r/news at 19:20 UTC, where it was immediately removed.
Before today, the last non-removed /r/news submission containing 'Republican' was on June 23rd. During that same period, /r/news allowed [13 stories]((https://i.sli.mg/bfwpwN.png) containing the string 'democrat' (11 pertaining to Democrats or the Democratic party), a striking disparity in its own right (though further investigation is beyond the scope of this post).
The news was submitted again at 19:27 UTC, 19:37 UTC, and 19:54 UTC. No duplicate sources, all removed.
The Charlotte Observer news story was submitted again at 20:15 UTC and 20:18 UTC. Both were removed.
My submission from a different source was submitted at 20:20 UTC and immediately removed. All subsequent submissions by other users have been removed as well (I counted at least eight).
Controlling the narrative
At approximately 20:24 UTC, a little over an hour after the news was first submitted to /r/"news", /r/news re-approved a single submission (while continuing to remove all other submissions).
Afterwards, /r/news manually tagged my removed submission, which was made when no other non-removed submissions existed on /r/news, as 'Already Submitted'. As you can see, no earlier submission has been manually tagged 'Already Submitted', only mine:
Also note that the first Charlotte Observer submission has comments starting at 20:15 UTC. This proves that the submission was visible in /r/news before being removed, which means it was not automatically removed by an automoderator rule, which means it was manually removed. Can't blame automoderator for this one. The news was deliberately censored.
It seems someone in /r/news disliked my submission so much that they re-approved an hour-old, previously removed submission and tagged mine as 'Already Submitted'. I am at a loss to explain why, perhaps /r/undelete can help?
Here is the title of my submission (taken from the article):
Republican office firebombed in North Carolina, warning painted nearby: 'Nazi Republicans get out'
Here is the title of the submission /r/news decided to go with (not taken from the article):
Republican HQ in Orange County, NC firebombed
Interestingly, the submission /r/news decided to go with violates their own subreddit rules ("has a title not taken from the article"). The actual, original title of the article (which has since changed) was "Republican HQ in Orange County firebombed, GOP officials say".
Can anyone think of a reason why the fine, unbiased mods at /r/news migh want to re-approve a rule-breaking submission linking to an article titled
Republican HQ in Orange County firebombed, GOP officials say
instead of a rule-abiding submission titled
Republican office firebombed in North Carolina, warning painted nearby: 'Nazi Republicans get out'
It would be...uncharitable of me to suggest that someone might have wanted to go with the article that had a weaker, less-descriptive title, a title phrased in a way that could raise questions about the veracity of the claim ("GOP officials say") as opposed to the title that practically invites commenters to point out that the side firebombing their political opponents are the ones behaving like Nazis, or susequent articles incorporating the quote from North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory about "an attack on democracy". That would be uncharitable of me.
We may never know what the motive was, or why /r/"news" would deliberately and completely censor a story of great newsworthiness and social/political relevance for a period of approximately one hour, or why /r/"news" only approved a single submission after submissions from /r/The_Donald and /r/politics became highly ranked on \r/all/rising. It is, truly, one of the great mysteries of our time.
ここには何もないようです