PressEthic

According to AdRants, a Yahoo bot edited a post by Wonkette, removing the word “Dick.”

Although this could be called inexcusable censorship, it is at least understandable. After all, Yahoo is syndicating Wonkette and several other Gawker Media blogs, so they have the right to edit the posts for their own use.

The problem is that the “Dick” that was removed was Vice President Cheney’s first name.

It seems that Yahoo disarmed the bot, though, because when Wonkette complained about the situation, the article was syndicated with no censorship at all, despite a less-than-innocuous (and less-than-work-safe) use of Mr. Cheney’s first name.

Is this just a case of whoever is in charge of censorship (or the censor-bots) not paying attention? Did Yahoo go from one extreme to the other?

While I prefer it the uncensored way, it strikes me as odd, and amusing, that Yahoo had a problem with one use, but let the other slide. Perhaps an updated list of permitted language is in order.