Nicholas F. Benton & Falls Church News-Press Silencing Critics

For a "journalist," Nick Benton has pretty thin skin.  He has marked nearly all of my comments on the Falls Church News-Press web site as spam (making them disappear) or just outright removing them.

Let me be clear that these were substantive comments that critiqued his message and politics--not ads or links to anything selling anything.

In particular, Benton hates when it is pointed out that he was once closely associated with and worked for Lyndon LaRouche.  Benton has since said that his views have changed, but in reading his editorials, his views don't seem to diverge much, as I have pointed out.

Mr. Benton obviously is not fond of that linkage being revived.  According to his paper's narrative, Mr. Benton is a self-proclaimed "gay pioneer," despite his being silent on the topic during his first 15 years here in Falls Church.  Obviously, his new aspirations as a civil rights figure clash somewhat with his inconvenient past.  Anyone who happens to have a long memory is banished from the Falls Church News-Press web pages.

See for yourself.  The "Removed" and "Marked as spam" labels are from Disqus, which both earns the FCNP money and is the means by which they moderate/censor comments:

Sadly, this is the problem in a one-newspaper town, where the owner-editor has a political agenda that claims to be inclusive but is only open to those with the same views.  {Sigh}