Censoring Debbie Nathan

Jesse Walker | September 28, 2006

Last month Debbie Nathan, an excellent investigative reporter whose work I've cited here before, wrote an essay for Salon about the legal barriers that prevent journalists and academics from double-checking government claims about the child pornography industry. You can still read the piece on Usenet, but it disappeared from Salon almost instantly. According to Nathan, the removal was prompted by legal threats from New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, whose own investigations into "child model" sites were discussed in Nathan's article. In its place appeared a "correction" of questionable accuracy, written without Nathan's input or approval.

For more on this strange story, click here. To see Eichenwald, or someone claiming to be Eichenwald, describe Nathan's piece as "false and misleading," Nathan's argument as "despicable," and Nathan herself as someone "incapable of understanding" his methods, click here.