Censorship

This post by Francisco Toro on censorship in Venezuela is very insightful:

Welcome to the world of twenty-first century censorship: censorship without censors. The Chávez government operates nothing so crass and cumbersome as an old-fashioned censorship board. Instead, by keeping broadcast editors and station managers under the vague but constant threat of shutdown, it relies on them to silence their organizations. And it is wildly effective.

This reminds me a lot of the argument I have heard against the MPAA (the people responsible for rating movies in America) and the FCC (the governmental organisation responsible for regulating radio and television broadcasting in America).
Of course, this is not to say that the self-censorship imposed by the MPAA and the FCC is anything near the censorship imposed by the Chávez government in Venezuela. The censorship by the MPAA and the FCC is stilting the American conversation about profanity and sexuality. The censorship by Chávez is tearing down the adversarial media, one of the most important pillars of a liberal society.