Editor: Many 'Banned Book Week' Celebrators Censor Conservative Views
by Jim Brown
September 28, 2005
(AgapePress) - The editor in chief of a conservative publishing company says, ironically, the very same libraries and bookstores currently celebrating "Banned Books Week" often stifle free speech. As part of their Banned Books Week observance, libraries and bookstores across the U.S. are highlighting various books they claim have been restricted or banned in the previous year. But Mitch Muncy, executive vice president and editor in chief of Spence Publishing Company, believes Banned Books Week is actually more about making money and silencing others than it is about celebrating free speech.
Muncy says many of the libraries and bookstores touting the so-called "banned books" have their own methods of censorship. "Our experience has shown that when they don't like your book, they do not hesitate to make sure that that book never makes it to their library or bookstore," he asserts, "only they don't call that banning books. They refer to that as 'selection criteria.'"
The editor notes that a representative of one of the major independent bookstores in the U.S. once stated that, even if it could sell 100,000 copies of Spence Books titles, it still would not stock them. "So, in fact, the very sponsors of this event have no hesitation about doing the very thing that they accuse others of doing," Muncy contends.
Another bookstore manager once asked Spence Publishing to remove him from its mailing list, stating, "We do not sell fascist publications." Such exchanges have led the conservative publishing executive to conclude that "Banned Books Week" is just another way for bookstores, libraries, and "self-styled free-speech advocates" to make money and censor people whose worldviews they find offensive.
For all their high-minded claims, Muncy asserts, many of these libraries and book vendors employ a free-speech double standard. "What is ridiculous is to refuse to stock books for ideological reasons," he says, "and then to turn around and try to shame parents ... because they object to a particular book being displayed prominently in their child's school library."
The annual "Banned Book Week" has been observed since 1982 and purportedly, according to the American Library Association, "celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
