Was Carlos Miller Really Censored?

When Carlos Miller recently posted a story about a New Mexico police officer engaging in intercourse on the hood of a car in full view of a video camera [see right], he never thought it would cause controversy in the front office of Pixiq, the website that hosts his blog called Photography Is Not A Crime [PINAC].

As The Daily Censored reported...

After posting his article, Miller headed to lunch and started watching the hits rain down. But suddenly he realized that the hits had ceased at about 500, and he began wondering why the story was no longer up on his blog, which is published on Pixiq, a website run by Sterling Publishing, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble.

“Then I get the e-mail from the editor saying, ‘we had to delete the story. It came from higher-ups because it was offensive and not about photography,’” he said.

“The story was not offensive enough for the New Mexico mainstream media, which seems conservative,” Miller wrote in a reply to his editor.

While Miller would like to make this a case of censorship, I'm pretty sure that his contract with Pixiq gives them full authority to remove content from any of their contributors that they want. In this case, they had a problem with the graphic nature of the material and decided to remove it. That isn't censorship. That's Pixiq exercising their editorial license.

Pixiq may have also felt that Miller's post wasn't in keeping with the stated purpose of his blog. In fact, over the years I've watched Carlos' focus slowly go from working tirelessly to preserve and protect the rights of photographers to incessantly documenting the misconduct of law enforcement personnel. Yes, the latter usually involves a camera or video taping device but often times, as in this case, there is no element of a photographer's rights being threatened or taken away. Miller took time to address that point in the Daily Censored article...

Miller acknowledges the article has nothing to do with photographers, the primary audience for the Pixiq site, but points out that he doesn’t only write about people photographing the police.

“Cameras are everywhere. That’s my thing. … They’re filming us and we’re filming them,” he said. “Here’s a big brother camera capturing a big brother cop.”

Only I don't see Miller regularly documenting other kinds of misconduct that isn't law enforcement related.

Asked for a response by SFDB, Carlos had this to say...

It's true that PINAC focuses heavily on photographers who get bullied, harassed, threatened, assaulted or arrested by police officers for doing something completely legal.

But it's also true that I've always written about bad cops getting caught on camera whether it be a dash cam, a surveillance camera or a citizen's video camera.

In essence, the main focus of my blog is that nobody has an expectation of privacy in public. Not even a uniformed cop who decides to have sex with a woman on the hood of a car in broad daylight.

And while it's true that Pixiq does have the right to remove the article under my current contract with them, it is not smart journalism to remove a story after it's been up for more than hour. That gets readers talking and asking questions. There is a number of other ways they could have handled it.

Also, they knew what my blog was about when they approached me to join them last year. In fact, this was one of my main concerns, the fact that I don't always write about photographers. But they said they loved my blog and wanted me to join (this particular editor is no longer there).

Nevertheless, the current editors didn't have a problem with my story on the San Diego cop who was recorded on a surveillance video buying cookies for a kid in McDonald's minutes before he was gunned down in his car.

That had nothing to do with photographers. But it had everything to do with the power of the camera.

And this last story they deleted was no different.

Working under Pixiq's umbrella has resulted in a wider audience for Miller. But it comes with a price that he is now starting to realize. The big question, of course, is how much freedom is Miller willing to sacrifice for that larger audience. How many "hits" and how much money is it worth to him?

Well, Carlos sort of answers that at Spatial Orientation...

At first, Miller was seriously considering jumping ship and moving to a different site, but now he is intent on mending the fence and moving forward, saying, “For now I’ll stick with them and hopefully we can just put it behind us.” Miller is looking to insert preventative measures into his new contract to avoid a repeat. He knows his work can be controversial and opinionated, but he also knows that Pixiq needs to sell ads, and he wants them to sell ads, asserting, “I just want to keep the site going and keep writing. I want to put this behind us because I have other stories to work on, news stories that have impact. This is a learning experience for everybody.”

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