Earlier this year CommonDreams.org offered readers the opportunity to comment on articles at their site. I signed up to make comments and did so for a time. When I made a comment I usually appended a link to my own web site and sometimes the substance of my comment was little more than a link to an article I posted to my own site. I noticed that traffic to my web site increased dramatically when I made comments there. But now CommonDreams won’t let me make any comments on their site at all. I can log on, but my comments won’t print on their site. I’ve written to their web master and to their editors asking why, and have never gotten a response. I don’t know if they are locking me out because they don’t like my offerings or if they are just too busy to respond to my emails. Other commenters also print links just like I did, so it doesn’t appear doing that, in and of itself, is prohibited in any way.
I am only suspicious because early on, for about a year, (before I ever wrote for OpEdNews), I used to offer CommonDreams my articles, none of which were ever accepted. Obviously, CommonDreams has no obligation to print my articles, but don’t they have some obligation to print my comments (or tell me why they won’t print them) given that this service is open to the general public?
Am I being censored or is something else going on. I might point out that I experienced this phenomena shortly after announcing my candidacy for President. If you know the answer, or if you’ve had a similar experience, I would be interested in hearing about it.
http://www.gpln.com/howiseeit.htm
