Facebook, Twitter and 'Almighty God'

How should we respond to Facebook and Twitter banning political speakers who knowingly repeat factual falsehoods?I have some experience with deciding what to publish, but no good ideas about what to do with these two Internet age companies.For a half-century at newspapers, my job included deciding whether to print stories or letters that contained … “hogwash.”But I am still puzzling about Facebook and Twitter. They do not fit within traditional laws and limits.As an editor, I allowed some upsetting stuff to be published, following the hoary cliché that newspapers should “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”I disallowed some stuff, too. When a Ku Klux Klan member yammered from near Punxsutawney, we published a news story about his demonstration in DuBois. We did not print direct quotations, photos of hooded Klansmen or of crosses. We told readers what happened. We drew the line at what might promote his vile, racist bigotry.I also got into a hassle about an obituary. The deceased had three surviving brothers. His obituary named two. His widow said he insisted in not naming the third brother because of a feud. That brother was a subscriber to our newspaper. We decided that either the obituary would name…
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