I'm happy to stick with "challenge". It means I can lament how "morally challenged" Apple is :)

I mean if this exact story happened about Sean Hannity I think the reaction would be to break out the champagne and fireworks. They would be showered with praise for years for doing the right thing. I think in the real world "censorship" bad, where censorship means benign things like "yeah, I'm not paying you to turn public sentiment against a budding industry we're trying to enter" or facing any of the natural consequences of people generally being asses in public isn't so cut and dry.

Because if blackballing racists or a right hook to someone who's screaming at women going to an abortion clinic is censorship then call me the chairwoman of the FCC.

Well, Hannity is a driveling liar with no critical thinking or humility or backbone. You can't compare the two with a straight face.

If Jon Stewart were intentionally getting major stories entirely incorrect, fewer people would be defending him.

You won't find any disagreement here, but that's my point. It clearly fine in principle to drop people and not associate with them, the only thing we're haggling over is how "bad" the person has to be for it to be okay.

Or you can sidestep the issue entirely and just let people not associate for any reason they want with the only restriction being when that non-association interferes with other people's rights. And there's some debate to be had when this happens but this to me is a pretty clear case of that not happening.

>the only thing we're haggling over is how "bad" the person has to be for it to be okay.

Yes, exactly.

I think people (here anyway) resent the kowtowing to the Chinese government, and so of course will goad Apple for their artistic cowardice, if it turns out they didn't want Jon to cover a topic due to concerns of a dictatorship's feelings.

I guess I'm confused - are people not supposed to have value judgements on journalists, entertainers or foreign governments or trillion-dollar corporations?