Media and the news

Near the end of this list stands la censura, and behind it is a Roman magistrate who held two jobs at once. The censor took the census — he counted the citizens and wrote down what each was worth — and he also kept the register of conduct, which let him mark a man down for the way he lived. Italian has never cut that root apart: censire is still to take a census, il censimento is the census itself, and censurare carries the two later meanings together, to suppress what may not appear and to condemn what somebody has done. English pulled that second pair in half and gave each half its own spelling. To « censor » is to cut a text or a broadcast; to « censure » is to condemn formally, and a parliament may censure a minister without touching a line he ever wrote. The nouns follow the split: « censorship » is the machinery, « censure » is the verdict. One letter separates them, which is what makes the slip so quiet — a report saying that a government censured the news has said that ministers disliked it, not that anything was stopped.