The facts of the apparently accidental publication on Youtube of a video from the St. Louis Chess and Scholastic Center revealing some of what Fabio Caruana was studying are by now well know., The matter was covered by IM Ian Rogers in an article submitted to Chess Life Online, an online publication of US Chess. It was rejected by the CLO editor and GM Rogers quit as a contributor to CLO.
The publishers "right to edit" within what is customary for the publisher is not the issue. Here, the problem I see is that the relationship between Rex Sinquefield, Fabio Caruana, the St. Louis Chess and Scholastic Center and US Chess gives the appearance that the edit was done to please a major US Chess contributor, to wit, Rex Sinquefield. That may or may not be the substantive situation, but the appearance of a conflict of interest is very real.
There has also been a copyright concern floated by US Chess as a reason for the proposed edit of GM Rogers' article. The argument is specious. Once the St. Louis Club aired the video, the screen shot at issue became newsworthy. As such, fair use permits any journalist to use it in an article regarding the news of the video being posted and withdrawn from Youtube.
Whilst, CLO has the right to edit or not publish GM Rogers' report, the appearance of a conflict of interest and the heavy handed way it was handled by CLO's editor and publications/communications director is, at best, unfortunate. IMMHO, it shows how fraught with embarrassing problems big donor money can at times be and, in this case needlessly so, given that all concerned should have known that once on the Internet, it would exist there in cyberspace as a news item forever. Additionally, attempts to discuss this apparent conflict of interest on the US Chess Issues Forum, have met with censorship by the forum's "moderators."
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