Censorship: a sign of the “Times?”

This week Time magazine reported that last week's story “The Two Faces of Anxiety” elicited the most mail. Readers wanted to “Why is anxiety the most pressing issue in the U.S. while the Egyptian revolution gets front page treatment internationally?”Time said that they are glad to be held to high expectations. Some readers were not so happy and called the cover treatment censorship.David Airey posted almost a dozen examples of different magazine covers printed over the past several years on his blog. His readers debated the ethics of the issue including the practice of using selective data to push an agenda.The covers were also hotly debated on Reddit, reaching close to1800 comments with more than one of them saying that the practice is “terrifying.”Business Insider stated that while there is nothing new about magazines using different covers to drive sales, (one reader posted that this is done about 80% of the time) the bigger question is why the covers for the U.S. market differ so much from the rest of the world.What do you think? Is it censorship, or merely Times' right to serve their markets what they think will drive sales? Or is it merely a reflection of the insulated world in which Americans live?Sources:Time, December 12, 2011http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601111205,00.htmlhttp://www.davidairey.com/time-magazine-covers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CreativeDesign+%28Creative+Design%29http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/mp5cz/time_magazine_cover_depending_on_country/?limit=500http://www.businessinsider.com/these-time-magazine-covers-explain-why-americans-know-nothing-about-the-world-2011-11