Self-censorship at NYT?

In a story run about the crazy millitant lesbian shooter of Andy Warhol, there was a comment posted by a "JK." The shooter had written a play reportedly so sexually explicit that Andy Warhol thought it was part of a plot to entrap him, hatched by the NYPD.

What I find interesting is the blatant calling out of the journalistic standards of propriety of the NYT, editing out "bad words," but displaying murdered people on the front page. I also find the reply from the editorial desk telling, as it omits any comment on the censorship note and focuses on her skepticism of the veracity of the witness in the story.

From NYT

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a) This story is extremely hard to believe and deserves a lot more skepticism.

b) The title of a play is not “unprintable.” What the Times means is that it wants not to print it, at the same time it does want to print, say, bloody bodies on the streets of Iran. Even if the Times has some rationale for protecting us from individual words–protection I neither need nor asked for–then it should be honest about its self-censorship rather than hiding behind a faux universal truth.

— jk

Jk,

Thank you for your comment. Four decades, and a conviction, after the day in question, The Times does not present Ms.Fieden’s account as definitive. On the contrary, we consider this just one angle of the story, made relevant by the discovery of the manuscript and the National Arts Club event tonight.

— Nicole Collins, assistant metropolitan editor