The discrepancy could be because Hacker News cares more about technology platforms than Alabama public TV. For an example of HN getting upset about government censorship on a technology platform, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219
I'm not sure that's the case. Some examples looking back on some of the most popular HN stories tend to align well with either tech platforms or issues dealing with personal rights. Such as [1] or the Snowden and Julian Assange situations [2] [3]. Or for the sake of not cherry-picking, when the Supreme Corut legalized same-sex marriage [4]. Although perhaps somewhat morbidly, the top comment seems to demonstrate one of the problems I find with HN.
With my first story I figured it would fit well with the people that tend to advocate for personal rights because it was an example of an American citizen being wrongfully detained for three weeks, but it ended up flagged because I think people tend to circle the wagon around anything tangentially related to immigration.
The second example was about a direct example of government censorship and the inconsistency of free speech advocates. Google's actions and bending to China for the sake of maintaining profitable behavior is bad, yes, but they also are not the government. The government should be held to even higher standards and yet it seems people are not willing to do so for this administration. An example of that is that people here were praising the administration's threats against Twitter as some sort of pro-freedom move.
