In my first semester of college, I worked for three months on an article that I would eventually turn in as my final project for my Intro to Journalism class.

I had recently come home from Denmark, where I had become good friends with a girl who taught me a lot about the importance of mental health. She and I remained friends through a lot of hard times for both of us and her studies in psychology at a different school inspired me to do a piece featuring the counseling center at my school.

I had originally planned something sweet and upbeat about the counseling center, something featuring the good it was doing for students who were struggling. The deeper I dug, however, the worse it got. From what I could see, the counseling center looked great on the outside and the school touted it as a reliable resource for students, but the center lacked money to expand enough to meet demand. The waitlist to talk with a counselor was two weeks at minimum, too long to wait for students who needed immediate help. I heard stories from parents whose children had worked up the courage to seek help from the counseling center only to be turned away.

After two months of research and interviews, I found a Google review from a girl who had set an initial appointment with a counselor and confessed her thoughts of suicide to him. He told her there was nothing he could do for her and turned away. Luckily, she had a supportive family who helped her through this incredibly difficult time.

I found her through our school’s student directory, and she agreed to do an interview with me. I put together the article with her story as the centerpiece. I aced the assignment and my teacher encouraged me to share it with our school newspaper after winter break. I worked the next semester as a reporter at the school newspaper and pitched my article the first day of class. After another two months of endless following up on whether a decision had been made, the student editor told me they would only publish the article if I took out the interview I had worked so hard to get.

I knew that wasn’t an option. Taking out this girl’s story would be dishonest and an injustice to her. That was my first experience with censorship in journalism.

On a much larger scale, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai shared last week her experience in a lengthy post on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) accusing former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her before she began an affair lasting several years with him.

While news outlets have been unable to confirm the authenticity of the post, a screenshot of the post has made the rounds on other social media platforms outside of China. Journalists have found evidence of censorship such as blocked comments on Peng’s other posts and blocks on her account.

While many Americans have become borderline used to rape allegations against government officials, it’s virtually unheard of in China. Other cases involving allegations of sexual assault have gone forward in China, including allegations against Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu and an employee at Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, but nothing this explosive has ever rocked China.

The Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong issued a statement in response to a survey put out to foreign correspondents in Hong Kong. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong sent out the survey and reported the results as showing increasing unease among foreign journalists in Hong Kong, many of whom fear for their safety.

The Associated Press reports the statement as reading, “There is no absolute press freedom in the world that is above the law. It is a common international practice for countries to supervise the news media working in their own countries in accordance with the law.”

I know this is an opinion piece, but I hate feeling like I’m standing on a soapbox. So, instead of preaching a sermon from the opinion section of the local paper, I’d instead like our readers to consider for themselves what would have happened if people in authority hadn’t stepped in to censor these stories.

That story I wrote in college is still sitting on my computer. I shared it on Facebook at one point, but it certainly never reached the audience it was intended for. The Chinese government itself reports one in four women in China are victims of domestic abuse. How many of them witnessed Peng’s courage in sharing her story before it was taken down? How many of them still think they are utterly alone in their struggles?

I understand the desire to protect vulnerable groups from certain media, but if we start censoring, where will it end? Who do you trust enough to oversee answering that question for you?