WHEN I reflect on it, I am mostly grateful not to be the editor of a newspaper. While I get my share of complaints and nasty letters, rarely can I move them to come and trash my offices. I don't have to make the difficult choices, day in and day out, that editors have to make regarding the content of the paper. The recent flap over David Horowitz's ads opposing reparations for slavery, and The Cavalier Daily's role in it, is an excellent example of the tightrope editors have to walk, and how there is rarely a single appropriate course of action.
First, let's be clear about one thing. This is not about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment protects people from having their speech abridged by either the state or federal government. This is about "free speech," a more nebulous concept than First Amendment rights.
Additionally, this is not about suppressing Mr. Horowitz's opinion. Mr. Horowitz has his own journal, and numerous regular columns in national media outlets. His opinion is regularly published throughout the country, and thus, he is hardly a victim of suppression of viewpoint. In addition, he is a brilliant media strategist and master of controversy who has gotten major exposure from the current contretemps.
The Cavalier Daily has an absolute legal right to refuse any advertisement, for any reason, or no reason at all. So, this brouhaha is also not about the legal right to do what The Cavalier Daily did, which was to refuse to run the ad. It is instead about whether the paper had an ethical duty to run the ad, or to refuse it. The answer is that the application of journalistic ethics to the situation could result in either outcome, based on reasonable choices.
The lead editorial on Tuesday, March 20 was a fair explication of The Cavalier Daily's position. The paper chooses not to run what they deem as "inappropriate content," nor to financially profit by disseminating same. They cite concerns regarding their relationship with their readers. And, perhaps most importantly, they choose not to allow the paper to become the de facto organ for any viewpoint, as long as they have a checkbook.
This is a reasoned, and reasonable, position for the paper to take. In some ways, it is the most difficult position for a paper to assume, for it involves the most complicated choices. For example, one would hate to think that the paper would suppress an ad simply because the editors disagreed with the political viewpoint, and The Cavalier Daily has generally not shied from controversy. It does not seem as if the paper rejected the ad because it challenges the idea of reparations, but instead because it did so (in the Managing Board's opinion) in a roughshod way which included "gross generalizations" and "patently incendiary comments." Free speech purists simply run any ad that doesn't directly incite violence and isn't obscene, and are freed from such deliberations.
Yet, many who wrote in specifically took the tack that The Cavalier Daily refused the ads because they cannot accept viewpoints at odds with their own. This quickness to label the paper's editors as draconian suppressors of speech is often politically motivated and intended to discredit the paper's editorial policies or to imply bias. It is also a common tactic to try to pressure papers for a reversal. The paper's record on according space to diverse viewpoints is well-established, and speaks for itself. Perhaps more interesting is what these letters, as well as some of the columns in last week's paper, along with the actions of students at other schools, say about the state of free speech in America and the difficulties papers face with responses from intolerant readers.
Certainly, the response by those opposed to Mr. Horowitz's ads have been most shameful: demands that the papers apologize, that the papers disgorge the money received for the ads, and that the editors of the papers resign. Such reactions show a complete intolerance of opposing viewpoints, and exert a pressure for newspapers to self-censor, not for bias or unfairness, but to avoid offending the sensibilities of the mob.
Most frightening has been the actions at Brown University to seize the paper and prevent its distribution. Such actions truly attack free speech by suppressing the viewpoint of everyone else in Brown's newspaper who doesn't have Mr. Horowitz's access to a national media forum. In addition, such acts are calculated to intimidate staffers, to frighten the people who make the paper and to damage their advertising income through thuggery. In a university setting, wouldn't the critics do better to simply attack Mr. Horowitz's statements? Have we grown so afraid of what ideologues and provocateurs might say that we attack the medium which brings an objectionable or dissenting point of view?
The Cavalier Daily made a deliberate choice not to run the ad - a choice with which people are free to disagree. The papers that ran the ad likely did the same - by valuing free speech concerns over others. The most unreasoned actions have been that of the people, both pro and con, who have sought to fan the flames with the rhetoric of intolerance and have acted to intimidate the students who put out the paper. Shame on them.
(Brent Garland can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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