SOMETIMES, very subtle things perpetuate stereotypes and promote prejudices.
About eight years ago, for a course on the civil rights movement, I looked at the original local coverage of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. One phrase still stands out in my memory as The Montgomery Advertiser's expression of racism: "the Parks woman."
"The Parkswoman." Not Mrs. Parks, as she would have been called if she had been white. Not simply "Parks," the less formal form most of today's newspapers would use regardless of race or sex: "the Parks woman." This less respectful reference plainly signaled the newspaper's refusal to extend equal respect to black women as to white. "When your wife and mother are never given the respectful title 'Mrs.,'" wrote the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, "... you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."
Today, of course, standard newspaper style often declines to use "the respectful title 'Mrs.'" -- not only because courtesy titles such as "Mr." and "Mrs." have gone out of fashion, but because many people no longer consider "Mrs." so respectful.
Yet there remains one context in which newspapers, as matter of policy, treat individuals' names differently in a way that shows a clear lack of respect for one group of people: Young people all too often are not taken seriously as individuals -- and this is reflected in the way newspapers treat their names.
Older people, once introduced in a story, are standardly referred to by their last names on subsequent references. But newspaper stylebooks -- the rulebooks that govern such matters -- typically provide different rules for younger news subjects. The Cavalier Daily's stylebook says: "In the first reference to a child younger than 15, use the full name. Thereafter, use the first name only, unless the story deals with a serious subject such as murder."
This policy is discriminatory and insulting. If one person is referred to by a first name, another by a last name, this usually indicates that more respect is being given to the latter. Thus, for example, it's common in many places to call your teacher by his last name but your student by his first; there's a distinctive egalitarianism in the University tradition of referring to both students and faculty by their last names; and it would be surprising to see a professor address a student by his last name and accept being called by his first.
Newspaper style is important because when things are written a certain way, that encourages thinking of them that way. If newspapers refer to a certain class of people less respectfully than others, they encourage their readers to think of members of that class with less respect than they extend to others.
Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Mills argued that the rule "recognizes that there is a difference between speaking with a child and speaking with an adult," and that the difference is "pertinent." But if age is truly pertinent to a story, it can be mentioned, and the readers can form whatever judgments they wish.
You might, of course, hold that the policy is justified because "children" simply aren't usually entitled to the same respect as adults. I disagree -- but unless you think age itself, regardless of anything else that might come with it, warrants respect, the point is irrelevant. When it comes to news subjects more than 18 years old, newspapers do not ask whether they've earned any respect. If you are 19 and a serial rapist and murderer, you get your last name. If you are 40 and have never held a job, though physically and mentally able to do so, nor accomplished anything else with your life, you get your last name. If at 20 or 80 you have the mental capacity of a typical 4-year-old, you get your last name -- but if you actually are 4, or 14, and have the capacity typical of your age, or even the capacity typical of someone much older, you usually don't. No conceivable standard of respect, except the one measured by the orbit of the earth and the rings of trees, can account for the distinction.
In any event, the view that one class of people is entitled to more respect than another, whether justified or not, should not be promoted by news writers in news stories. If someone wants to argue that young people are entitled to less respect than their elders, that is an opinion and belongs in the opinion section.
Student newspapers especially, whose writers and editors are themselves often subject to age discrimination, ought to be sensitive to the issue.
And they ought to treat all ages equally in their news stories.
Editor's Note: Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Mills did not edit this column as it contains her quotation.
Alexander R. Cohen is The Cavalier Daily's ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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