Don’t stop the presses!

Most of us try not to cuss in front of our parents, or if we do, the language tends more towards “damn” and “hell” than the more, shall we say, Anglo-Saxon curse words. Of course, we can say whatever we want, but we have to accept whatever consequences befall us, whether we lose our access to the family car or access to the roof over our head.\nSimilarly, in the world of journalism, the First Amendment’s freedom of the press concerns government interference in media sources, not the consequences of media action that offends or outrages. The public’s reaction matters most.\nRecently, a few instances have reminded us that regardless of our constant bellyaching over freedom of the press, the ultimate deciders of what we print are the readers, not some tyrannical dictator. The editor of the Rocky Mountain Collegian at Colorado State University may have kept his job after his paper’s controversial “FUCK BUSH” editorial, in which the words appeared in large all-caps font in a space normally reserved for hundreds of words, but the newspaper lost thousands in advertising and took pay cuts as a result. At the University of Kentucky, the editor and cartoonist of The Kentucky Kernel had to apologize publicly after a cartoon depicting a slave auction was roundly denounced by campus groups, even prompting student protests outside the journalism building. \nEvery newspaper has a code of ethics that it follows, but the line between sensitivity and self-censorship can become blurry in a world where everyone has a megaphone to blast his or her displeasure. Just take a look at the way the Collegian editorial ballooned from a small fracas in Colorado Springs into a national news story with coverage in the New York Times and regular billing on Fox News. It’s difficult to gauge when a group’s potential outrage outweighs the importance of distributing the news source’s information or opinion.\nWe’re not promoting self-censorship in the press, least of all in student press where decisions are often second-guessed to the point of absurdity. In fact, we celebrate the right we have to speak our minds freely on this page. Yet, the dangers of miscalculating audience response are numerous, and ultimately it’s the reading public who will determine a newspaper’s reputation. Just as we have the freedom to say what we want, the public has the right to refuse our product.\nToday, when the reach of media outlets is longer and when the stakes are higher, we cannot afford to be careless with our words. To those media outlets who consider making a stupid decision for the sake of a little publicity, we recommend that you weigh the reaction as part of your judgment. If we put ink to the page, we had better make sure we mean what we say and prepare to accept the consequences that come our way. The line between offending and affecting may be thin, but it’s our job as journalists to toe the line as best we can.