Media’s hateful rhetoric stems from abuse of First Amendment

Monday, January 12, 1998

Media’s hateful rhetoric stems from abuse of First Amendment

JOURNALISM: Sense of decency lost in trend of printing spiteful
remarks in college newspapers

By Suzanne Evans

The modern law of free speech provides, in part, that all
American citizens have the right to advocate positions which are
not substantially likely to incite imminent illegal activity. Thus
it would seem that even the phrase, "show your spirit on Chelsea
(Clinton’s) bloodied carcass," which appeared in the UC Berkeley
Daily Californian a few days before the big Cal-Stanford football
game, is entitled to constitutional protection.

Yet the publication of this particular phrase is significant not
so much for the First Amendment issues it might raise, but for what
it reveals about the rise of hateful rhetoric in American college
and university newspapers today.

Read any recent issue of the Daily Californian or the Daily
Bruin, for example, and you are likely to find references to Ward
Conerly, the UC Regent who helped dismantle affirmative action
programs in California, as a "racially bigoted Uncle Tom,"
allusions to Gov. Pete Wilson as a "prejudiced" politician who
"hates anyone who is different than him," and descriptions of
President Clinton as a "sexual predator."

Of course, it can be said that students who utter and publish
these types of remarks are simply emulating a larger trend in
American journalism. Taking their cues from the mad, screaming
shock-jocks on talk-radio and the amoral purveyors of an earlier
muckraking tradition gone bad, it is possible that some students
are simply mimicking the compromise standards and practices made
popular by the modern rise of tabloid journalism and the
concomitant tabloidization of the news.

Although it might not be fair to expect young journalists to
reject the unethical methods their mentors commonly use, it is an
irony worth noting that the moment students begin to implement such
methods is the moment at which they begin to imperil the very
institutions they stand to inherit.

Perhaps an even greater irony lies in the fact that the students
who regularly write and publish offensive columns and letters seem
to believe that they are promoting the First Amendment by
exercising one of it’s most central tenets: The right to criticize
public figures and officials.

But in this assumption they are often mistaken, for it is their
refusal to print hateful rhetoric that will invariably enhance free
speech values by raising the level of public debate. After all, to
what extent does public discourse benefit by allusions to
"Chelsea’s bloodied carcass?" How much can we, as concerned
citizens, possibly learn from such hollow, hateful words?

Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, there are more values –
such as human dignity and decency, for example – that are more
enduring and fundamental than those promoted by the modern law of
free speech. Indeed, just because we may have the constitutional
right to publicly express our views, it does not necessarily follow
that it is always morally desirable to do so.

Reading the offensive column in the Daily Californian sadly
brought to mind the slow, weary tone of Joseph Welch who, in
response to the irresponsible assertions of the amoral Senator
McCarthy, softly asked long ago: "Have you no sense of decency,
sir, at long last. Have you left no sense of decency?"

Given the indecent remarks recently published in the Daily
Californian and the larger journalistic tradition from which they
stem, perhaps that is a question all American journalist might do
well to renew in a moment of quiet magnanimity and reflection.