More Violence
Out of context: Reply #106
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- mrdobolina0
Decent editorial about censorship -
WHEN IS IT CENSORSHIP AND WHEN JUST COMMON SENSE?
There have been two news stories recently involving free speech that have put that inalienable right to the test.
In Minneapolis, a student who was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after he wrote an essay about killing his teacher and then himself is now suing the Cook County School District.
He was found to be not mentally ill and was released within a few days, and now he and his mother are suing the district for more than $440,000 in damages.
His attorney said the student was taken into custody for something he wrote — not anything he did.
The student wrote a creative writing essay in which the narrator kills his writing teacher, and his real life writing teacher, understandably, feared for her life.
And, in my mind, with good reason, as recent reports of school violence would attest.
The teacher had warned him that she didn’t approve of previous writings that focused “on sex and potty language.” After that, he wrote essays about a character who was angry with being censored in his writing.
Now I’m not in favor of limiting someone’s right to expression, but I don’t call it censorship when a teacher steers a student in a new direction.
Maybe the teacher should’ve talked to the parents or the student. But even so, her first responsibility was to take seriously any threat – written or otherwise – of violence. Can you imagine the backlash had she laughed it off and the student was using the literary technique of foreshadowing?
That’s story No. 1.Different story, same take
Story No. 2 has global implications – it’s the one about Muslims’ angry protests against European countries where caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, including one depicting him wearing a turban fashioned into a bomb, were published.
In Washington, the State Department criticized the drawings, calling them "offensive to the beliefs of Muslims."
While recognizing the importance of freedom of the press and expression, U.S. State Department press officer Janelle Hironimus said these rights must be coupled with press responsibility.
"We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and for their religious beliefs and practices."
This is another case of rights vs. responsibilities. I agree that the press had every right to run with the cartoons. But I think it had a responsibility to reject it as well.
Not everything that ends up on an editor’s desk makes the paper. Readers rely on papers to be gatekeepers of information – meaning they are entrusted to make responsible judgments as to what’s important and what can be discarded.
With that comes the responsibility to determine, as best as possible, whether running a piece will have detrimental and possibly unintended consequences.
I’m with Hironimus on this: Tolerance is called for, and running the cartoon showed an extreme lack of it.
And I’m reminded by the words of columnist William Safire: “The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”