[827] in peace2
one more media action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Tue Jun 5 17:25:09 2001
Message-Id: <200106052125.RAA13529@gold.mit.edu>
To: peace-list@MIT.EDU, earth-action@MIT.EDU, greens-announce@MIT.EDU
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Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 17:25:03 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
http://www.fair.org/activism/boston-globe-iwf.html
ACTION ALERT:
Boston Globe's Continued Hypocrisy on Free Speech
June 5, 2001
FAIR sent out an action alert on April 9 asking readers to contact the Boston
Globe about the paper's apparent hypocrisy. The Globe had
written an editorial (3/20/01) upholding the free-speech right of right-wing
activist David Horowitz to place a racist ad in campus newspapers
attacking the idea of slavery reparations. The paper told student editors and
campus activists: "Far more dangerous than offensive ideas is
their censorship, because censorship knows no ideology and will eventually
muzzle the views of the minorities as well."
But as columnists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman pointed out ("Focus on
the Corporation," 4/3/01), the Globe itself recently refused
to publish an ad critical of the Staples office supply chain for using paper
made from old-growth forests. The environmental group that wanted
to place the ad, Forest Ethics, says it was told that the paper would not
print an ad that criticized Staples, a major Boston-based company, by
name. The paper told Mokhiber and Weissman that it was uncomfortable with the
way the group expressed its views.
Hundreds of activists sent messages to Boston Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas,
asking him to explain why his paper lectures student
journalists about the need to print any ad, no matter how offensive, while
censoring an ad that might hurt its commercial interests. The
response from Thomas: total silence.
Now the Globe is scolding students again about their insufficient regard for
the free speech rights of advertisers. On May 30, the paper ran an
op-ed by regular columnist Cathy Young taking campus feminists to task for
their protests against an ad from the right-wing Independent
Women's Forum, explicitly inspired by the Horowitz ad, that was published in
UCLA's paper.
Some students at the school criticized the paper for running the ad, which
claims to debunk "feminist myths" while referring to campus feminism
as "a kind of cult" promoted by "factually challenged professors." While
Young, whose own work was cited in the ad, described it as "factually
impeccable," much of the ad's content is deeply misleading.
For example, it asserts that it's a myth that "one in four women in college
has been the victim of rape or attempted rape"-- a statistic based
on a National Institute of Mental Health study of sexual assaults from age 14.
(See Extra!, 11-12/93, 11-12/00.) The ad counterposes this
with the number of rapes that happen *on campus* and are reported to campus
police-- obviously a fraction of all the rapes and attempted
rapes college-aged women have ever experienced.
Accusing the UCLA students of disdaining "intellectual openness," Young wrote
that "esteem for freedom of expression seems to be in equally
short supply." She said that other student paper's decisions whether or not to
run the ad would be an "important test" of whether the "free
exchange of ideas" is imperiled.
Of course, one could argue that student papers ought to publish such
intentionally provocative ads-- if only to prevent the advertisers from
achieving the free-speech martyrdom that they crave. But the Boston Globe
op-ed page is hardly the appropriate place for campus editors to
receive lessons on the "free exchange of ideas"-- not when the paper hasn't
explained why it doesn't seem to practice the openness to
uncomfortable advertisements that its editorials and op-ed writers preach.
ACTION: Please contact Boston Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas and remind him that
he has never addressed the hundreds of questions he
has received about his paper's apparent double standard regarding advertising
acceptance. You might also contact Globe editor Matthew
Storin and ask him to ensure that the ombudsman does his job of responding to
complaints from the public.
CONTACT:
Matthew V. Storin, Editor
617-929-3049
storin@globe.com
Jack Thomas, Ombudsman
617-929-3020
ombud@globe.com
