Journalistic ethics, the media, and sex words
In a democracy the news media is supposed to stand for openness and honesty. Right?
But the managers who run our news organizations regularly breach those principles when sex is in issue.
The most common example of this ethical lapse is in the censorship of the simple word fuck, defaced with hyphens so it appears: f---.
Only words that refer to sexual organs and actions are the target of such censorship. The media never censors words that refer to harmful things like rape or murder. You won't see a sentence like: He r---- and then m------- the little girl.
The daily news media teems with examples of the primitive self-censorship of sexual words. The Vancouver Sun is a rich source of this ethical breach and provides an excellent illustration of the harm it causes.
Consider yesterday's (Feb 25, 2006) article by Sun columnist Pete McMartin on the prevalence of "profanity" in every day discourse. McMartin's entire column is about "The Word" as he calls it, but he never prints it out. McMartin starts his article "It is f---ing everywhere." He hyphenates it eleven more times.
He asks "But why do we swear, and what explains this public growth in its use?" He cites academic theories that our sexual mores have "loosened" or that swearing acts as a "release valve" or is simply youthful rebellion.
McMartin is a talented writer but not so well endowed as a thinker. His column never contemplates that swearing is the product of a system that his own conduct perpetuates. He designates a simple word as weird and then wonders why that same word should be so common in the vocabulary of our youth.
Systems that stigmatize words like "fuck" operate exactly the same as systems that stigmatize numbers like "13" or people like "negroes", "Arabs" or "Jews". All are superstitions that operate in the irrational parts of the human mind. Because the low-brow brain is in control here, stigmatizers have little insight about their behavior or its antisocial effects.
If McMartin's piece was simply an example of his own isolated word-stigmatizing, his piece would not deserve much attention. But his behavior is representative of a toxic journalistic habit that prevails in most media organizations in North America and one media managers, journalism schools, and journalists themselves simply take for granted without any critical analysis.
Consider, for example, the responses of Patricia Graham editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Sun to inquiries about her newspaper's word censorship:
"We do not have a written policy. We do have an unwritten policy to use ellipses in place of the word "fuck" and certain other words. Does that mean they don't get in the paper? We're not that perfect, but a database search from January 1, 2004 to date turned up only one instance of "fuck" appearing in a story, in a quotation in a story recollecting the Beatles visit to Vancouver."
Notice the attitude she lets slip. That "perfect" would be zero use of the printed word 'fuck", that "perfect" would see every such word defaced by hyphens.
And note how she rationalizes the censorship of simple words:
"When we use "f..." for fuck, I do not believe there is a censorship issue, because it is clear what the word is. Nothing is hidden, yet sensibilities are honoured.
So Ms Graham administers a policy that sees every instance but one of the word fuck printed in a way that omits the letters "u" "c" and k" and yet she can say "nothing is hidden". A better example of psychological denial would be hard to find.
Who cares if our media mavens help stigmatize simple words and are in denail about their conduct? What harm does it do?
Lots.
And it is precisely because of this harm, that people like McMartin and Graham and the industry they represent deserve censure.
By helping stigmatize common sexual words, they help stifle expression about sexuality, and such expression is vital to a culture's sexual health. Consider for example, one specific example of the effects of word censorship. The Vancouver Sun again provides the illustration.
Last year the Surrey School Board banned a play called The Laramie Project a powerful work that deals with the killing of a gay man in Wyoming. Because of the Board's previous anti-gay policies many people inferred that homophobia inspired the ban.
"Not so," said the chair of the School Board. Rather it was the play's use of sex words. The School Board official wrote an op-ed piece for the Vancouver Sun explaining this position and printed out the specific portions of the script that he considered objectionable.
The Vancouver Sun printed the piece but censored the sexual words! Even though the School Board official used no hyphens in his original, the Sun printed his letter setting out the offending portions of the script in this way:
"Don't f--- with a Wyoming queer, case they will kick you in your f-----g ass." "...he starts grabbing my leg and grabbing my genitals. It was like 'Look, I'm not a f------ 'faggot' ... I beat him up pretty bad. I think I killed him."
"He tried to grab my d---."
Notice that the Sun had no problem spelling out a hateful word, like faggot. Only sexual words catch the censor's eye.
The defaced words are not an irrelevant detail of the story, but rather its heart because those words are key to the School Board's decision to prohibit the play. The Sun's censorship (on its op-ed pages no less) is a clear violation of elemental journalistic ethics to "seek truth and report it".
In censoring the words the Sun powerfully yet mindlessly endorses the School Board's position. If the province's largest daily newspaper believes that those words cannot appear on its op-ed pages about a controversy involving those very words, how could the Sun possibly blame the School Board for canceling a play with the same words? In practicing censorship the Vancouver Sun helps cause more of it.
School students and their families and friends are in turn denied access to this play and to the important ideas about sexuality that it contains. The whole community is harmed. And the journalists turning the wheels of this system are blind to their own complicity.