Struggling with free speech issues

A provocative, political, full-page advertisement -- paid for, written and conceived by David Horowitz, a conservative columnist and critic -- has sparked a national controversy on, around and about our nation's college campuses in recent weeks.\nThe ad is intended to provoke the student press and academia in general by presenting a challenge to what its author considers the dominant mode of social and political discourse in higher education -- liberal ideology.\nHorowitz, who serves as president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, distributed the controversial (some say racist) ad to 69 college and university newspapers. Twenty have printed it and 36 haven't. The others are still considering it.\nThe ad, entitled "10 Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea -- And Racist Too," is intended to be an intellectual challenge to higher education and student media in the United States. Horowitz thinks academia has been stifled by political correctness run amok -- a "dictatorship of the left," in his own words during a discussion sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education. \nHe thinks liberal ideology has become the status quo, making any conservative thought anathema to acceptable social and political discourse. Launching such an assault on academic thought by way of the issue of slavery reparations was a bold move, bound to get attention. \nAnd it did.\nAngry readers stole thousands of copies of the Brown University Daily Herald in protest of its decision to run the ad. The Daily Californian, the University of California (Berkeley, Calif.) student newspaper, printed the Horowitz ad in its Feb. 28 edition. Chaos ensued; a front-page apology appeared in the paper the next day. Both the ad and the subsequent apology have come under fire from various sides of the debate.\nWhen Daily Californian editor in chief Daniel Hernandez was interviewed for this column, he characterized his paper's printing of the ad as a "mistake" in that the decision lacked "editorial oversight." He said the advertising section's process of flagging controversial content and alerting management about such material failed. \n"We didn't realize it was going in," Hernandez said. "The majority of us thought the ad was pretty bigoted, but we stand by our decision." \nHernandez cited many factors as reasons for a collegiate newspaper to debate publishing Horowitz's ad. "It's a matter of taste, a matter of appropriateness, a matter of values," he said. "We don't necessarily have a duty to shield the public from offensive ideas, but it's a little unfair to put this kind of pressure on collegiate journalists."\nHernandez maintains a fundamental disagreement about the nature of Horowitz's ad. "To say that this is totally a free speech issue, that's bullshit," he said. "It's paid advertising." Some collegiate editors have skirted the advertising issue altogether by encouraging Horowitz to submit his ideas and arguments in the form of an opinion or editorial column, thereby keeping the controversy strictly in the realm of intellectual debate.\nThat said, let's examine some more reasons for and against publishing Horowitz's ad and others like it.\nUnderlying this controversy is a false dichotomy about free speech and advertising. The ad's content and message is political speech -- the form of discourse most protected by the First Amendment. This is where the false dichotomy comes in. \nIt goes like this: A newspaper prints the ad in the interests of the unfettered debate of political and social ideas, despite the rancor and outrage it might provoke. Or it rejects the ad and, in doing so, invites accusations of political bias and suppression of free speech. In other words, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.\nIt's a dilemma, a no-win situation, right? Wrong. An editor may go between the horns of the dilemma by asserting the newspaper's right to set its own standards for publication and to ensure that any and all proposed advertising or other content is in accordance with such guidelines. Strict regulation of political and social speech is a road few, if any, newspapers would be willing to travel. Also, the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech but doesn't require newspapers to publish everything, column or ad, that comes its way.\nAnd such regulations must be used consistently. If a newspaper publishes a political ad that denies the Holocaust, it had better be printing the Horowitz ad. To publish one and not the other would invite accusations of hypocrisy. Such criteria-based policies might solve problems in the here and now, but they're more likely to be viewed as cop-outs. And for good reason: the more speech, the better. \nIt's more important to express controversial and potentially offensive ideas than to suppress them. Stifling an opinion or viewpoint simply because it is unpopular or goes against what is socially acceptable is not a productive course of action. Ideas with merit will survive and perhaps flourish, even if at first they seem ludicrous. That's the theory, anyway.\nUltimately, the decision to publish or not to publish the Horowitz ad should and does rest solely with newspapers themselves. Public or political pressure might be intense, but it should be ignored. And then there's the money issue. Full-page advertisements usually command a hefty price. But that shouldn't factor into the equation, even if a newspaper is financially strapped. \nThe decision to publish or not to publish a controversial political ad is one of principle. No one can force a newspaper's hand in this matter, and rightfully so. Such ethical and professional tests come with the territory. They're part of the reason why journalism is the only business protected by the U.S. Constitution. \nBut the First Amendment is not something to hide behind. If a newspaper chooses to publish the Horowitz ad, it should do it and not look back -- no apologies or explanations, please, and no second-guessing.