Frozen Out   

Journalists must remember that politically incorrect views are entitled to an airing.

A SINKING FEELING HIT ME in the gut as I read of Paul Greenberg's recent censoring by KUAR, the National Public Radio outlet in Little Rock. A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor whose work has long graced the editorial pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and other newspapers, Greenberg was given his walking papers shortly after the station asked him to provide a conservative counterpoint to liberal commentator John Brummett.
In his first commentary, Greenberg criticized a proposed hate-crimes measure. In his second, he talked about abortion and the "culture of death." What followed was a sequence of events that is becoming all too familiar. There were backdoor protests from prominent local NPR contributors, including some, Greenberg said, who were "unaccustomed to hearing any strong opinion on KUAR they might disagree with."
Station manager Ben Fry caved. Greenberg--who earned his Pulitzer at the Pine Bluff Commercial for his eloquent defense of civil rights in 1969, when doing so was dangerous--was sacked.
" 'What do you expect me to do, Paul?' " Fry asked him, according to Greenberg.
"Well, Ben, I expected you to show a little courage. Because without courage, neither journalism nor freedom itself will prove a going concern for long."
Fortunately, an avalanche of support, including that of Brummett, resulted in Greenberg's reinstatement. But that could soon be a rare exception without a major attitude adjustment among journalists on the front lines of the First Amendment's defense and campus journalists who aspire to succeed them.
The problem here goes way beyond the familiar charges of liberal media bias. I spent 14 years as a reporter and editor, so most of my media colleagues were and are liberals. It's just part of the typical newsroom landscape.
It's not the bias, it's the blind spot too many journalists display when the victim of censorship is a conservative or somebody else whose opinions are out of step with the reigning liberal orthodoxy.
Consider the journalism community's nonreaction to Greenberg's ouster. The silence was deafening. Nothing from the nation's great editorial pages. No expressions of concern by Dan Rather. Not a peep from SPJ.
The same blind spot buried the news earlier this year when an arrogant Massachusetts mayor decided freedom of speech doesn't protect Marie Cupo's right to inscribe the words "For all the Unborn Children" on a commemorative brick she bought in a fundraiser to renovate a local public playground.
Newburyport Mayor Lisa Mead incorrectly assumed the banned message referred to abortion, though Cupo says it was a response to a recent miscarriage. Cupo filed suit in a federal court, but her case has generated scant coverage.
Sadly, things are worse on campus, judging by the reaction to the paid anti-slavery reparations advertisement '60s-radical-turned-conservative David Horowitz tried to place in college newspapers.
The ad presents 10 reasons Horowitz believes reparations are a bad idea. Some of his reasons are utterly conventional (a tiny minority of whites owned slaves), while others are controversial (blacks owe a debt to America).
At latest count, three dozen college newspapers--including those at Harvard, Columbia, the University of Virginia, Notre Dame and Penn State--have rejected the Horowitz ad.
Among the few that did publish the ad, some editors responded to campus protests with orgies of politically correct self-flagellation and abject denials of professional integrity. One even ran a front-page apology for letting his paper become "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry."
What will such student journalists say when they are the reporters and editors targeted by people like Cathy Renna, spokeswoman for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation? Renna tells gay activists to "have those tough conversations with journalists about when it is completely inappropriate to run to some radical group like the Family Research Council because of misguided notions of 'balance.' We are now in the position of being able to say, 'We have the high ground, we have the facts, and we don't have to go one-on-one with these people.' "

Who will tell Renna now and in the future that, "Oh, yes, you do have to go one-on-one with your critics. Welcome to democracy"?
If journalists don't defend the First Amendment, who will? We all suffer when one person's freedom of speech is violated. Whatever happened to the grand old idea that journalists are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, without fear or favor?