Northern Illinois Newspaper Association

Summer 2004

Decency standards
aim at moving target

By Jim Killam

I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article in the early 1980s. The writer paraphrased the chant of a raucous Red Sox crowd: "Steinbrenner creates a partial vacuum with his mouth! Steinbrenner creates a partial vacuum with his mouth!"

It never caught on. This morning, my Google search for this phrase came up empty, while "Steinbrenner sucks" yielded 2,980 results.

That bit of editorial restraint seems quaint today, when "sucks" has lost its sexual connotation and become as commonplace in print as "stinks." In the past decade, editors have been barraged with tougher questions - for instance, how to talk about what Bill and Monica were doing. Before we even had time to decide what our standards should be, the details were everywhere. I'm not sure journalism has ever caught up.

Thanks to the First Amendment, print and online media aren't subject to FCC standards. We set our own. We'd be lying, though, if we said we weren't paying close attention to what's going on in the broadcast industry. Television viewers appear to be safe, at least for now, from seeing any more disco-bondage nipple medallions. But decency standards, whether self-imposed or government-dictated, aim at a forever-moving target.

When no one's entirely sure at any given moment what those standards are, audiences never know what to expect. Case in point: I'm watching a Cubs game with my kids on a Sunday afternoon. Every half-inning, we are subjected to a commercial for "male enhancement" pills and are warned of the dangers of a four-hour, um, enhancement.

Everyone stares straight ahead, hoping to avoid eye contact.

Finally, I decide it's my duty as a dad to break the ice.

"Hoo boy, that lawn sure needs mowing."

Yet, at the same time advertisers teach kids about male enhancement, TV and radio honchos live in fear that certain expletives will be uttered on their stations and incur the wrath and fines of the FCC. Even hearing the surname of the Cardinals' first baseman makes them twitch nervously.

Broadcast media gets its decency standards designed by bureaucrats and vote-hungry politicians. Those standards shift as often as the political winds. Newspapers have the opportunity to do it right: to set standards based on values, not votes. In doing so, we will re-emphasize our role as gatekeepers of quality in American media.

Who decides for whom?

Not that it's easy to decide what those values are. College journalists, as you might imagine, like to test the boundaries. One of my student columnists tries whenever he can to inject the term "moon whores" into his prose. And HBO's "Sex in the City" has spawned a generation of copycat columnists, each self-appointed sexpert believing the world is breathlessly awaiting his or her advice.

With each new graduating class, a slightly different set of standards enters the newspaper world - a few as journalists, far more as readers. Editors are left to decide whose standards prevail. One reader might be offended by "sucks," another wouldn't flinch at a column explicitly describing oral sex … or an explanation of what the heck "moon whores" are. If editors take a zero-tolerance approach, they're afraid of being labeled out-of-touch prudes. If they're overly permissive, their phones never stop ringing.

The newsroom conversation goes something like this:
"We can't print that. The old ladies at the nursing home will read it tomorrow morning and spit out their oatmeal."

Or, "We can't print that. We're a family newspaper."

Those are valid approaches, so long as the staff doesn't interpret the unspoken subtext as: "I'm fine with it, but the morality police will see it and complain and I don't have time to handle the phone calls."

Old ladies and little kids make convenient scapegoats. But a newspaper is supposed to stand not only for what its readers want or don't want, but also for its own values. I think most newspapers would list community and decency among those values.

Better for editors to set this tone: Sometimes we will publish unpleasant and offensive news if it's important enough, but never with undue sensationalism or vulgarity. And if we're not certain about whether something is too offensive, we'll err on the safe side and not use it.

We live in an increasingly explicit culture. I once interviewed a former pornography addict who said we are sexually assaulted every day by the images and words our culture throws in front of us. Would it be so bad for newspapers to swim against that tide? To say with conviction that we will establish clear standards and then uphold them, because it's the right thing to do? And to say that, even though some of those standards might have to be revised now and then, we will not simply let them erode without careful thought?

The dirty-words list

At the Northern Star last year, enough questions arose about what language is appropriate and what isn't that we decided to come up with a list of red-flag words and phrases. The list would make George Carlin blush. I won't print it here, but it is printed in our staff manual. If you want to see the list, e-mail me and I'll send it to you (turn off any filtering programs). We separate it into two categories:

Usually a bad idea: Allowable in some instances, such as direct quotes, but don't use gratuitously. Generally, these should be avoided by columnists, cartoonists and in advertisements. Before this year, just about all of these words - including a couple of words from Carlin's old "Seven Words" routine - could be heard regularly on radio and network television.

Never allowable: Self explanatory. This list includes not only traditional profanity, but also racial, ethnic, religious or sexual slurs. Not knowing what a term means is not an excuse. If editors decide the words are necessary to the story, they use dashes after the first letter of the word.

Obviously, no policy can cover every objectionable word or phrase. New hybrids crop up all the time, and just because something does not appear on the list does not necessarily mean it should run without question. I also don't doubt that an editor or two along the way will decide to run something from the "never allowable" list. So along with the list, we encourage our student journalists to ask themselves these questions:

Is the language necessary to communicate the message? Or will it divert attention from the primary focus?
Is the author using certain words just for shock value without journalistic justification?
Is there less-offensive language that would communicate the same idea?

Sharon Boehlefeld, features editor at The Journal-Standard in Freeport, says her paper's policy boils down to this: "Would you want your 5-year-old using the word in a conversation with your mother?"

Is that quaint? Or is that responsible journalism? It's a conversation every newspaper ought to have with its readers.

Jim Killam is adviser for the Northern Star, the daily student newspaper at Northern Illinois University. Contact him at jkillam@niu.edu

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