Originally published September 30, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified September 30, 2007 at 2:02 AM
Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist
Free speech can be so — well, let's face it — rude
Some of you guys are jerks. No, I'm not talking about you, dear reader, whose erudition and class I've always admired. And you smell good...
Some of you guys are jerks.
No, I'm not talking about you, dear reader, whose erudition and class I've always admired. And you smell good, too.
But some of you other guys are some seriously preliterate knuckle draggers. Exhibit A would be the relatively new message boards on the Web site of that great metropolitan newspaper, The Miami Herald. Or at least it would have been, before management stepped in a few weeks back, began policing the boards more closely and put up a notice asking people to keep their comments on-point.
Before that, the message boards, theoretically a place where readers engage in robust debate on articles and commentaries in the paper, were a sewer of sexist, racist, pornographic crudity. For instance, a story on Shaquille O'Neal's divorce engendered an exchange on the basketball star's probable penis size. A story on Cubans brought the "I Hate Hispanics" crowd out in force. A story about the search for a black suspected cop-killer begat a call for lynching. Which, in turn, inspired someone to respond, "Bleep the police and all of you white racist folk." Yadda yadda yadda.
Frankly, the only robust debate was the internal one among reporters and editors appalled at what one called "vandalism." I even received e-mails from readers asking me to ask my bosses to clean up our message boards because they were stinking up the whole Internet.
Not that Mother Herald's experience is unique. Other papers that provide online message boards — The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, for example — have reported the same problems.
There's something depressing about watching how this ideal, so noble in the abstract, unfolds in reality. You start out hoping to provide a forum wherein citizens can engage in discussion — frank, spirited, even rude, mind you — of the day's news. You end up policing a debate over Shaq's jockstrap.
Is this what we have an Internet for? Does this latest and greatest medium of mass communication really exist only so that some of us can vent our ids?
Yes, I know. I protest too much.
This is nothing new. These same issues surfaced 200-odd years ago, when print was the latest and greatest (and for that matter, the first and only) medium of mass communication. In "Infamous Scribblers," his book about journalism in the colonial era, Eric Burns takes us to a time when it was common for writers, using pseudonyms, to engage in vicious, ad hominem attacks against political opponents.
Facts were often optional. They loved to wallow in the gutter. And anonymity made people brave.
Sound familiar?
For a devotee of the First Amendment, it's a sobering history lesson. We tend to think of free speech in lofty terms, to regard it as a means of liberating the human intellect, spirit and body. And why shouldn't we? We are the nation of Thomas Paine and John Steinbeck, of Betty Friedan and Cesar Chavez, of Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. What further proof do you need that when people are allowed to say whatever they want, sometimes they will say great things?
Problem is, we are also the nation of Larry Flynt and Don Imus, of Charles Coughlin and David Duke, of 50 Cent and Luther Campbell. What further proof do you need that when people are allowed to say whatever they want, sometimes they will just tell fart jokes?
To put it another way: Not everyone has something to say. This will not stop them from saying it. For some people, freedom and anonymity are always an invitation to sink like an anchor to the lowest common denominator. Which is distressing until you consider the alternative.
After all, they don't have this problem in Cuba.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: lpitts@herald.com
2007, The Miami Herald
David S. Broder / Syndicated columnist: House-approved health-care bill doesn't pay the bill
Guest columnist: Obama, our Confucian president, goes to China
Guest columnist: When recession ends, will container ships come back to Seattle and Tacoma?
Opening day at Crystal Mountain
Skiers crowded the slopes at Crystal Mountain for one of the resort's earliest openings.
nwjobs

Post a comment

Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
How to tell your office you're gravely ill
Post a comment
nwautos

Choosing a new sedan? Weigh the impact of your choice on your wallet and on the planet.
Post a comment
- Homeless man, 46, arrested in Greenwood arsons
- KVI talk radio host off the air as of Thursday
- Steve Kelley | ESPN's Bill Simmons gets us: He hates Clay Bennett, too
- Police investigate videotaped arrest
- Seattle U. Men's Hoops | Big recruit goes from Huskies to Redhawks
- Mariners sign Jack Wilson to 2-year contract
- Razor found in muffin an accident, 'mortified' baker says
- Suspect's family shaken by slaying of police officer
- Mountlake Terrace woman reports razor in muffin
- Man says he will protest city's gun ban by carrying gun into community center
- Police investigate videotaped arrest
635 - OSU game thread
433 - Seattle man to pack a pistol into community center to protest mayor's ban
337 - KVI talk radio host off the air as of Thursday
143 - Mariners sign Jack Wilson to 2-year contract
142 - NYC trial for 9/11 suspects poses risks
124 - Wright State game thread
97 - Band of advocates, activists now McGinn's likely insiders
89 - Rang says Locker not ready for NFL
85 - Licata looks at boosting traffic-ticket revenue
81
- Light rail to airport to begin Dec. 19
- Homeless man, 46, arrested in Greenwood arsons
- Ivar's undersea billboards a hoax devised as marketing ploy
- Light rail to airport to begin Dec. 19
- Steve Kelley | ESPN's Bill Simmons gets us: He hates Clay Bennett, too
- An 802.11n upgrade could make a big difference
- KVI talk radio host off the air as of Thursday
- Washington in race for federal education funds
- Police investigate videotaped arrest
- Goodwill's Glitter Sale is Nov. 14-15





