The Kaimin’s revealing “defense”
Montana taxpayers reading today’s editorial “defense” by the Kaimin of its publicly-funded porn might legitimately ask just what kind of “education” hardworking Montanans are being taxed for. (See Gregg’s post for link.)
After telling us about some of the OTHER vulgar public performances at UM, the Kaimin adds the following:
“And it’s not like sex is only dealt with in plays and newspapers.. . . The week of Valentine’s Day [at UM], you could, for only a dollar, purchase a chocolate Pussy Pop or Penis Pop in the UC [The student union]. Many of you chose not to buy the chocolate vulva on a stick – but many of you did. . . .students can purchase sex toys right here on campus. Each year sex toy parties for women are held in the dorms. . . .”
As I stated in a comment to an earlier post, education is not just about book-learning. It is about social and ethical development. The generation that fails in its duty to civilize the next generation bequeaths barbarism.
P.S.: Significantly, the Missoulian apparently did not think it appropriate to quote the Kaimin’s government-supported vulgarities in a family newspaper. Give the Missoulian some credit for taste.
Professor Natelson,What is your reaction to Bob Eddleman’s guilty plead yesterday?
[Ed. Note: Stay on point, Charlie.]
The girls from “Our Bodies, Ourselves” have finally achieved their highest goal: They’ve created an entire generation of sluts.
Checker/Chung/Rook, I agree with you (~wink~). Those women have finally tried to take control of their own sexuality, and it’s our job to demean them back into being our sluts, instead of their own.
So, if I read you correctly, Rob (and I do) this really isn’t about waste of public funds at all. It’s really about enforcing your view of morality, isn’t it? If the parents of those ’sluts’ at U of M, don’t want their ‘children’ to become ‘barbarians, why don’t you rail against them?
Hmm, UM set record enrollment numbers this year. Something seems a little remiss with your argument, Dr. Rob.
The Kaimin lacks experience in dealing civilly with its reading public, a skill that professional journalists learn. Contrary to the suggestion of the Kaimin advisor, Ms. Juras does not need “standing” to voice her concerns or talk to her legislator; she has the same First Amendment rights as the paper. While her view may not carry the day, she can and should be heard in a civil fashion. What could have been a learning moment — how to respond to one involved reader while educating the broader audience on journalism principles — has turned into a display of arrogance, which became seriously passe when newspapers lost their monopolies.
Wufgar:
I doubt group membership and group action constitutes taking control of one’s own sexuality, unless your sexuality belongs to the group, of course.
But thanks for the deep insight into the feminine psyche. (I won’t ask how you managed it.)
Establish what groups to which you refer, and you might start to make sense, troll. What exactly is the “group” of “slut”? Please, do tell …
All this is is some crusty old prude trying to force his version of morality onto everybody he can. Funny how some of these Republicans are all about small government until someone offends their delicate little sensibilities, then they want people to forget about that “free speech” thing in the Constitution just because someone said something “naughty”. “While I May Not Agree With What You Say I Will Defend To The Death Your Right To Say It”. Now shut up and show some respect to what our brave men and women in uniform are giving their lives to protect.
For some reason I get the feeling that the two Law Professros are trying to throw their weight around because this does not go in line with their ideals.
Yes, mom and dad were wrong about sex being bad, it is actually good.
Mihalis gets the argument wrong here – as the Professor has said, this isn’t about free speech necessarily – it’s about the kind of speech that is paid for by our public dollars. And then he throws the troops in for good emotional cover. Nicely obfuscated.
That’s not to say that I agree with the Professor here – this is a guy who doesn’t believe that public dollars should be going to the University system at all – but who’s pretty cool with foreign expeditions and a staggeringly large military budget. I have to pay for those things with my tax dollars no matter what – not to mention massive bank bailouts and payouts for huge agri-businesses. Those are things I disagree with – and I think it’s a cop-out to say that the only reason the Professor disagrees with this stuff is because his tax dollars are going to pay for them. He disagrees with this stuff because he’s old and prudish.
I read the Kaimin a lot when I was going to the U – and I thought the writing was mostly awful. And I had to pay for that with my tuition AND my tax dollars. But its existence is still necessary – so far as I’m concerned these students should be given essentially free reign – that’s kind of the point, you know.
Actually, it wasn’t an attempt at obfuscation. It was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of a group of people that pretend to support personal freedom up until those freedoms are used to say something that group disagrees with. If you’re going to support free speech, then support it. Don’t claim to support it unless it’s “inappropriate”.
As for the “kind of speech” that’s paid for by our public dollars. It’s a College newspaper. To say that the discussion of sex in college is inappropriate is shockingly naive. Perhaps if the good professor had actually attended college any time after the bronze age, he’d remember that college students have a lot of interest in sex. The paper is suppose to be educational and informative, and the column in question is both in my opinion. If the professor is shocked or finds the content of the article “inappropriate”, perhaps he shouldn’t read it.
My previous post was meant to have an air of sarcasm to it because this subject is outright moronic. The paper is paid for by public dollars because it’s meant to be educational not just to the people reading it, but also the people writing it. Teaching our future journalists that they need to censor what they write about as to not offend people goes against the basic idea of free speech. If there is something wrong with the author’s writing, I think this professor is more than welcome to bring it up. If she’s a bad speller, or she ends sentences a preposition with, or whatever. To complain about her content is completely missing the point.
Yowling for free speech in this instance seems a bit odd to me…those who pay the bill call the shots. I don’t have any unalienable right to have my opinion printed in a newspaper or anywhere else. I only get that right if I own it, or if the owner acquiesces to printing it. There is no question of “personal freedom” here; it’s simply a tug of war between the shareholders.
I don’t think that “yowling for free speech in this instance” is the slightest bit odd. Those who pay the bills are black, white, Chinese, Mexican, French, Spanish, etc. They’re also Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Atheist. They’re tall, they’re short, their skinny and fat, and everything in between. Who calls the shots when the “shareholders” cover such a wide range? The editors of the paper and the journalists writing do. If it’s done any other way, it ceases to be a public paper.
My suggestion, keep printing garbage.
Keep enforcing the label as party central. Take the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. Leave the other state schools to the ones who actually have graduation plans.
Help me out Rob, doesn’t 60% never finish?
Great record, keep it up.
Mihalis, I think you’re part way there.
That’s what elections are for.
Doug, even our elected officials can’t tell newspapers what to print, nor should they be able to.
And right you are, Mihalis. One thing they do do, though, is hire those whose philosophical mores are similar to their own.
Mihalis: The First Amendment isn’t about forcing others to pay for the publication of your views — it’s about the right to use your own efforts and resources to promote your views. I support the right of the Kaimin to print what they want, but if they are going to take public money on the grounds that they are part of the UM educational mission, then they have to meet normal journalistic standards.
But my preference is that they get no public money, and they say what they want. That IS the small government position.
Steve J.: Re your comment, “this is a guy who doesn’t believe that public dollars should be going to the University system at all.” Actually, I do favor government support for higher education, but as I’ve said for the last 15 years, I think we’d all be better off if it went to student scholarships rather than directly to the University bureaucracy.
I stand corrected, Rob – that was just an assumption on my part – based on some of the more Libertarian things you’ve said in the past.
What are normal journalistic standards, Rob? Journalism is an industry; it conforms to the market.
If I write a political story with a random butt sex metaphor in it, the Indy takes it out. The San Francisco Bay Guardian would leave it in. Journalism responds to its audience like any other commercial entity. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably a journalism professor and therefore probably trying to justify their existence.
klemz, what about this: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
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Minimize Harm
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
Journalists should:
— Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
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Just words. I’ve seen sbj give out awards for lurid curiosity.
klemz, you response about ethics being just words is not surprising given how you ran over to B-birds for a ‘high 5′ after commenting here. “That’s so fallopain tubes, man.”
If you think that was klemz playing to a sympathetic audience, you might want to check again.
Uh huh. I see where a Wulfgar (don’t know which one now given the “Gregg, the comment left at 11:16 am this morning wasn’t me. I was at work.”) concurred in part with kudos when he said: “Well played, sir. Kinda assholish, but well played.”
Ethics is empathy, canonized. If you need a manual, then swell. I’ll save room on my bookshelf for the Bible. At least that one has a lot of nifty fairy tales too.
Wulfgar is right. That wasn’t a high five. Wulfgar is wrong. That was dada.
Klemz, interesting comment. Since you are a professional journalist, which of the SPJ’s ethics codes gives you trouble in voluntarily following as a matter of professional honor and integrity and instilling confidence in the reading public? That seems to me to be the point of any profession that serves the public interest with real value by following some cannon of ethics, not cheap shots at religious faith as your Bible remark demonstrates.
The parallel was directly drawn, but you chose not to see it. Let me put it this way: I don’t keep the 10 commandments but, lo and behold, I didn’t kill anyone today. I doubt I’ll kill anyone tomorrow.
Moving away from the ridiculous why does the SPJ seem so unimportant to you?
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Preamble
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society’s principles and standards of practice.
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Why is your notion of ethics limited to canonized empathy? Doesn’t it take more to instill confidence in the public that a professional like you has some compass and self-control?
People navigated the seas before compasses existed and could again, but that would put the compass makers out of business. If people thought freely then who would get paid to write elaborate codes of ethics? Furthermore if people begin to understand what a simple, blue-collar, common sense industry journalism is — or better yet how inconsequential a “j school” degree is to a hiring editor — then who would want to pay the professors?
Canonization pays better than reporting — I’ll leave it at that.
Before the compass there was the stars and the sun. Seaman have always used guideposts. As to where the money is have you offered your services to the tabloids at the checkstand? People know what they get there with the two-headed monkeyman stories and such. Is that the attitude you take with the Indy to just package stories in saleable fish wrappers just short of killing someone, or do you conform to higher professional standards?
whatever happened to letting the free market decide, rob? i mean, this should sell some ads, right? seems like if there’s a market for this type of column…and your blathering about it has certainly not hurt interest in the upcoming articles. these kids are old enough to be sent to iraq to be blown into kibbles and bits to preserve the free market you so roundly pontificate about. so why should your personal brand of outdated prudish opinion carry any weight in what gets printed in a free press published by students who value it’s content?
what is the difference between the taliban and your call for repression of a popular column? i would submit you and the local mulah would be in perfect agreement with the possible exception that i presume you would support the student’s right to keep her head resting upon her shoulders, rather than rolling on the ground in a pool of blood.
our kids are fighting people who preach repression half way round the globe. the least i can do while their brothers and sisters are off fighting is to try to keep busy-bodies like yourself from repressing their freedoms here in the states .
if you don’t like it. don’t read it.
My professional standards are higher than the SBJ’s, I can assure you. If I write them down and sell them to 22-year-olds will that make you feel better?
All you have assured me is that you mock ethics and professional standards. Perhaps Jason Blair was merely unlucky.
Rob Natelson: I’m not going to sit here and argue the First Amendment with a Professor who teaches Constitutional Law, except to say that I strongly disagree with your interpretation, under which almost any journalist across the country could be censored at any time. I’m just going to point you to Dean vs. Utica, in which a Federal Judge ruled that a public forum created for use by student editors (which the Kaimin is) can reasonably be regulated in terms of time, place, and manner of expression, but not on the substance of that expression. Oh, and that was a High School newspaper. I’d love to see you argue your case in his court for a College newspaper.
Also, I have been completely unable to find any reference to you having issues with the Kaimin being publicly funded prior to the time when Bess Davis’s column was published. Your classification of it as porn, smut, or a pimp sheet points heavily to the fact that you care less about the paper being publicly funded and more about that column in particular. Further, your reference to “unmarried post-pubescents” is particularly telling. The fact that these students are unmarried is completely irrelevant, unless your religion dictates no sex until marriage. Under that light, this becomes more a case of you attempting to enforce your religious views under the guise of a protest on the use of public funding.
Yes, Jayson Blaire’s folly was disobeying an SBJ ethics guideline, not lying. It was not disregarding the only actual directive of the profession: relaying facts. It was not acting with ridiculous myopia. It was breaking a rule in a goddamn book.
I don’t understand how this conversation is actually still going on. Okay; time out. Is there honestly anyone else here who doesn’t understand what I’m saying?
Let me try one more time for good measure… Someone can make a moral decision (and the right one) without a preset code of ethics. Disavowing the code of ethics, additionally, is not disavowing the spirit behind any of its tenets. I can have contempt for a code because of 1 flaw in it (for example, an element saying same-sex copulation is wrong) without flushing the baby with the bathwater (rape, predatory behavior and BEARING FALSE WITNESS, especially when your job is only to tell the truth) . I mean, am I being unclear or are you trying to skirt the argument? If not, I’m about to call the short bus.
Let me see if I understand this situation. Two law professors, who happen to have academic freedom to teach and say almost anything they want no matter how offensive (just talk to some of Professor Natelson’s constitutional law students) by virtue of their secure jobs at a state law school, argue in favor of censoring an opinion column that they find offensive in the university’s student newspaper published under the authority of the student government. Neither professor has provided any precise legal authority to support their claims, which various experts in the first amendment reject. Wonder how a judge would rule? But of course, that’s because she would be a godless liberal.
klemz, like any good tabloid reporter you seem to take great liberties with the truth.
You write:
” Yes, Jayson Blaire’s folly was disobeying an SBJ ethics guideline, not lying. It was not disregarding the only actual directive of the profession: relaying facts. It was not acting with ridiculous myopia. It was breaking a rule in a goddamn book.”
In fact it was much more serious and different than merely breaking a goddam book rule. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/11PAPE.html?ex=1367985600&en=d6f511319c259463&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
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A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.
The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.
And he used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq.
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You seem to think that ethics and professional standards spring sui generis and that intent may be cleaved from the those ethics while discarding the rest. If that were so, universities would not spend the time teaching, and professional organizations reinforcing, professional ethics. Again, all you have done is underline the notion that chasing the dollar rules, and mocking ethics and standards is your free pass to assuage your conscious in doing so. I started by asking you about a specific ethics code provision concerning how journalists should show good taste and avoid pandering to lurid curiosity. Your mocking hostility to that question reveals much.
Go back and read the SPJ Preamble that I provided above.
Mihalis
Could you clarify how you came up with Dean v Utica as compelling precedent for this issue?
You are unbelievably dense. I don’t care what other journalists do because I’m not a j-school teacher. My record of accuracy speaks for itself. Your assumptions do not.
Hostility? Yes, toward a lack of critical thought. Guilty as charged.
firefly: Sure.
Both cases involve attempted censorship of a publicly funded publication. Both cases involve the faculty of the publishing entity (in the case of Dean v Utica, it was the Principal and Superintendent of the school system publishing the paper, who actually have some real authority over that paper, in this case it’s Mr. Natelson and a few other faculty, none of which has any authority over the paper). Both cases involve a student author and editor.
When Dean v Utica went to trial, a Federal Judge ruled that a limited public forum (a public forum created for use by student editors) can reasonably be regulated in terms of time, place, and manner of expression, but not on the substance of that expression.
The First Amendment protected Katy Dean’s article, even though it was in a publicly funded publication. It will also protect Bess Davis’s article, even though it’s in a publicly funded publication.
klemz, you say: “My record of accuracy speaks for itself.”
I agree. You claim, “Jayson Blaire’s folly was disobeying an SBJ ethics guideline, not lying. ”
Apparently the NYT must be wrong for their mea culpa to their readership, that I linked above, for Blair having: “…fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not. And he used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq.”
I have assumed very little here. You have demonstrated much.
If you honestly cannot see that I was being facetious there, then I apologize for my short bus comment. I think you actually are retarded.
Otherwise stop trolling. It’s obnoxious.
klemz, look in the mirror. ““That’s so fallopain tubes, man.” Not so much fun being on the pointy end of the spear is it when your professional reputation is at stake?
You write, “What are normal journalistic standards, Rob? Journalism is an industry; it conforms to the market. ”
When confronted with the professional practice standards of your craft, you show nothing but contempt. I’ll look for your name on the checkstand tabloids.
Mihalis, your interpretation does not seem to address several of the core issues our courts based their decision on. You will see some of them if you read Hazelwood, which Professor Natelson has linked in a more current thread. The dissenting opinion reflects some of your arguments, however, as has been noted several times in posts and comments here, the Kaimin issue may not be a clear First Amendment issue.
Of course, that is just my opinion, and since I do not have a crystal ball that tells me clearly what any court will do, (which would be really cool) I shall go now, and perhaps blather about my opinion on my own forum.
firefly: One of the reasons I chose Dean v Utica is because it overrode the decision from Hazelwood. Maybe I can address these core issues if you’d care to elaborate on what they are?
No, I don’t mind that. However, it’s not much fun trying to have a conversation with someone with a reading comprehension deficiency.
Terrific blog! I’ll probably be referencing some of this info in my next speech.