Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301110219
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
CASTING STONES
LETTERS to the editor, like their authors, come in all sorts, shapes and sizes. Last week, a letter to me - delivered to the newspaper's reception area - was taped to a 50-pound bag of chicken feed.My first reaction: pleasant surprise. After all, the bag's contents weren't smelly. Then it occurred to me that fertilizer, at least, might have come in handy. My family and I don't raise chickens.
So - why the feed? The note explained, in a manner of speaking. A Confederate battle-flag emblem adorned its cover. Below it were the words: "Deo Vindice." (Can you get this kind of card at Hallmark?)
Inside was written: "Mr. Sorensen, For not quite having the stones to print an adequate and truthful rebuttal."
Well, now. A bit of history: This message's author - let's call him Mr. Jones - had, some time before, brought in a letter in response to an editorial. Our editorial had argued that Alabama's state government shouldn't fly the Confederate battle-flag over the capitol building.
We chose not to print Mr. Jones' letter, which is apparently why he has called me, in effect, a chicken and not a rooster.
I don't know if Mr. Jones saw in the letters columns the lengthy rebuttal to our editorial by one Greg Gallion, printed Dec. 29. Perhaps he did, and considered that letter inadequate or untruthful.
Gallion is a camp commander in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I didn't see a lot of difference between his criticisms of our editorial and Mr. Jones'. But this is beside the point.
The chief difference between the letters was that Gallion did not append to his a note that said: "Run as is, or not at all." The other letter-writer did.
As I explained to Mr. Jones when he came in (and before I had read his epistle or knew its contents), all letters are subject to editing.
Never, I hope, do we edit letters to alter, distort or weaken a writer's point of view or style. We do edit for grammar, spelling and punctuation, for libel, for factual mistakes obvious to us, for conciseness, clarity, redundancy, and especially length. We cannot pledge to exempt any letters from editing.
Which is why, by refusing to give us editing rights, Mr. Jones left us no option but to exercise the choice he provided: Print as is, or not at all.
I sent Jones a letter reiterating this, after receiving the feed. I also wrote that I found his reference to "stones" not only distasteful, but unfair.
Our letters columns include not only an informational box explaining the guidelines on submitting missives - including the statement "All letters are edited." They also include, day after day, many letters in rebuttal of our editorial positions.
There's a reason for this. While we can't print all the letters we receive (we don't have the space), we give priority to letters that criticize editorials or other articles - even if we think their arguments are for the birds.
We publish a variety of views, especially ones opposed to our own - on everything from gun control to school holidays in Montgomery County. This is our journalistic obligation. It also makes the pages more readable.
For whatever reason, the letter flow has been growing. In 1991, the newspaper received 3,985 letters to the editor, of which 2,068 were published. Last year, we received 4,716 and published 2,394. Consistently, a letter-writer's best shot of getting into the paper has been to take a shot at us.
Many good letters go unpublished simply for lack of space. A lot of letters remain unpublished for other reasons.
Excessive length, for one. Mark Twain once wrote to a friend: "If I had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter." Short letters are more likely to get in.
Unsigned letters, as a rule, never do. Here's how one, received the other day, began: "The only `slime' in the Roanoke area exudes from the pens and word processors of the homosexual editors of the Roanoke Times & World-News." (Is there a theme emerging here?)
"The animus of homosexuals toward Christianity shows in every line of editorial comment." (Surely, not in every line!)
This message was unsigned.
A stone far more likely to hurt, if cast in our direction, would be the suggestion that we toiling on these pages are a smug, self-satisfied bunch of know-it-alls scornful of readers' views. I don't think we are.
But letters offer a corrective in any case. It's important to us that the opinion pages serve not merely as a platform for our pontificating, but as a forum in which various views come together and clash.
The First Amendment, wrote the judge with that great name, Learned Hand, "presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all." Rightly so.
Without freewheeling debate, people have a much harder time understanding each other - even if the tone of discussion may at times seem shrill or extreme.
In New York Times vs. Sullivan, the Supreme Court described a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." On newspapers, too.
The letters columns allow the public to serve as watchdogs over a newspaper's presentation and viewpoints. They are one of our most significant contacts with readers.
But they are not a bulletin board, upon which all letters are pinned without alteration and regardless of content. We remain ultimately responsible for what appears in the columns.
According to my colleague, Geoff Seamans, the editorial staff once experimented briefly with the idea of preserving the original text's sanctity. When letters were shortened for reasons of space or redundancy, ellipses were inserted. Otherwise, letters weren't edited.
The experiment was, Seamans reports, a failure. It drew dozens of reader complaints and was quickly scrapped. But it wasn't scrapped to protect the newspaper, or its editorials, from criticism.
The priority we give to critical letters - like the necessity of reserving editing rights - is a matter not of "stones," but of professional responsibility.
Speaking of which, we also have guidelines about accepting gifts. I hope the reader who sent me the bag of chicken feed will come retrieve it.
While he's here, perhaps we could talk things over. We may not reach agreement, but we might reach a better understanding of each other's point of view.