“Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
The above statement is the basis for all that follows, so if you only glanced at it, take a second to read over it again.
My first column of the semester was a guide to how The Crimson White’s Opinions page works. Admittedly, space constraints kept me from fully expressing myself, so maybe some of this is my fault. When I get to blaming myself, though, I just remember that the word “Opinions” is printed in big, bold letters on the left-hand side of this page, and I feel a little better.
Ross Owens wrote an extraordinarily asinine, poorly thought out letter to the editor last week. It was devoid of any real fact or coherent thought beyond hollow assertions that all Occupy Wall Street wants is free handouts and that New College isn’t actually a discipline.
And I loved it. Here’s why:
The Opinions page operates as a public forum. It is a place for people to get their message out, positive or negative, so that others may read it. Some may point out that pieces such as the one written by Mr. Owens should not be printed because they are devoid of any real substance or constructive thought.
To a degree this is true, but I would argue that even that particular letter served a purpose, even if it wasn’t explicit. My guess is that in today’s paper there will be at least one letter to the editor openly disagreeing with Ross Owens.
My view of free speech is that everyone should be allowed to say whatever they want. The reason is that, in a public forum, the audience also has the right to openly and publicly disagree or even discredit the statements they feel are untrue, which creates conversation. The only way this doesn’t work is if no one bothers to respond.
I have been criticized by the readership as a person who, on a weekly basis, picks a topic and complains about it without actually doing anything constructive. Past columnists have received similar criticisms, and I imagine all columnists until the end of time will as well.
It is fair criticism, I suppose – I certainly disagree with it, but it is fair. In my mind, a public forum is the most productive place to air grievances or critiques. I could go to an open SGA meeting and state my case to 50 or so people, or I could write my case in a column and, in addition to those 50 people, state it to the much larger student body. That’s just my opinion, though.
Not all of you share that opinion, but instead of making passive-aggressive Facebook statuses about how I just complain without doing anything (a great example of irony, for those still struggling with that word), you could share that opinion with the student body, a much larger group than your friends list. And anyone who disagrees could respond, and so on and so forth.
And that’s how discourse works.
One final point I wanted to touch on is the readership segment that still hasn’t come to grips with the fact that the Opinions page isn’t a place for journalism. Should columns and letters to the editor be based in fact? Absolutely, but as I argued earlier, the important point is to gather the most diverse array of opinions.
The reason I even bother with this point is that The Crimson White does have good journalists, and The University of Alabama does have a good journalism program. Most of the people who write on the opinions page aren’t journalists, and what they write isn’t journalism. It isn’t even news. It’s the author’s opinion, and it reflects the views of the author alone.
John Davis is the chief copy editor of The Crimson White. His column runs Mondays.
