January 20, 2012, Segment 5, Project U Radio

Segment 5: January 20, 2012.  ”Editorial Discretion”. Editors, would you publish work with content that you think is personally objectionable (i.e. racism) if you thought it was an otherwise good piece? How do you feel about a blanket policy about certain kinds of content, such as “We don’t publish anything that includes sexist elements”. Do you make distinctions as far as language, character, etc. and have you had this issue come up when selecting work for a zine, website, journal, or project? Do you find the line of subjective interpretation to be difficult? Have you rejected work that you thought was well written because it contained something that you thought to be offensive or thought might offend readers? Beyond offensive, but perhaps hurtful or harmful?

If you want to start at the beginning, check out the archives *here* for our Censorship show, December 2, 2011, where we discussed movements like The Citizens For Decent Literature whose aim was to suppress literature that organizers felt was "objectionable". Inspired by this and being a fan of free speech, Literary Underground's Michele McDannold started a printed publication by the same name and soon after, a website to showcase poetry online. Brief editor of the website content, Michael Goscinski, was invited on to talk about censorship and a lengthy conversation ensued.

My distinction on the difference between censorship and editorial discretion is simple- one involves the systemic suppression of free speech through an authority either by their own undertaking or under pressure by a group that has lobbied for suppression. The other involves the discretion of a content producer and their right to have standards with respect to content. If I have a magazine, I have the right to decide that I don't want any content that involves clowns. (to use my example from the show) We are looking at my right as an owner and producer to discretion, which I believe to be important. But censorship would involve the government telling producers that they cannot publish content that involves clowns. This distinction takes away editorial discretion with a blanket rule across the board, presumably (they say) for societal or other benefit. This is an external, imposed control meant to assert one group's moral or religious view onto another group by limiting clown content. ......