Last week, the student newspaper at the University of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Daily, published an editorial that essentially called on the Ku Klux Klan to be turned into an outlaw group and have their rights to free speech stripped from them. Well, earlier this week, they issued the following statement:
We want to apologize for Friday’s editorial. We’re sorry. The views expressed were not that of The Daily’s editorial board as a whole, and what was written strayed from what we intended the message to be.
Of course we believe in the First Amendment’s power. As a news organization, we have to believe in that power. On any given day, we will defend anyone’s right to express his or her opinion, even if we do not agree with what he or she has to say. Friday was not that day. We failed to be a leader in the OU community.
We were so preoccupied with managing the newsroom and coordinating content with the desks that produce news stories that we let our editorial fall to the wayside. We were unable to sit down as a whole editorial board and discuss the editorial. Had we done so, the editorial would have taken a different stance than the “First Amendment shouldn’t protect the Klan” and would have taken the views of the majority of the editorial board.
Instead, we left ourselves with a few hours to complete the editorial and present a compelling argument, something very few people can do in a short a time frame.
The editorial was finished 45 minutes before the whole paper was supposed to be sent to the press, which is hours after it is normally finished. This caused some of the ideas to be skewed and were not worded correctly because it hadn’t received the proper editing process.
To fix our wrong, we met Sunday afternoon to discuss our actual view and how to convey our message to the OU community, and we put this editorial through all the processes it’s supposed to go through.
While we abhor the Ku Klux Klan and what it stands for, we will defend its right to free speech, whether that be exercising its right to peaceably assemble or writing a letter to the editor to a local newspaper. However, we will not support the Klan’s right to free speech if it exercises said speech by defacing property, by making threats toward another person or by harming another person.
Like the KKK, everyone has the right to speak freely, however they choose to do it. Instead of sitting idly by and watching a hate organization rally for something you find inhumane, speak up. Use your voice. Start a protest against the other organization’s rally. We’ll stand by you, too. Raise your voice as loud as you can, and drown out the other organization’s collective voice. You can make a difference if you believe in something strongly enough.
That’s something we strive to do every day with our editorial, and when we mess up, everyone notices. That’s good, though. We want our Sooners to notice what we do. That’s how we remain relevant and essential. And we want your voices to be heard, too. If you disagree with us, let us know. Get your voice out, because it’ll go unnoticed if you don’t. You might change our minds or help us see a different side on an issue.
Okay, so this is good, right? They realized their mistake and acted to correct it.
Well, no. Not exactly. Let’s break it down.
“We want to apologize for Friday’s editorial. We’re sorry. The views expressed were not that of The Daily’s editorial board as a whole, and what was written strayed from what we intended the message to be.”
It’s of course preposterous to assume that everyone on the editorial board has the same point of view on a specific topic, but this is the one they chose to go with. It wasn’t sneaked into the paper without approval, a point we’ll get to more fully in a second.
“Of course we believe in the First Amendment’s power. As a news organization, we have to believe in that power. On any given day, we will defend anyone’s right to express his or her opinion, even if we do not agree with what he or she has to say. Friday was not that day. We failed to be a leader in the OU community.”
This is good. I don’t really have anything to say about this, except maybe that it sort of falls flat given the next paragraph:
“We were so preoccupied with managing the newsroom and coordinating content with the desks that produce news stories that we let our editorial fall to the wayside. We were unable to sit down as a whole editorial board and discuss the editorial. Had we done so, the editorial would have taken a different stance than the “First Amendment shouldn’t protect the Klan” and would have taken the views of the majority of the editorial board.”
No. Sorry, but no. I have no doubt that the Daily is an incredibly hectic place to be on deadline, and my experience in busy newsrooms in general compels me to sympathize with at least part of that, but unless the Friday editorial was submitted by an outside student and ninja-placed on the InDesign Document complete with the headline they ultimately went with for this piece, then the only conclusions I can reach here are that the board (or whichever individuals on the board who approved this) knew it would be a piece that would bring in a lot of eyeballs and generate a lot of buzz – or they just didn’t care that much. This paragraph nearly insists that no one felt the editorial was objectionable enough to comment on during production, much less argue against its publication. I can’t believe that is true.
“Instead, we left ourselves with a few hours to complete the editorial and present a compelling argument, something very few people can do in a short a time frame.”
The Vista managed to do it every issue with a staff shortage. Of course, they only publish twice a week, not daily, so that gives them some wiggle room, but I have seen editorials written, proofed and placed 20 minutes before deadline, and the only one that came close to this in my memory is the editorial about how Black History Month is exclusionary to white people.
“The editorial was finished 45 minutes before the whole paper was supposed to be sent to the press, which is hours after it is normally finished. This caused some of the ideas to be skewed and were not worded correctly because it hadn’t received the proper editing process.”
“This caused some of the ideas to be skewed”? “not worded correctly”? The whole premise of the article is that the KKK should be turned into outlaws because of their abhorrent views. It would take more than a quick grammar edit to change that. This is just deflecting from the fact that they screwed up. They’d do better just to say, “we screwed up” and discard the rest. Blaming the publication of an article as seriously wrong as the one on Friday on mere lack of time is kind of dishonest and cowardly. They don’t want to take ownership of the fact that they wrote and published this for the entire body of their peers to see.
The rest of the article is just a palliative, a reassuring statement directed mainly at the people who were actively upset by the editorial in question and raised their voices about it. “You can make a difference if you believe in something strongly enough”? Seriously?
Ultimately, though, the issue I take with this article is that by deflecting their editorial decision onto outside forces, they don’t address the fact that someone among them actually believes that people should lose their freedom of speech because that speech happens to be vile and regressive. They are rejecting any claim of ownership of the article in question. That’s irresponsible. It’s very nearly a non-apology, a very wordy cousin to “lol just joking” or “sorry I offended you”.
I emailed the editorial board asking to interview them. Hopefully they respond.