In fishing for ethical issues to kick off this column, I noticed there has been a tad of controversy about the content of campus publications this year, even garnering national attention. And while much has already been said about The Insurgent’s and the Oregon Commentator’s publication of religious cartoons, I thought I would add a media ethics perspective to the mix. The right to free speech has been upheld for our campus publications, so I am not going to approach this case from a legal standpoint, as ethical obligations stretch beyond the scope of the law anyway. The fundamental ethical issue in the case of these offensive cartoons at both papers involves harm. The intent of both the Mohammed and Jesus depictions was to push the envelope and be overtly sacrilegious, demonstrating that religion, which has some harmful social consequences, does not deserve a special status that makes it immune to satire or criticism. I don’t disagree with the latter viewpoint; it seems unfair that there are many secular ethical philosophies that do not get the privilege or respect that organized religious beliefs tend to garner politically and socially.
However, the tactics each paper used to critique religion and challenge the self-censorship most of us practice around people of certain faiths could have been achieved through more intelligent commentary, without the use of offensive or inflammatory imagery. The cartoons caused excess and unnecessary emotional harm and much negative public argumentation that seemed to further polarize people rather than build understanding or open minds to any red flags of religious ideology that deserve consideration. The feminist ethical philosophy, the ethic of care, suggests communicators should promote a feeling of community and caring by showing respect for audiences. Upping the ante in publishing offensive material using an “eye for an eye” approach does not achieve a caring posture, and is a bit like going to war instead of opting for diplomacy. An important consideration, however, is that both of these student publications serve to question the mainstream and to provide alternative and minority viewpoints, so we should not expect them to cater to everyone’s sensibilities. Still, they could have used a bit more tact than sexually objectifying Jesus or showing Mohammed as a terrorist.
You could argue that publishing offensive material against one religion is either more or less wrong than against certain others. One utilitarian or consequential argument, which is interested in maximizing benefits for the greatest number of people, would say that insulting the Christian community causes more emotional harm numerically because there are more offended Christians than there are Muslims in Eugene. However, the justice principle asks us to consider the rights of the minority to avoid always having a tyranny of the majority, and in the case of Muslims, they certainly are a population that is more vulnerable to discrimination, considering their marginalized status in the U.S. and the military conflicts the U.S. initiated in Muslim countries. While some Christians claim they are marginalized in the U.S., it is a difficult argument to make when virtually all our country’s Presidents have been
openly Christian.
Another argument is that students deserve having their feedback count for something because they have no say in helping to fund campus publications with fees. Any newspaper is always challenged to balance its paternalistic desire to tell its readers what editors think the community should hear with the readers’ desire to have some agency in getting what they want from the paper. We accept quite a bit of paternalism, out of trust and professional respect for the publishers, but we want a little bit of control that comes from publishers being responsive to our feedback. So while these alternative campus publications see it as their ethical obligation to publish viewpoints that are in the minority, something necessary for diversity, for the sake of fairness, their publishers should give some care and consideration to student feedback, especially when it is numerous and intense, so that not all decisions about media content are made by publishers alone. Perhaps the campus publications should develop their own codes of ethics to help guide them in editorial decisions, considering all the moral claimants involved, so that they can continue to challenge students’ beliefs without totally alienating or harming them.