PressEthic

In a column printed in The Cavalier Daily, the student paper of the University of Virginia, ombudsman Lisa Fleisher expressed her concerns over the lack of consistency in the editorial ethical decision making process regarding the most recent of what seems to be many comic strip controversies.

According to Fleisher’s column, two comic strips drawn by a student cartoonist and printed in the paper in late August have angered both readers and the Catholic League, which has demanded an apology, citing previous comic strip controversies that ended when the paper apologised.

According to the article, one of the comic strips depicts “Jesus nailed to a Cartesian coordinate plane ­-- the mathematical x and y axes,” and the other “implied that Mary had a sexually transmitted disease”

The issue of possibly offensive comics is apparently not new to the publication, which in 2005 issued an apology to readers for running a comic strip in that, according to the Fleisher’s article, named the crane as “the gayest of all birds.”

One of the problems, as clearly stated by Flisher, is that the paper inconsistently issued apologies to readers over the years for other offensive comics. While both the crane debacle and another comic deemed offensive in February warranted an apology, the latest comic controversy is being backed up as an exercise in freedom of speech.

"What Woolard's cartoons share with several of the disputed cartoons of last year is a lack of a clear message. When I asked both Editor-in-Chief Michael Slaven to explain the cartoons' messages, he asked me to speak with Woolard and repeated the artist's statement to a Cavalier Daily reporter that he wanted to make people talk by juxtaposing dissimilar ideas images and concepts. Slaven said he submitted both cartoons to its censorship policy, hammered out by the managing board in an April 24 editorial, 'Censorship Criteria,' in response to the controversies of the school year. 'Our job as editors is not to judge all opinions on whether we agree,' the editorial stated. 'We censor very infrequently because we are committed to the First Amendment and the freedom of expression of our staff'."

While I personally have to support an editors decision to defend their editorial content, no matter how uncomfortable taking that position may be, I also agree that a real problem in this situation is the lack of consistancy in policy. Either stand behind your comics from the start or don't run it at all.

I think that this issue is especially important in student publications, which by default, have a relatively high staff turnover rate of young staffers, made apparent in this case, since the problem has risen more than once.