PressEthic

Wayne Ezell, the reader advocate of the [Jacksonville] Florida Times-Union wrote on Friday on how the paper had recently offended readers with a light-hearted feature that proposed a few comical spins on the Army’s new slogan (I haven’t personally seen it advertised yet), “Army Strong.”

Three of the slogans Ezell quotes read: "Army: It's gayer than you think," "Because The Decider said so,” and "Enlist now, and keep a grandpa from going to Afghanistan."

And, as any editor could anticipate, the feature created a little controversy.

Ezell writes:

Sean Neeld said the "gayer than you think" line was "very disrespectful ... it crossed the line." He served in the Army in the 1980s.

"To suggest, no matter how innocent, any sort of perceived negativity about the current crop of soldiers is tantamount to dishonoring those who have served and died protecting all of our freedoms," he said.

Neeld added that he usually likes A.M.Stir, which he finds "a slice of the eclectic pie" that "takes you away from the overly repetitive main stories that filter through the print and television media."

Jo Ellen Mobley also objected to the Army slogan piece, including references to "The Decider" and to keeping "grandpa" from going to war. "I am tired of seeing these things slipped in about our president," she said.

Another part of the problem is that the feature carried no byline, and attributed the work to un-named Times-Union staffers. Though the lack of specific attribution this is one obvious problem (I mean, how can you play the blame game with no one specific to blame?), but another is that it even ran at all. I get that the regular A.M. Stir feature is meant to be some kind of entertaining fluff piece, I’m having a hard time imagining staff just sitting around and coming up with these (obviously) offensive slogans.

Maybe next time the staff should just open up the phone lines to readers and let them submit their own ideas. I’m sure they’d come up with slogans just as clever and at least the paper couldn’t be accused of using print space as their own comedic soap box.