The Coulter case and reprinting slurs

Certain words are sure to offend readers, and true enough The N&O did so last week with its reporting on the latest Ann Coulter-John Edwards controversy.

With a story on the dust-up between Coulter and Elizabeth Edwards, the presidential candidate's wife, The News & Observer ran a timeline of Coulter-Edwards exchanges. Referring to an incident in March, it read, "Coulter jokingly refers to Edwards as a 'faggot' in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington."

The slur was tucked away obscurely in a sidebar on Page 8A, but it nonetheless drew protest from at least one offended reader. That called to mind similar complaints back in March when The N&O initially reported on the controversy and quoted the same homophobic epithet by Coulter. Readers said that the use of the word was gratuitous and that the meaning could have been conveyed by a synonym for the offending vulgarism.

There are two things going on here. First, seeing obscenities in black and white on newsprint jars the sensibilities of some readers. For instance, I was slightly put off to read the words, "p - - sed off" (spelled out) in a book-page column last Sunday, and I was startled to see "s - - t" in a 2003 story from The N&O archive that I reread the other day. Readers expect the local newspaper to uphold a certain standard for public discourse.

The greater concern is putting into print words that we know are offensive to identifiable peoples. The obvious example is the n-word for African-Americans, a word so ugly that it's beyond the pale for normal social discourse, much less newspaper stories. You can say the same for most other derogatory labels for ethnic groups.

Is that the case with the f-word for gay people? Yes, says Janie Long, director of Duke University's Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life. "It is an extremely offensive word," she said. "Using it in public discourse conjures up the same kinds of things in people that some sort of racial or ethnic slur would."

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association offers a guidebook for journalists that says, of "fag" and "faggot": "Originally a pejorative term for a gay male, it is now being reclaimed by some gay men. Caution: still extremely offensive when used as an epithet."

That sounded a little fuzzy to me, so I called up Tom Avila, acting executive director of the association. He said journalists should ask themselves whether using the word is essential to an understanding of the story. "Is it that important to the reader's understanding of the story? Are they going to be less informed if the word isn't used?"

In the case of the Coulter story, he said, readers today are aware of the slur she employed four months ago: "At the place where we are today in that particular story, I don't think the justification can be made for using that word."

Steve Merelman begs to differ. As The N&O's front-page editor, he is a gatekeeper for the language that goes into news stories. Merelman said the Coulter slur last Sunday indeed was essential to the reader's understanding of the story. The N&O writes for a mature audience, he said, and it shouldn't be afraid of words: "If the story is about Ann Coulter and the ugly things she's saying, then I think we have to use the word."

He added: "You print it only as much as absolutely necessary and no more."

I looked back at The N&O's previous coverage of Coulter's volcano mouth. In her first attack on Edwards in March, the paper quoted the f-word as she used it. In a follow-up two days later, it was "[expletive]" and in a later Rob Christensen political column, it became "school-yard epithet."

You might guess my feeling by the way I've used these ugly utterances in this column. If the story about the use of an abhorrent word is newsworthy, then so is the word itself -- first time around. Subsequent usages are superfluous and don't add to the reader's understanding.

The Coulter case: Ann Coulter is a professional provocateur, and her deployment of a homophobic slur is calculated -- to incite her following, to bait her target and, yes, to offend a vulnerable social group.

Should the newspaper be a party to that? Yes, if it's news, as Edwards made it in March by appropriating the Coulter attack for his own fundraising appeal. The cynical among you said Elizabeth Edwards was doing the same last month in her on-air bracing of Coulter on MSNBC.

But more-than-rare use of an execrable word in a newspaper gives it unwarranted popular currency, even legitimacy. There is little enough justification for the paper to give a wider audience to the Coulter sideshow first time around; compounding it adds insult to injury.