COLUMN: Just doing my job

From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96 From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The theft of student newspapers at theFrom Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The theft of student newspapers at theUniversity of Michigan brings backFrom Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The theft of student newspapers at theUniversity of Michigan brings backunwanted memories--and a case of nerves. From Lisa Levenson's "First Person," Fall '96The theft of student newspapers at theUniversity of Michigan brings backunwanted memories--and a case of nerves. "Paper theft," blinked the subject line on a new message in my e-mail account last week. I gulped in an unbelieving breath as my heart began racing and sinking down into the pit of my stomach. "Oh no," I thought. "Not here. Not again. Not today." My worst fears were allayed somewhat when I began reading a forwarded article from The Michigan Daily, describing the "cancellation" of half of its 16,500-copy March 27 press run by protesters claiming its coverage is racist. The sequence of events sounded vaguely familiar -- campus controversy involving the independent student newspaper, anonymous notes left at distribution points early one morning, a car pulling up outside a university building, its trunk filled with papers, as its occupants enter to add to their stash. This year, tempers flared at Michigan. Last year, anger boiled over at the University of Maryland, ultimately leading to the passage of a state law outlawing newspaper theft. Two acrimonious years before that, it was the University that was thrust unwillingly into the national spotlight, the racial and cultural divisions that still pervade our campus laid bare for the entire country to see. Current seniors are the only undergraduates still on campus who were here during the confiscation of all 14,000 copies of the DP on April 15, 1993, by a group of protesters calling itself "The Black Community." The papers were taken in the aftermath of the "water buffalo" incident, during a semester when conservative columnist Gregory Pavlik was inflaming just about everyone with his controversial views on race. (Sound familiar yet?) While DP editors and even the University Trustees spoke out forcefully against the theft, explaining that the only legitimate way to counter disagreeable speech is with opposing speech, the offenders were not disciplined by the University. In fact, the only people punished in the whole affair were a University Police officer and a University Museum security guard, who scuffled with a student trying to remove papers from the University Museum. Fliers left by the thieves at Michigan explained that they'd been spurred to action by editorials in the Michigan Daily criticizing the United People's Coalition, a minority party fielding candidates for student government, and by an editorial cartoon critical of affirmative action. And that's when everything about the Michigan incident hit me with full force: It would have been me being accused of racist tendencies, had the theft happened here. I shivered involuntarily. This wasn't just about freedom of speech anymore -- it was personal. I've fielded my share of hostile calls from readers this semester, listened to their irate voices telling me why the word choice in one sentence of a 25-sentence editorial negated our whole point or offended the precise group we were trying to support. I've felt the blood rising to my cheeks when they confronted me with a fact that escaped inclusion in our original news story, changing the context on which our viewpoint had been based. I've also defended our decisions to take controversial positions and stood behind these positions, with the support of the entire editorial board, in the face of angry letters, threats and misguided recommendations that we should censor a columnist's choice of topics or remove his or her "rants" from the newspaper entirely. Moderating campus debate is a definite balancing act; regardless of how we select biweekly and guest columnists, come to consensus about editorial topics or print letter after letter critical of what the DP does and how we do it, this newspaper will still be the target of complaints from the campus community and an occasional object of derision -- and that's fine. As Michael Fribush, general manager of the University of Maryland's student newspaper, told the Michigan Daily: "When you're at a newspaper, whether you write about race or write about anything, if you get complaints, you know you're doing something right." That's not to say the sole point of our investigation and agitation as members of the so-called Fourth Estate is the creation of controversy. Believe it or not, I don't get a rush from making people mad, as much as I enjoy healthy, if rancorous, dialogue. And I don't delight in making people in high places look foolish. What I write is not based on or related to my own opinion of the person in question; I'm only doing my job. Although the press in this country ranks only slightly higher than nightcrawlers or snails on the evolutionary scale, I'll risk speaking for everyone involved in this sometimes infuriating, sometimes exhilarating, always exhausting enterprise and say that our aim is to find the truth, not to slander and harm. Sometimes when newspapers overturn rocks, people are upset by what -- or who -- crawls out from beneath. And it's human nature to be angry when someone disagrees with your fundamental beliefs, especially if that someone is urging others to come over to his side and presenting cogent arguments for the falsity of your dearly held convictions. But the best way -- and the only honest way -- to fight back is by grabbing a pen and writing an equally charged response. I promise, I won't be offended. You're just doing your job. Taking my newspapers, on the other hand, prevents either of us from being heard.