Starting in early 1994, I worked for my first-ever newspaper, The Northern Student, the student newspaper at Bemidji State University, where I attended and received my bachelor's degree in mass communication. Over three years, I would be a staff writer, news editor, managing editor and editor. I wrote everything from news stories to feature stories to sports stories to opinion pieces. It was the greatest training ground a journalist could ever have, and I am grateful to the many talented people I worked alongside in my years at The NS.
Oct. 5, 1994
By Devlyn Brooks
News Editor
This is only one aspiring, white male journalist's plea to the modern world: Please wake up, clear away the morning fog and just see what the "political correctness" movement is doing to an already over-scrutinized profession at the end of the day.
Instead of being the "watch-dogs" of the government, we as journalists are being forced to be the "watch-dogs" of ourselves. We are also being forced to focus more on whom a particular story will offend than the goals that have been set for the press -- communicating our culture, informing the uninformed, entertaining the public and serving as a guardian of the public.
If journalists must worry about whose feelings are going to be hurt by writing a particular article that includes a word considered to be offensive, instead of focusing on the content of the article, reporters will become "gun shy." The result will be news stories that are diluted. News stories involving a minority won't be written for fear of offending a particular group of people. Writers will be afraid of being labeled as insensitive or prejudiced.
I would like to invite readers to view news as what it should be -- an attempt to educate. I also ask you to not automatically perceive negative innuendoes in so-called "politically incorrect" words. I agree that there will always be people who may use the media to perpetuate negative stereotypes. The proper way to deal with these people who use stereotypes as "hate tools" is to ignore them.
Do not do the disservice of punishing all journalists for using potentially offensive words because there might have been something meant by a word in some other instance. Judge a word by the context in which it is used, not by how it has been used in the past.
We all should be intelligent enough to spot an instance where a word is being used in a derogatory manner as compared to when a word is not intentionally used in such a way that it carries any connotation.
We should not punish innocent journalists for not being politically correct. The writer of that story simply may not harbor any negative connotations for a particular word that others find offensive. Just as a stereotype can be a generalization about a specific minority, political correctness is a generalization that all people who use a word that can be construed in a derogatory manner, mean it in a derogatory manner. Not true.
As a journalist, I do not want to intentionally discriminate against people; I want to emancipate people. I do not want to be exclusive for the benefit of a few people; I want to be inclusive for the benefit of all people. I do not want to be ethnocentric; I wan to be "global centric." I do not want to have prejudices against our fellow human beings; I want to be educated about our fellow human beings. I no longer want to hear about our differences; I want to hear about our similarities. But if I am to continue pursuing the goals set aside for the press, then please don't handcuff me with the views of political correctness; but instead, free me with the views of open-mindedness.
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