EDITORIAL

The First Amendment.

It’s the foundation on which our democracy is built.

And when it comes to standing up for it, we, as journalists, are the

first ones on our feet.

But as Orange Coast College students learned this week, it’s not

always as simple as it sounds.

The editors of the weekly Coast Report have come under fire by the

Costa Mesa-based Anti-Defamation League and the editor of a Jewish

community newspaper for allowing a paid advertisement that claimed the

Holocaust didn’t happen to run in its paper.

When the paper’s advertising director, Mary Quinn, received the

request, she deferred the decision to the editorial staff, rightly

predicting that it would be controversial.

The students then had a tough decision to make.

And we can well imagine the arguments, because we’ve made them too.

(And by the way, we didn’t always come up with the right decision.)

What does free speech mean if we can only hear words that don’t

offend, words that don’t hurt our ears?

Isn’t the First Amendment designed to protect groups that may have an

opinion not shared by the majority?

Those are tough questions to answer.

Student journalists, and we were in their shoes once, often opt to

answer the questions by falling on the side of free speech absolutism,

letting ideas and statements run unfettered and raw.

But is that always the best course to take?

The Daily Pilot, just like any newspaper across the country, has dealt

with controversial or questionable advertising requests. As part of the

Los Angeles Times, we follow the rules that have been set by that

newspaper over the years regarding advertising. For example, we don’t run

any tobacco or gun ads on our pages, and for sensitive topics such as

race and religion, we have an entire book of guidelines.

At the Coast Report, however, the student journalists didn’t have the

advantage of pointing to long-standing policies. And they ended up

relying solely on the First Amendment.

Under the direction of advisor Cathy Werblin -- who, ironically,

happens to be Jewish and recused herself from any decision -- the class

engaged in lengthy and spirited discussions on the matter.

Eventually, the paper’s leaders decided the writers of the ad --

though their ideas may be off-base and offensive -- had the freedom and

the right to have them published.

They got it half right. The First Amendment guarantees the right to

free speech, but not the right to have it published.

And that’s a big difference.