Hop into the handbasket, honey, we are on a fast track to hell.
And, once we have been assigned a spot in one of the circles of eternal suffering, we will find ourselves among the hypocrites, because as Utahns we constantly cite our American freedoms — we’re free to pack pistolas where ever we want, free to worship how and when we want. But we seem oddly incapable of spotting instances in which one of those basic American freedoms is ignored.
Case in point: Nary a peep of protest was heard from Utah bastions of the press when some stores in the state refused to carry the July 2 issue of The National Enquirer, which features an article unflattering to a Utah family now the subject of stories in the national media because one of their children was taken at gunpoint from her home.
Ignore for a moment the content of the Enquirer article — that’s between the tabloid and their libel attorneys and the family. Consider instead the stores that refused to sell this issue. They have carried the Enquirer 25 weeks so far this year. Probably they will carry the Enquirer the rest of the year — at least the issues without reference to the Utah family. But this particular issue was so controversial that Albertson’s pulled all copies from many of its Utah stores. (The issue on the stands June 28 will have a follow-up story on the kidnapping.)
Another supermarket chain said buyers would have to ask for it at the customer service counter as it would not be packed into the checkout racks. Oddly enough, the issue was on display at the gift shop of LDS Hospital.
(A momentary disgression is in order for context: Grocery and convenience stores sell the magazine rack space in checkout lines and next to cash registers for a premium to publishers which want greater impulse-buy opportunities, so stores that refuse to stock the Enquirer probably are breaking annual contracts they have with publishers to display their issues.)
It is no accident that one of the most cherished freedoms of a free society is that of speech. Once speech — even that oratory that makes our skin crawl — is muzzled, doing away with the rest of any freedoms becomes easy picking. Nazi Germany understood this — and in today’s world, many countries in the Middle East understand it. Journalists have died for the right to print even three paragraphs critical of ruling parties, juntas, monarchs and other repressive governments.
Carol Gnade, executive director of the Utah American Civil Liberties Union operation, said she is disturbed about this kind of censorship. “If this were a public library instead of private corporations that decided it was bad taste [and pulled a newspaper or magazine], it would be unconstitutional.” It would be censorship.
There are people who would bring a judgment to this debate — what is the quality of the publication involved? What difference does it make? As long as the publication does not break the laws of the state of Utah — such as publishing child pornography on its pages — then there is no legal reason to pull copies from the racks. Quality decisions remain where they should — in the eye of the beholder. One person’s Shakespeare is another’s master of puffery and antiquated language.
Mike Porche, president and CEO of the American Media subsidiary that markets and distributes the Enquirer and the Star, said he keeps in close contact with the corporate offices of stores like Albertson’s, Smiths, Walmart and K-Mart. No one at the corporate level made decisions to pull the Enquirer from the racks, but local store managers apparently were given discretion about carrying the issue.
“We know that it was a hit-and-miss type of thing. About 75 percent of stores kept copies up at checkout [in the Salt Lake area],” Porche said. Store headquarters are sensitive to censorship, and “every time they pull one, there are dozens of other complaints countering initial complaints,” Porche said. He was surprised that the issue was “pulled over words only. Usually we get pulled over photographs.”
Bob Steele, the ethics maestro at the Poynter Institute, a group that trains journalists in leadership and decision-making, said this incident of stores refusing to sell a publication they sell regularly could be a matter of “competing moral obligations.”
Said Steele: “If an individual promises something to another individual, then ideally that promise would be honored. But we can make exceptions, if we believe there is a profound harm that will result if we honor the promise. Perhaps [the stores] felt a moral obligation to keep a promise and a moral obligation to make sure you do not do harm to other individuals.”
Allowing shopkeepers to decide what issues of magazines and newspapers they regularly stock will be sold is censorship. If a grocery chain can do that to the Enquirer, it can do the same to The Salt Lake Tribune or the New York Times or, God forbid, the Deseret News.
