Censorship and the Ethics of Editors

Meta
Title:	Censorship and the Ethics of Editors
Creator:	Randall Landers
Date(s):	1988
Medium:
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Censorship and the Ethics of Editors is a 1988 essay by Randall Landers. It was printed in Comlink #38.

It was written in response to a 1987 essay by Joan M. Verba called Censorship and the Rights of Editors which was printed in Comlink #29. Landers begins the essay with:

The article stressed that editors indeed have "the right to print anything for any reason" and" the right... not to print any item, for any reason." However, is it censorship if an editor deletes sentences from letters? Absolutely. "To suppress, as parts of letters..."Is it wrong? Legally, perhaps not. But ethically it is .

Some Topics Discussed

• that the primary purpose of a letter-col is to provide a public outlet for expressing opinion
• don't rely on one venue for all of your information
• speak up

From the Essay

If I write in a letter to the editor of the mythological Trekzine FANDOM SPEAKS, and I have a series of letters printed over the years. Suddenly, I write a letter containing one critical section about one of the studio figures with which he maintains an active relationship, and the section is deleted from my letter. Have I been censored? Quite probably. Is it illegal? Absolutely not. Is it unethical? I personally feel it is very unethical. But where can I turn to? As it stands now, there are very few letter-zines in fandom. Some of them only work with special areas of interest (fanzines, pro-novels, Star Trek), and few of them actually share a lot of readers. Is it fair to subject the readers of one letter-zine to the problems in another? Not really since many of the readers may not have even heard of the other publication. So there is absolutely nothing I can do about the unethical censorship going on in the fanzine FANDOM SPEAKS. Oh, I can try, but an attempt like this is doomed to failure. My only recourse then, as Joan says, is to cancel my subscription, which I do after trying to bring the matter to the attention others and fail.

Let us consider another reason for unethical censorship. I edit a Star Trek fanzine, and have done so for nearly a decade. During that, time, I have printed a letter-col which allows for the readers and contributors to comment on the contents of previous issues. During the nine years I've edited my zine, I've received a few negative letters, and I have printed them word-for-word. Why? Because I feel to deny these readers the right to express their negative opinions while printing the positive letters would be hypocritical. No one is going to like everything about every zine they read. The reason you have a letter-col in fanzines such as mine is to allow for public feedback to the authors, artists, and poets who contribute to the zine.

Now, let's consider what our unethical, mythological zine editor would do. The editor of FANDOM SPEAKS suddenly receives a rash of letters criticizing his editorial policy to cancel a regularly-appearing column in his letter-zine. He chooses not to print these negative letters, and yet he continues to print letters praising his virtue, his wisdom, his fairness, his umpteenth issue. Is the editor of FANDOM SPEAKS guilty of the heinous crime of unethical censorship? Of course he is, because he is selectively printing letters he finds flattering, and omitting those he finds negative and unflattering. Is it illegal? Nope. But it is unethical. Now, how do these fans who know their letters have failed to see print react? Same as before, who do they turn to? Oh, perhaps they try to print a letter-zine of their own, but it is seen, by and large, as a publication created by a few malcontents, and so it probably fails. So what can they do? Cancel their subs, but little more.

Again we have the problem of too few letter-zines in fandom, and I feel something needs to be done to address this problem before it. continues to worsen. The job of editing a letter-zine requires a special breed of person, a person who can rise above personal interests. There probably are letter-zine editors out there who are ethical, but I can't help but feel that there aren't enough, and will never be enough as long as there are so few letter-zines available to fans.

...f your favorite letter-zine is criticized for its editorial policy, write to the editor and politely request an explanation. It could very well be that a jealous fan is making a number of false accusations merely to gain some personal satisfaction from having sullied the reputation of a letter-zine editor. Or it could very well be that the editor has lost the ethics he once had, or, perhaps the editor never had ethics to begin with. Whatever the case may be, do not decide the merits of either side's case without hearing the other side's arguments as well.

I guess, in short I would say, those who oppose unethical censorship should fight against it every chance they get. Don't sit on your hands expecting the whole thing to blow over, thinking that the U.S. Constitution gives the editors the right to do anything they want to do with your letter. Legally, according to the letter of the law, the editor may have they right to censor anything for any reason, but you've got stand up for ethics, the very spirit behind the law.