Terrorism and Censorship

"I love Andy Young," said "Reg" Murphy, publisher and editor of the San Francisco Examiner, "but Young's foot-in-mouth disease is really beginning to get to him."

Murphy's affectionate grumping was caused not by any of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations' forthright foreign policy remarks. Rather it was Young's observation at a press conference in Sacramento, Calif., that he wished the reporting of spectacular violence could be regulated. Distressed by the overheated coverage of the Hanafi Muslims' siege in Washington, D.C., Young suggested that the Supreme Court might "clarify" the Constitution's First Amendment to inhibit newspapers and television from "creating a climate of violence." Although he later backed away from the idea and admitted that he was "reacting rather emotionally," Young appeared to have been advocating press censorship.

That moved Young's boss Jimmy Carter to weigh in with a statement acknowledging the "complexity of the problem." The President made it clear that he "has no desire to seek legislation or to otherwise impose a solution." Nevertheless, Carter's view of "hostage situations" was that the manner of coverage merited "discussion and sober consideration."

That was just what it was getting anew last week. Young had touched a sensitive spot, as thoughtful newsmen as well as scholars who have studied the problem of violence were quick to concede. Seeing violence on television, observed Purdue Psychologist Robert A. Baron, not only gives "unstable people the idea of doing the same, but also teaches them exactly how to go about it --it cuts out trial and error." Said veteran Lawman Michael Spiotto, Chicago's first deputy police superintendent: "Overpublicizing crime tends to bring the kooks out of the woodwork."

There was also wide agreement that the promise of publicity, especially on TV, helps create terrorist acts. "The press," says Stuart H. Loory, managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, "must start thinking more about the ways people like terrorists are using us. We have become part of the story." It was clear in Washington during the siege that Terrorist Leader Hamaas Abdul Khaalis' motive was publicity for his cause as well as revenge against the Black Muslims.

One stern critic of the coverage of the Hanafi siege was George Gerbner, dean of Philadelphia's Annenberg School of Communications. Charging that the coverage was "an act of entertainment" that served primarily to boost ratings or sales of papers rather than further the public interest, he also noted that "the media cooperated with the terrorists and in so doing made their gesture more effective. It became a media event. Cameramen began covering other cameramen covering the story."

Dean Gerbner suggested that such excesses might be avoided if the media delayed their coverage of terrorist attacks. "Nothing would be lost if the public didn't get the information for 30 minutes, an hour or even a couple of days."

No newspapermen, however, have suggested such a delay, for they believe a blackout would generate wild rumors. So would legal censorship, which both newsmen and experts on violence argue is the worst possible solution. "Had the media tried to suppress the story of the hostages in Washington," argues Elie Abel, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, "the danger to the public could have been greater. There was evidence of trouble, and if nothing had appeared in the news, panic would have developed." Says Richard Simon, formerly of the Los Angeles police: "If the truth is not good, it's better than rumors, which are generally horrible." TV Newsman Eric Sevareid noted it was an "odd irony that it was the absence of publicity that drove Khaalis to his act as much as anything. He appeared maddened by the fact that the frightful slaughter of his family several years ago received so little attention."

Censorship founders first of all on a rock that Poet John Milton charted 300 years ago in his great anticensorship treatise, Areopagitica: If there were a censorship law, whom could one possibly trust to act as the censor? As Loory's Sun-Times editorialized, "Who would administer a law like that? A national news censor? Do you really want someone to shut off your news?"

Said Columbia Law Professor Frank Grad: "It's very dangerous to restrain First Amendment liberties. The chance of occasional excesses is not too heavy a price to pay for assurance of liberty." Said New York Daily News Editor Michael O'Neill: "We must weigh one value, of a fully informed public, against another, the risk of some madman imitating what he has seen or read. The first enormously outweighs the second."

The crucial value of a free and believable press, several journalists noted, should be especially obvious to Andrew Young. As a civil rights leader and aide to Martin Luther King Jr., he is aware --as he has acknowledged--that extensive press coverage enabled the black movement to bring its just grievances before the American public. Southern editors vividly recall that in the 1950s and 1960s there was heavy public pressure to limit coverage of black demonstrations on the ground that such publicity stirred up more trouble. Recalls Eugene Patterson, editor of the St. Petersburg Times: "A large number of readers wrote to tell newspapers that if they quit covering King, he would go away." But the press continued to report the demonstrations, which helped Young, King and others to achieve substantial strides toward equality.

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