English: In defence of the right to offend

Columnists occupy a privileged perch in journalism, having the freedom to express their opinions on issues that matter to them.

The considerable distinction between news reporting and columnists' opinions in the Star is often not clear to readers, however. That's sometimes because the Star doesn't clearly indicate when an article is an opinion column. But there's also much misunderstanding about the scope of Star columnists.

Simply put, news is the unbiased, fair reporting of facts, gathered and verified by reporters. Columns are expressions of opinions about facts.

Among the most frequent subjects of complaint to the public editor's office is that some columnist or another at the Star is "biased," "unobjective" or "unfair." The reality is that opinion columnists can indeed be biased, unobjective and yes, sometimes, unfair.

That's the nature of opinion journalism. Opinion columns are a columnist's arguments for a particular point of view. And vigorous argument is not necessarily fair and balanced, as you should expect the news to be.

As Clark Hoyt, public editor of The New York Times, told me in an email discussion about whether public editors should weigh in on the fairness of opinion columns: "I think it is virtually impossible to judge the `fairness' of arguments made by a newspaper or those it licenses to offer their own opinions.

"Argument is almost by definition unfair, in the sense that one marshalls facts to support a conclusion, emphasizing some and de-emphasizing or ignoring others. Someone who disagrees with the conclusion almost always thinks that has been done unfairly."

Columnists at the Star have wide latitude in articulating their opinions and the manner in which they express their views – however outrageous those views may seem to some. If I had a loonie for every time a reader told me he or she considered an opinion column in the Star to be "unfair" or "offensive," I could escape dreary November and be sunning on the Mediterranean right now.

Instead, I'm in Montreal today, attending the annual conference of the Canadian Media Lawyers Association, also called Ad IDEM – Advocates in Defence of Expression in the Media. I tell you this because the core mission of this organization – standing up for the Charter right of freedom of expression given to all Canadians – is at the heart of a newspaper columnist's right to express opinions that some may find offensive.

As Justice Ian Binnie said in last year's Supreme Court ruling on fair comment: "We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones. ... Public controversy can be a rough trade and the law needs to accommodate its requirements."

Star columnists are guided by these legal freedoms, which include the obligation that opinions expressed in columns be based on fact. Like all journalists, opinion columnists must also abide by laws regarding libel and hate speech.

Columnists speak for themselves, not the newspaper (the views of the Star are expressed on the editorial page). That doesn't mean "anything goes."

The Star's columnists are subject to editorial oversight and this news organization's ethical standards. It's not unusual for columnists to alter what they have to say, or the manner in which they say it, at the behest of astute editors offering wise second thought.

Still, I'm often asked: "Why did the editor let that in the paper?"

My answer: Generally, editors give columnists wide latitude in expressing their personal opinions in recognition both of the right to freedom of expression and journalistic traditions of what makes for a compelling column.

As Poets, Pundits and Wits, a collection of newspaper columns, tells us, columnizing is a "self-indulgent" occupation, and columnists have licence to be "rude, reckless, silly and prejudiced."

That same view was expressed by the recently deceased William Safire in a note to the New York Times' A.M. Rosenthal when Rosenthal became a columnist: "As you cultivate the garden of controversy, burn the bridges of objectivity. Show me an even-handed columnist and I'll show you an odds-on favourite soporific."

It's the right and the role – arguably, even the responsibility – of columnists to poke and provoke, enrage and offend. In doing so, the best columnists can make us think and reach our own conclusions about issues that matter to us.

Readers often ask me to weigh in on the "fairness" of opinion columns. I don't think it's fair to offer my opinion on a columnist's opinion. I do tell these readers that they have the right to express dissenting opinions through letters to the editor or online comments.

Certainly, I don't always agree with the opinions published in the Star.

But, as a defender of the right to free expression, I must defend the right to offend.

publiced@thestar.ca