By Matt Clyburn
It was 3:58 p.m. on March 14. Hundreds of aspiring student journalists piled into an already packed convention hall to see the main event: Westboro Speaks.
The small Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan. is well known for sensational tactics and raunchy language to support their causes and protest others. As they picket across the country (on more than 30,000 different occasions, by their count), their signs proclaim “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for IEDs,” among others.
On this day, a representative of the First Amendment Center interviewed Margie Phelps of the WBC, following up on their recent Supreme Court victory. The Court ruled in the church’s favor, 8-1 , that they indeed have the right to protest and picket soldier’s funerals given appropriate time, place and manner restrictions.
The conversation of the day was intended to be academic and scholarly in nature, played out in front of a group of JIT (journalists in training, as the WBC later called us via Twitter) who were expected to uphold that intention and maintain civility in approaching this very, very touchy subject.
The interview presented a type of learning opportunity that every student should be exposed to before it’s too late. The dynamics at work in the dark hall were all at once pugnacious, strained, combative and tense.
Phelps, daughter of the church’s founder, is also a lawyer – the Supreme Court considers her a First Amendment expert. At her core, though, she is (by all accounts) a spiteful, condescending and eminently intelligent woman. Half of the audience members decided to sit back and observe the fascinating elephant in the room, the other half engaged the beast with scattered inappropriate laughter, shouting and clapping.
Students were invited to find their way to the closest microphone and query Phelps. While some maintained a type of journalistic integrity far in advance of their years, others stooped to the level of conversation that Phelps instigated, asking content-based questions in an attempt to trip her arguments on some long-forgotten piece of scripture or ill-informed perception of the Constitution. Needless to say, the JIT that wanted to put out the fire got first degree burns.
I spent a majority of the session excited at the spectacle we were witnessing, enlightened by the observations I was making and a little bit wiser for having experienced it. I spent even more time, though, frustrated by my colleagues. These JIT are the future of our field – a group of ‘professionals’ supposed to deliver the facts without injecting themselves into the story. And yet, here they were, hundreds of them, injecting themselves right into a debate that cannot be won.
The lesson, then, is twofold, and the first takeaway is fundamental. The Supreme Court upheld the basic premise that these people have a right to do what they do, say what they say and express themselves nearly any way they choose. Not coincidentally, the piece of natural law that allows them to do what they do also allows us to do what we do. There will always be fringe ideas, extremists and unpopular speech – it is up to journalists to present the news that will challenge and stimulate the marketplace of ideas. When we lose the credibility to do that, then we lose everything.
The second takeaway is for our readers. The populace is responsible for affirming the right to free press, free speech, free exercise of religion, free assembly and others, by exercising them at all times. Implicit to this affirmation is a vigilant and active disregard of journalists that would so readily discredit themselves and their colleagues and unwavering support for those that further pursuit of the same.
As The Recorder has endured both good times and bad, an award-winning website and a highly questionable opinion piece, high readership and low readership, we ask that you continue to support us in our pursuit of quality reporting. While the First Amendment will always support speech, both that which enlightens us and that which disgusts us, the buck stops with you. Consumers and citizens have the final say in the journalists they choose to support with their words, dollars and actions.