BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I’m Brooke Gladstone with a few of your letters. Let’s start with the push back we received from our discussion with journalist Jenny Jarvie about so-called content “trigger warnings” that have spread from their beginnings on internet self-help forums to universities and beyond.
[03/14/14 OTM CLIP]:
JENNY JARVIE: At Oberlin College, lecturers are told to be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, same sex-ism, able-ism and other issues of privilege and oppression.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Many of you thought we were too dismissive. William Tomlinson wrote that our discussion was, quote, “ridiculous. If anything, a trigger warning makes it easier to discuss certain issues by making people aware that sensitive subjects will come up so that they aren't likely to object to reading these things unexpectedly. There is no risk of trigger warnings chilling speech, and uttering two words is not some terrible burden.”
But Ben Asher from New York City disagrees, quote, “Anyone who is interested, or involved in, issues relating to potentially ‘offensive’ speech, art, comedy, and particularly the whole rape joke imbroglio of the past year or two, should listen to this. One of the best articulated defenses of free speech and what it means to be an adult member of our society who participates in public discussion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And finally, a few weeks back, we had a discussion about the propaganda impact of the Russian TV service, Russia Today, with Russian-American journalist Julia Joffe. In the course of the discussion, she said this.
[03/07/14 OTM CLIP]:
JULIA JOFFE: Voice of America doesn’t try to present itself as a news organization, as a straight-up news organization, and people know what it is. Russia Today is trying to fly under the radar and kind of have it both ways.
[END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We should have challenged that assertion. As listeners to OTM have heard in previous discussions focused on Voice of America, it has stood up to rage from the State Department when it ran a clip of Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, in 2004, and it has a tradition of that. We've also reported that back in World War II, policymakers wailed when VOA aired General Stilwell's admission that, quote, “The Japanese gave us a hell of a beating.”
The current director of Voice of America, David Ensor, wrote us this, quote, “VOA is not a government mouthpiece, as Joffe suggested, and this is a fact, it seems, many Americans do not understand, though audiences around the world know it well. When there's an Abu Ghraib scandal, a story that is a stain on our country's honor, we tell that story fully, like any other news organization, and our audience in 45 languages knows it can count on that.
We have a charter passed into law in 1976 requiring us to aim for balance, objectivity and comprehensiveness - truth, not propaganda.”
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Comment anytime on our website at onthemedia.org, but come on, stand behind your words, by leaving us your name, okay?
[MUSIC/MUSIC UP & UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I’m Brooke Gladstone with a few of your letters. Let’s start with the push back we received from our discussion with journalist Jenny Jarvie about so-called content “trigger warnings” that have spread from their beginnings on internet self-help forums to universities and beyond.
[03/14/14 OTM CLIP]:
JENNY JARVIE: At Oberlin College, lecturers are told to be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, same sex-ism, able-ism and other issues of privilege and oppression.
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Many of you thought we were too dismissive. William Tomlinson wrote that our discussion was, quote, “ridiculous. If anything, a trigger warning makes it easier to discuss certain issues by making people aware that sensitive subjects will come up so that they aren't likely to object to reading these things unexpectedly. There is no risk of trigger warnings chilling speech, and uttering two words is not some terrible burden.”
But Ben Asher from New York City disagrees, quote, “Anyone who is interested, or involved in, issues relating to potentially ‘offensive’ speech, art, comedy, and particularly the whole rape joke imbroglio of the past year or two, should listen to this. One of the best articulated defenses of free speech and what it means to be an adult member of our society who participates in public discussion.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And finally, a few weeks back, we had a discussion about the propaganda impact of the Russian TV service, Russia Today, with Russian-American journalist Julia Joffe. In the course of the discussion, she said this.
[03/07/14 OTM CLIP]:
JULIA JOFFE: Voice of America doesn’t try to present itself as a news organization, as a straight-up news organization, and people know what it is. Russia Today is trying to fly under the radar and kind of have it both ways.
[END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We should have challenged that assertion. As listeners to OTM have heard in previous discussions focused on Voice of America, it has stood up to rage from the State Department when it ran a clip of Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, in 2004, and it has a tradition of that. We've also reported that back in World War II, policymakers wailed when VOA aired General Stilwell's admission that, quote, “The Japanese gave us a hell of a beating.”
The current director of Voice of America, David Ensor, wrote us this, quote, “VOA is not a government mouthpiece, as Joffe suggested, and this is a fact, it seems, many Americans do not understand, though audiences around the world know it well. When there's an Abu Ghraib scandal, a story that is a stain on our country's honor, we tell that story fully, like any other news organization, and our audience in 45 languages knows it can count on that.
We have a charter passed into law in 1976 requiring us to aim for balance, objectivity and comprehensiveness - truth, not propaganda.”
[END CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD: Comment anytime on our website at onthemedia.org, but come on, stand behind your words, by leaving us your name, okay?
[MUSIC/MUSIC UP & UNDER]
