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CounterPunch
December
2, 2002
Stupid Decisions:
Self-Censorship in America
By WALT BRASCH
The author and the publisher could agree upon
only one thing--neither of them wanted 50,000 copies of the author's
book to be in a 146,000 square foot warehouse in Williamsport,
Pennsylvania.
Michael Moore, the author, wanted the
publisher to start distributing Stupid White Men and Other Excuses
for the State of the Nation. ReganBooks, the publisher, wanted
to pulp them. What ReganBooks tried to do to Moore's book may
be typical of what has happened to the industry that has often
been accused of sacrificing much of its editorial integrity to
the business and marketing sides, and continues to publish "safe"
books that don't attack establishment values.
Copies of Stupid White Men were ready
for distribution when terrorists struck America on September
11, 2001. Moore, an anti-establishment social issues and media
critic who is adept at using the media to promote his views,
had first earned a national reputation with his playful film,
Roger and Me, which looked at corporate greed. He followed that
up with a best-seller Downsize This! (1996); a brief television
series, TV Nation; and subsequent "reveal-all" about
that series, Adventures in a TV Nation (1998). In October 2002,
he would release Bowling for Columbine, a two hour documentary
about America's gun culture.
But now, in the days after the terrorist
attacks of 9/11, ReganBooks thought Moore's criticism of the
Bush administration was not only irreverent but also inappropriate
and unpatriotic. In one of publishing's all-to-common intertangling
alliances, ReganBooks is an imprint of megapublisher HarperCollins,
which less than two years before stopping distribution of Stupid
White Men had published George W. Bush's political memoir, A
Charge to Keep. HarperCollins itself is a part of News America,
a major division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation conglomerate
which also owns the FOX TV network. Roger Ailes, FOX's news chair,
was a senior advisor to former President George H. W. Bush. On
Election Night 2000, John Ellis, first cousin of George W. Bush
and Florida Gov. "Jeb" Bush, was a FOX news consultant
and on-air political analyst; in addition to analyzing the election,
Ellis relayed information in several private telephone conversations
to his cousins.
Perhaps none of the alliances entered
into ReganBook's decisions about Stupid White Men. But, Moore
told Publishers Weekly the company had wanted him to rewrite
up to half of the book, and change the title and cover art. ReganBooks
refuses to discuss what it said to Moore, or to answer numerous
questions about why it didn't want to release the book. Moore
says he agreed to a title change and a revision of the cover
design. He didn't agree to lose his journalistic integrity.
In the book, Moore opened with an attack
upon how George W. Bush had become President at the beginning
of 2001, although Al Gore received over a half-million more votes
in the popular election. He called Bush a "crook" and
a "Thief-in-Chief" for having stolen the election by
the Supreme Court's 5-4 vote along political lines to uphold
the official, but highly controversial, election results in problem-plagued
Florida, a state in which Bush's younger brother was governor
and the secretary of state were co-chairs of the Bush for President
committee. The Supreme Court decision several weeks after the
election had given Bush just enough electoral votes for the victory.
"We are now finally no better than a backwater banana republic,"
Moore declared. In other chapters, Moore attacked racism, corporate
business practices, those who presided over the recent economic,
technological, and environmental decline, the media obsession
with sex scandals, and even Bill Clinton whom he called one of
the best Republican presidents the country ever had.
After a couple of months of discussions,
Moore says ReganBooks told him it had decided to pulp the warehoused
copies; the publisher would allow rights to revert to him after
a year. As Moore knew, a year's delay would have killed the essence
of the book. He proposed to buy the 50,000 copies, then sell
them himself; the publisher, says Moore, refused. ReganBooks
refuses to say why it wouldn't allow the author to buy the copies,
or why it had planned to kill it.
"We had considered a number of options,"
says corporate spokesperson Lisa Herling who refuses to say what
those options were. Whatever they were, apparently the only viable
one the publisher was comfortable with was a rewrite.
The book was almost dead.
The day after discussions apparently
ended in early December, Moore spoke to the New Jersey Citizen
Action Coalition, a friendly audience. What he hadn't counted
on was support from a source that is vigorous in First Amendment
issues.
"This was all about a publisher
censoring itself on a book because it may have been politically
intimidated," says Ann Sparanese, head of the Reference
and Young Adult services for the Englewood (New Jersey) Public
Library; she had been at the Coalition's meeting as the delegate
from the Bergen County Central Trade and Labor Council. Two days
later, she e-mailed letters to members of the Social Responsibilities
Roundtable of the American Library Association (ALA) and to the
Progressive Librarians Guild. "My colleagues apparently
picked up the ball and ran with it," says Sparanese. The
librarians began writing each other and the publisher. And, they
did even more--they placed orders.
Within days, as Moore later told Publishers
Weekly, ReganBooks was receiving "hundreds of letters a
day from angry librarians. . . . That's one group you don't want
to mess with." The publisher had already sacrificed its
editorial integrity when it thought dissent wasn't "appropriate"--and
that it would be subject to attacks for releasing the title,
and would probably lose sales not only for Stupid White Men but
possibly other titles as well. But, now there were those letters
of support--and all those book orders. Now, that was something
to reconsider!
About the same time the librarians were
mounting their campaign, Jane Friedman, chief executive officer
of HarperCollins, asked a question. Moore believes Friedman "was
probably a bit of a hero in all this, saying 'Why are we distancing
ourselves from something we approved of and worked on?'"
In mid-December 2001, ReganBooks agreed
to release Stupid White Men without changes. ReganBooks claims
the librarians had minimal impact. "We did not receive a
lot of comment from librarians, not a lot of feedback from outside,"
Herling claims. She says the decision to publish was "made
by a team of people"--she refused to identify who was on
that team--"and certainly not because of feedback from outside."
Was Jane Friedman part of that team? "The team made the
decision," says the corporate spokesperson firmly.
In February 2002, Moore began a 12-city
author tour, coupled with several appearances on national TV
shows to promote the title. The controversy helped assure exposure
and eventual sales. Within weeks, HarperCollins even featured
Stupid White Men on its web site home page. Speaking to the ALA
annual meeting in June 2002, Moore again forcefully noted that
the librarians' campaign was a major reason ReganBooks decided
to release Stupid White Men, and directly stated that librarians
are "the most important public servant in a democracy."
Within six months of distribution, there were more than 500,000
sales, making the book a surprise run-away best-seller.
What ReganBooks did to Stupid White Men
isn't censorship since the First Amendment applies only to governmental
interference not to what private companies do. But, the government
doesn't need to worry about interfering when so many private
companies, especially media conglomerates, seem willing to self-censor
themselves out of greed or fear. "Americans are apt to quickly
spot and automatically distrust government efforts to impose
prior restraint," wrote media analyst Norman Solomon in
March 2000, "but what about the implicit constraints imposed
by the hierarchies of enormous media corporations--and internalized
by employees before overt conflicts develop?"
Self-censorship is the "most corrosive
and insidious form of censorship," said Aidan White, general
secretary of the International Federation of Journalists. He
attributed much of self-censorship to journalists "living
and working in conditions of fear, poverty or employment insecurity."
Self-censorship begins when writers submit
articles, book manuscripts, and scripts to editors and producers
who reject them or demand modifications. Often, there are good
reasons. In the print media, it's known as editing; in television
and film, it's known as "notes," which could come from
any of several dozen places, including executives whose only
creative thought may have been to add non-dairy creamer to their
cappuccino. Many times, rejection is based upon personal beliefs
and news values of the editors, disguised by such comments as
"We regret that your manuscript doesn't meet our needs at
the present time" or "This area doesn't seem to work."
Whatever the reasons agents, editors, and producers have, after
enough rejections or requests to delete or modify portions of
a manuscript, writers learn what is and isn't acceptable. Soon,
writers become socialized to the system, adapting to the wishes
of editors.
Self-censorship extends to lunches and
dinner receptions, gyms and golf courses, where writers, agents,
editors, and owners mix to discuss everything from other writers,
agents, editors, and owners to the world economy. Those who travel
in the "power circles" of their sources learn and internalize
the norms, no matter how independent they believe they are; those
who maintain their independence, or can't afford to be a part
of a power-elite, are forever knocking on doors that never open.
Self-censorship for editors and producers
is the next level of self-restraint. Often, they impose standards
they think their own editors, publishers, vice-presidents, and
owners might impose, even if nothing was ever said. Vice-presidents
and publishers don't need to say anything--their subordinates
figure it out. An author who proposes a book attacking book publishing
conglomerates probably won't get a warm response from either
conglomerates or independents, some of whom may need conglomerates
for distribution. Nor is it likely authors will investigate and
report about perfidious publishers or supercilious book reviewers,
all of whom could be useful to an author who sheds what dignity
and integrity he or she may have left in order to become published
and, thus, little more than a pawn in the industry.
One leading agent told an author one
of the main reasons she couldn't represent his next manuscript
was because he wrote about some "dirty little secrets"
in the publishing industry--among those "secrets" was
a minor sub-plot about a leading character who didn't want to
go on author promotion tours, the backbone of many front-list
titles. However, greed trumps publisher principles--if John Grisham,
Stephen King, or Jackie Collins wrote a "secret," publishers
would undoubtedly defer to the anticipated income rather than
any principles they may or may not have.
A reporter for a large Iowa newspaper
says he was given permission and a budget to research repair
practices among auto dealers and service stations, then had his
article spiked when the publisher declared the two-part series
wasn't objective since he didn't go to all of the repair shops
in town; when the reporter said he could do that, the publisher
decided there wasn't enough money in the budget for the investigation
of shady repair practices among some of the advertisers. The
experiences of the book author and the newspaper reporter aren't
unique.
About one-third of journalists say that
stories are avoided because of possible conflicts with the business
interests of their employers or advertisers, according to a poll
conducted in 2000 by the Pew Research Center and the Columbia
Journalism Review. About one-third of local newspaper journalists
also reported they "softened the tone" of a story to
meet what they believed was the interest of their employer. Even
if a medium is vigorous in pursuing the truth, even allowing
freedom for "in-your-face" reporters and writers, a
web of unwritten edicts restricts writing and publishing media
analysis and commentary; it may be acceptable to attack others
but don't look inside our own houses, many editors and news directors
silently tell their staffs.
For every Michael Moore book that gets
accepted by a publisher, hundreds are rejected, often for reasons
no writer ever hears but are whispered in the silence of corporate
offices.
"[I]t's not just the books under
fire now that worry me," says best-selling author Judy Blume
whose books are often among those that are most challenged by
self-proclaimed moralist-censors, "it is the books that
will never be written. The books that will never be read. And
all due to the fear of censorship."
Michael Moore, still believing he is
an independent journalist, is now under contract to the media
conglomerate AOL Time Warner which, Publishers Weekly reports,
paid $3 million for the rights to his next two books. ReganBooks,
says Herling, "declined to review" Moore's forthcoming
manuscripts.
In a final irony to the story of Stupid
White Men, the distribution center for HarperCollins is less
than a half-mile from Brodart, one of the nation's largest suppliers
to libraries.
Walt Brasch,
a national award-winning reporter and editor, is professor of
journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is the author of 13 books,
including The Press and the State, and the current book, The
Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era. You may contact
him through his web-site www.walterbrasch.com.
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