Free Speech Isn’t Sexy, But It’s Necessary

By TMP 43rd Editorial Board

What is a journalist? Is it someone who sells a validation-drunk audience content that it already wanted to hear, like the new CBS Evening News anchor, Tony Dokoupil, who recently promised to source his information from his own audience, rather than experts? Is it someone who carries water for those in power, like The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who withheld leaked information about planned US strikes in Yemen, which killed hundreds of civilians, from the public?

The Milton Paper believes a journalist is someone who offers the authorities above them and the audience beyond them something more valuable than comfort. A journalist compiles reliable information, honest arguments, and cultural commentary. Those products can be difficult for amateur students to provide consistently, and delusions of grandeur are perhaps the defining characteristic of student-run news outlets, but we do not take that fact as an excuse to offer anything other than our best efforts to be journalists—your journalists—every week.

In light of developments regarding Milton’s student publications this past semester, including the response from campus adults to an exchange between a guest writer and the DEIJ Student Board published in our last issue, we at the Paper perceive an administration-driven chilling effect—whether intentional or not—on our writers’ willingness to argue controversial perspectives. Where our staff once flocked to politically-charged topics, truly debatable stances require more and more coaxing each year before they make it to print.

Given this troubling culture shift, which reflects how timid Milton’s discourse has grown generally, we are freshly considering our role as both a promoter of discourse and a gatekeeper of perspectives. For our news coverage—whether on sexual misconduct policy changes last year or the Israel-Palestine Conflict the year before—this role means pushing for the truth when we feel it has been obscured, as well as changing course when the facts do not meet our expectations. Our standard against falsehoods is absolute; when we make a mistake, we make a correction. For our opinion section, our role means creating a platform for productive conversations about controversial issues, in which arguments challenge readers to understand opinions other than their own. Collectively, our editorial board leans overwhelmingly to the left, but we always seek to publish perspectives with which we disagree and which spark difficult conversations.

In an increasingly polarized climate, the Milton community defaults too often to wanting to remove contrarian perspectives in favor of “protecting” students from “harmful” views. When used to ignore facts, this rhetoric can be downright misleading, promoting dishonesty from a journalistic perspective. When used to justify suppressing opinions, the tactic not only creates political echo chambers, but it also teaches us to ignore the reality in which “harmful” views are, in fact, held by many. As a student newspaper, we challenge the idea that such publications should reflect only the opinions supported by a majority of writers, faculty, and administrators. Instead, we publish contrarian opinions when they reflect conversations already ongoing within our community, in the belief that only good can come from moving debates from within echo chambers onto a public forum. We do not seek to platform bad-faith arguments, nor do we take dogwhistles at face value; we simply hope Milton and the Paper can serve as spaces where students can learn, make mistakes, and fail, rather than be afraid to try at all.

Our belief in publishing contrarian perspectives leaves two crucial questions for us to address. First, where do we draw the line between productive discourse and violent speech? Second, how do we responsibly use the power of a newspaper to privilege the legitimacy of certain perspectives over others? Regarding the question of violent speech, we never publish rhetoric that incites physical violence. Moreover, we recognize that some rhetoric, while not physically threatening, can prove psychologically harmful to members of our community. However, we also believe that it is nearly impossible to determine whether speech is psychologically harmful, and that the benefit of productive discourse almost always outweighs the risk of psychological discomfort. Thus, on the question of violent speech, we err on the side of leniency.

On the question of legitimacy, we recognize that newspapers are gatekeepers of perspectives, as what we choose to include and omit shapes which views are considered legitimate. As such, we have a responsibility—beyond promoting discourse—to strike a balance between elevating novel and complex perspectives and representing conversations that our community is already having. In publishing diverse opinions, we do not seek to manufacture perfect arguments where they do not exist; instead, we do our utmost to make the authentic voices of Milton audible on the page, be they pretentious or clumsy, funny or dire.

Ultimately, both of these questions are complex and subjective. We navigate this subjectivity with high stakes and great difficulty. In this task, we simply ask that you trust us and that you withhold immediate judgment even when our actions contradict your academic instincts or professional training. We don’t always have all the answers, but from what we can tell, no one does, and we can promise that we do this job in good faith. We edit this paper, never to promote personal or institutional objectives, but to contribute to a culture of learning and growth—as people and political agents. To do so, we must publish perspectives that some deem uncomfortable, or maybe even harmful. Ultimately, we will always prioritize our most fundamental directive: to promote truthful complexity and authentic exchange.