Editor-in-Chief says offensive letter to the editor should've been looked at more carefully, but free speech still needs to be protected.
Earlier this week, The Post ran a letter to the editor under the headline "Court ruling on gay marriage should be overturned."
That letter, written by Wayne Lela, the founder of the group Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment, sparked considerable outrage on campus.
Some readers said phrases like "homosexual minds in heterosexual bodies are also sure signs of mind/body mismatches and are sure signs of a disorder" could be considered hate speech. Others just said the letter was plain offensive, especially when considering that Lela's group had been determined to be a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Several of those who reached out to us demanded an apology. They were frustrated and hurt by Lela's assertions, and concerned that we hadn't properly researched his background.
To be honest, we hadn't. Our editors weren't aware of his affiliation with an organization classified as a hate group, nor his website, which made arguments far more gruesome than the one's in his letter.
We issued an editorial shortly after the letter was published saying we should have been more careful, and that we'd be researching those who wrote letters to us in the future.
Still, a group of student journalists were being asked to define those of us that deserve the right to free speech and those who don't. The Post still reserves the right to disallow letters carrying hate speech, threats or gross inaccuracies from running in print or online. Even so, we don't get to decide which opinions are valid and which one's aren't. We're protectors of speech, not its gatekeepers.
Conversations had between the executive editors since the editorial have led us to the conclusion that our place wasn't in deciding the letter's validity, argument or offensiveness — it was realizing that the letter came from a man with, as far as we know, zero ties to our audience. His letter contained no reference to Ohio University or Athens.
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Lela lives in Illinois, and we never asked why he sent us the letter in the first place. Was it in reference to coverage we ran in our paper or online? The political atmosphere in Athens?
As journalists, our job was to ask, "Why?" We didn't do that. For that, we apologize, and we thank our audience for pointing out our flaws so we can better learn from this mistake.
Emma Ockerman is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Want to talk to her? Send her an email at eo300813@ohio.edu or tweet at her @eockerman.
