OPINION

It's not a freedom of speech issue: Smith has every right to express his view, and the Herald has every right to choose to publish the ad, but the Herald also has every right not to accept the ad. Basically, Nick, you're saying that you published the ad because you knew that the readers would not buy that the Holocaust is even a controversy and would ignore/reject the basis of the ad. So why publish it in the first place, besides for the negligible revenue?

I submit that you published it because you knew that the controversy would become just that question: why publish the stupid hateful ad? I understand that the media's role, whether it tries to or not, will always be to stir controversy and debate. But to use the Holocaust to stir freedom-of-speech controversy is disgusting, distasteful, and just as vile as denying it in the first place.

You're supposed to report the news, not create it. That's exactly what you've done here, at the expense and the offense of many people. Have you no shame?

I agree with Sean, and I would add that the prevailing party line that the ad somehow "slipped online" under the radar and was evaluated after the fact smacks of dishonesty.  I hate to think this, but my initial reaction is that those who published the ad didn't think at first that it would be controversial, based on their own ignorance of the deeply offensive nature of such claims to those of Jewish heritage (myself included) and/or faith.  I envision a hastily arranged meeting after the fact wherein rather than debating the issues of freedom of speech, implied racism, etc., the board convened merely to evaluate the outcome of what might happen should they let the ad stay up. 

I went through an ordeal like this in 1979 as editor of the Madison Perss Connection, a newspaper union strike newspaper that converted to a co-op newspaper for its las year. People had been defacing billboards put up by Wisconsin Citizens Concerned for Life, an anti-abortion group, and they bought a full-page ad in the Press Connection to protest the defacements. We accepted the ad.

We were picketed and I was called a Nazi by Michael Feldman on his morning radio talk show. We were held to account in a heated meeting at Lysistrata, a women's restaurant, which was broadcast over WORT. It divided the Press Connection staff, and when I let out a big sigh of sadness a woman screamed in my face for me to get out. I broke down in tears on Rep. Midge Miller's blouse.

I heard all the same arguments that I'm reading now about the Badger Herald "giving them a platform." What I think now is that the Badger Herald is under no obligation to offer editorial space to anyone -- which is giving someone a platform. That's an editorial decision. Selling  advertising space is a different deal. If people want to buy space to have their say, your only obligation is to set the type and check the spelling. Editorially, you can choose to confront the ad on its terms in your news and opinion pages. I did that, but my editorial was pulled in a power play that was the beginning of the end for the paper. Some people felt the advertiser had the right to have its say unchallenged  on the day of publication, and that it was bush league to do otherwise. I might have agreed if I'd been asked about it but I wasn't consulted. We folded three months later.  

I'm sure few will agree with the position I'm taking here, and will talk about paid speech and hate speech. But this is one of the hard places where you decide if it's a free country.   

Selling ad space to a concern you personally feel/know to be false is even worse than ignorantly doing so. "See through their lies"? Are you serious? You're ostensibly journalists. You don't hold a blind taste test of true and false. You search for true. You advocate for fact.

It was an awful choice, made either out of total tone-deafness, malicious agreement, or the all-mighty dollar. In any circumstance, horrible.

Kyle, are you serious? You really think the Badger Herald accepted this ad because it just could pass up the chance to make $75? Agree or disagree with the decision, but don't chalk it up to base and silly motivations.

If you want to talk about base and silly motivations, look at the position of the critics. They believe the campus community in particular and the larger society just aren't smart enough to withstand exposure to claims that are unsupported by any evidence.

They think that if people besides themselves are allowed to see arguments that the Holocaust never happened, they may very well agree that it didn't. They believe the only way to keep the public from falling sway to these lies is to block their exposure to them.

This is a position that shows extreme deference to the power of lunatic ideas and pure contempt for citizens and the campus community. The Badger Herald's decision does not.

Bill and Kyle, You're both right. The Herald took the ad to make $75, failing to recognize what it was. The Herald then decided to keep running the ad, not for the money and in spite of the fact that they stood to lose significant amounts of advertising because of the offensiveness of their decision.

But Bill, I am absolutely at a loss to understand the extent to which the Herald has now articulated this specious philosophy on ads, to wit:

"We currently review ads for libelous, obscene or inciting content. But we will not censor an (sic) ad content solely on the basis of its offensiveness, outrageousness, or even falsity, because many ads that are offensive, outrageous and even false still contribute productively to public and commercial discourse."

Really? We're now refusing to reject any ad, even if we know it to be false? This is in direct contravention to advertising ethics codes (http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=37 or http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/Statement%20of%20Ethics.aspx?sq=ethics). These codes recognize that lies and deception detract from productive public and consumer discourse.

Beyond that, double-really? We're now going to justify running offensive, outrageous and false messages simply because we have confidence in the community's ability to identify and reject them?

If this is truly the standard, then why is the Herald now pledging to monitor comments to stories and remove them when comments are "an offense to common decency"? (http://badgerherald.com/oped/2010/02/11/from_the_editor_trea.php)

I have great respect for Nick, and I appreciate his attempt to articulate a grounded, rational reason for continuing to run this pernicious flith. The Herald did not make this decision lightly. No matter what recklessness people want to ascribe to them, they did not act blindly or without consideration.

But Nick, your reasoning fails in many ways. Three of them are critical to me:

1. Bradley Smith has full and unfettered freedom of expression. No government is shutting him down, and no protestors are launching DoS attacks on him. Your linked ad does not give him free speech. It gives him amplification and legitimacy at your own expense.

2. In an overreaching defense of a misguided decision, you are articulating policies that could open you up to all manner of worthless speech. I doubt you will become the platform for ads from deniers of slavery, promoters of genocide and advocates of subjugation. But you've left yourself vulnerable to exactly those forces.

3. Declaring a community able to call a lie a lie cannot validly justify promoting hate speech within it. I believe in -- and have argued fervently for -- broad protection for speech that offends. The answer to worthless speech is *more* speech, not less. But protection of speech differs markedly from promotion of speech. You have failed to draw the line between telling your community about Holocaust deniers among us and advertising those deniers.

Other arguments abound, but these three are most persuasive to me. Coupled with what I see as a bright ethical line in denying space to false advertising, these arguments arrive at only one conclusion: take the ad down.

"We currently review ads for libelous, obscene or inciting content. But we will not censor an ad content solely on the basis of its offensiveness, outrageousness, or even falsity, because many ads that are offensive, outrageous and even false still contribute productively to public and commercial discourse."

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The hypocrisy here is unbelievable. First off, I'd love to see Nick please explain exactly how he and the Herald staff came to this definition of what to censor, because at the forum Thursday night both you and Smathers clearly had a lack of First Amendment legal understanding.

First Smathers said he'll only censor material that immediately incites - a possible reference to Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire? Then later he switched to censoring only "libel," before also touching on "obscene," a possible reference to Miller? Before making statements that the Herald does have some sort of editorial policy, I would advise first getting a firm basis in the legal principles that be.

A second example of Nick's hypocrisy was also quite evident at Thursday's forum when he was asked by Katy Culver why he decided to run the ad. 

(See the video of this here http://vimeo.com/9935033 - begin at 10:45)

Nick Penzentstadler (Herald Publisher): “Well I think by bringing [the ad] in doesn’t give him legitimacy. It puts him [Bradley Smith] there to be shouted down. And I think by putting him there and allowing people to take shots at him, it’s better than ignoring him. Part of it’s been the last week people have been coming up to us saying ‘I didn’t even know this guy was out there.’ I mean you [Katy Culver – asking the question] made the point that we could write about him, but showing people what he’s doing and allowing him to advertise puts him and says: ‘here he is, shoot him down.” Howard Schweber (Constitutional Law Professor): “So you would run an ad for the Klan, the American Nazi Party, a criminal gang of Mexico or the Ethiopian CIA? All of those, you’d run their ad so that we could all know they exist?”

Penzentstadler: “No. I...We don’t think this...”

Schweber: “So I’m losing something.”

Penzentstadler: “Well we don’t equate this advertisement with those tactics”

Schweber: “Why?”

Penzentstadler: “We don’t see this person [Bradley Smith] and this organization [CODOH] standing for the same things as the KKK does.”

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And again, as Nick also said in an interview with WKOW27 yesterday (http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12091197), he would be fine with pulling or refusing to run an ad from the KKK but not one from a Holocaust denier and known anti-Semite. This thus implies that Holocaust denial somehow does not meet Nick's threshold for "libelous, obscene or inciting content," whereas something from the KKK does cross the line as showing more "offensiveness, outrageousness, or even falsity" than the Herald can handle.

My question then is, how can we trust a newspaper that is so poorly managed to deliver the news, which is often critical of the management of other institutions in the community, including the university?

This is ignorance at its best!

The fallacious philosophy continues. Instead of separating the wheat from the chaff, the Herald has decided they can coexist together. 

It is not an issue of hate speech verses other speech but granting another forum for the continual propagation of ignorance and granting ignorance (and malice) an equal seat at the table. 

Education and knowledge is hard and slow and cumulative and requires continual focus and the ability to quickly dispense with the easily generated drivel that now makes up much of the public discourse. New (and old) generations need to (re)learn the facts that ample evidence has proved true, and not be bombarded with arguments which have no basis in fact. 

It's not an issue of being balanced and fair, but the issue of being right or wrong. The Herald staff made the decision it did because they remain at best minimally educated and believe the Holocaust deniers have plausible, though, controversial arguments to make, which, in all fairness, should be aired. Penzenstadler seems to have admitted as much. 

For decades I've been opposed to the belief that everyone has a right to their opinion and often is it said explicitly that all opinions are equally valid with due respect to be given, therefore. And, the 1st Amendment is often dredge up to stop criticism of the lies and unfounded beliefs that are often expressed and to give a forum to their propagation.

Truths are not subject to popular opinion and a majority vote. One does not have the right to one's own facts. There are settled truths that must be understood, and if not understood, accepted. Keeping an open mind is not the goal of an education and certainly not within the definition of progress.

A favorite quote of mine from logician Bertrand Russell: "A mind forever open is a mind forever empty." The Holocaust is one of the many truths that must now and forever be closed to debate -- the evidence is beyond overwhelming.

Bill: Do a story on Bradley Smith. Write an op-ed. Expose the awfulness of his ideas. But don't take his money. Don't assume that the judgment-free placement of an advertisement will be countered by the good thinking of readers. If you know, or even reasonably believe, something to be false, why on earth would you give it an objective place on a page or site?

(Of course, I'm asking this of someone who publishes Blaska's screeds, but at least Emily Mills provides some equal-profile counterbalance.)

If not malicious (agreement or sympathy), the answer can only be base (ad rev) or silly (failure to appreciate controversy), because i fail to grasp the logic when it's coming out of the mouth of someone like Nick who hopes to be a professional journalist.

Kyle, if you find Bradley Smith and his lunatic views worthy of your attention, write your own op-ed or article. It's frankly not something I'm going to take time to do. I don't blame the Herald for not taking him seriously enough to do so either.

The notion that the Holocaust never happened is preposterous. It doesn't need to be seriously refuted, any more than does, say, the notion that the earth is flat or the moon is made of green cheese.

You and others seem to think Bradley Smith's ideas are quite powerful and compelling; thus the only responsible course of action is to suppress them. I disagree. In fact, I think the best way to discredit them is to let them be aired.

I assume that if Bradley Smth joined this exchange you would also want The Dailypage to purge his comments, just as you apparently believe there is something questionable about TheDailyPage running David Blaska's "screeds."

I guess the only solution is for every publication to check with you before publishing anything. You up for that?

We need to make two different distinctions here.

First, is the difference between legally controlled hate speech and garden variety idiocy.  Bradley Smith is an idiot and a despicable human being but he has a right to buy ad space like any body else.  The herald has a right to sell ad space to anybody so long as the ad itself doesn't cross the above-mentioned legal threshhold, and in doing so they are not condoning the product, viewpoint, service advertised therein, thats what the editorial section is for.  For example i seriously doubt that many members of the Onion staff really support Bennett's stupid, offensive, and as of last week now racist ads, but they run (often next to dan savage amusingly enough)them, because thats how newspapers work.

Hate speech and stupid dangerous racist ideas aren't going to go away because we segregate them and pretend they aren't there.  Just like when John Adams tried to crush dissent with the Alien and Sedition Act, repressing speech always leads to it being legitimized by it's repression. 

Also they aren't going to go away by crying and moaning about how things are either right or wrong.  Bradley Smith's views aren't historically worthless because what he says is racist, thats just a term.  He's worthless because he fails every objective test posed to a historical argument.

Ben Moser does an adequate job of expressing his confusion and the confusion of other journalist types. Basically, it's nonsense on stilts. "[R]epressing speech always leads to it being legitimized by it's repression" is an interesting theory but one which false, and dangerous as well. Freedom of speech and other similar rights are critical in areas of policy, and general values as such discussions which are most often are concerned with balances of personal interests, and that cannot be had by suppression. 

Outside of such areas freedom of speech, generally and legally enforced, can have a strong negative value; it used to be that societal pressures (as opposed to legal sanctions) would prevent people from opining on subjects they know nothing about and should morally have no opinion on. But today, we seem to value the opinions of morons as much as those with expertise. 

I am reasonably well educated but I hope my 1st Amendment "rights" would be denied if I were to demand to have published my opinions on, say, the topic of the fusion processes that are occurring on the sun, and demand that I be given seat at the same table as the experts in such matters and to "force" people to listen to what would be complete drivel. I simply have no business having an opinion on these matters. However, I'm sure I could convince a substantial number of Americans who buy into the current fiction that science is just another belief system. I could certainly dredge up some previous theories from 100 years ago, before the evidence mounted for the current understanding (and couch it in religious terms -- a double whammy under the 1st Amendment)

I'm certain that, if I got enough morons to follow my "theory", I could get enough political backing to force some school districts to teach it in high school -- as a matter of 1st Amendment rights -- and to force scientists to constantly defend themselves to the same morons who can't understand the evidence anyway. 

And I can get help from the Badger Herald, and Bill Lueders and Ben Moser to spread my new gospel and tell the world that if my drivel on the sun's processes is repressed, it would be legitimized, and how scientists should, children that they are, quit crying and moaning about how things are right or wrong. 

I'm afraid you all have never seen a fact that can't be placed into dispute, and perhaps don't even understand the value of indisputable evidence or knowledge. 

That's where we profoundly differ. There are certain categories of issues under which 1st Amendment policies should be paramount, and other categories in which 1st Amendment issues are irrelevant (and dangerous if confused). My position is clear: Indisputable evidence and knowledge trumps 1st Amendment rights every time. 

Bradley Smith's views, as well as my "views" on the sun's processes, fit within the categories of views for which there should not be any 1st Amendment protections.

Bill, Smith's views aren't compelling. They're noxious.

The rest of your most recent response to me is patronizing and foolish, and I don't really feel like picking it apart. Suffice it to say, I'm not talking about rights; I'm talking about choices. Badger Herald had a choice to hand the microphone to a person they knew would say something awful. They decided to do so, and my opinion is that that's a bad decision.

I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Lawrence Winkler, for recognizing that Bradley Smith's views -- as well as his own inaccurate musings about science (and presumably lots of other things) -- "fit within the categories of views for which there should not be any 1st Amendment protections."

Ask any constitutional scholar: The First Amendment was obviously never intended to protect speech that Winkler finds offensive. There is, of course, a very good reason for this. It's that Lawrence Winkler is such an amazingly good person, overflowing with wisdom and virtue. Thus he is able to see which views are acceptable and which are not.

But other people are not nearly as discerning or as decent as he, so they must not be exposed to ideas he condemns. Surely, if presented with views that are so wrong that they deserve no protection, the great mass of Americans would not be able to make rationale judgments. Soon they would be spouting nonsense about the Holocaust and solar fusion. Some might go crazy enough to start watching Glenn Beck.

So I agree: Free speech ought to apply only to speech that meets Lawrence Winkler's approval. The rest needs to be suppressed. In fact, I think that's something we can all agree on.

Bill Lueders, having no original thought, goes on the ad hominem attack.  Not surprising since my comments were beyond his comprehension.

I don't know what a First Amendment Constitutional scholar would say. But, perhaps this following constitutional scholar has something to say about what might have been intended.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821. ME 19:408

"Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science." --Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795. ME 9:297

"Light and liberty go together." --Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480

Jefferson's comments are not directly on point, but do seem to indicate, perhaps, some affinity to the position I took? Somehow, I I think Jefferson hoped that the propagation of enlightenment not the spread of the sewage of ignorance would be the benefactor of free speech.

"Surely, if presented with views that are so wrong that they deserve no protection, the great mass of Americans would not be able to make rationale (sic) judgments", you say, as though with irony.

Sorry, I must be living in a different universe than you. I have not seen much related to "rationale (sic) judgments" recently.

Plenty of free speech but precious little rational discussion on health care. Perhaps there are rational discussions going on somewhere but the books and newspapers, and TV and cable chatter and all this free speech have relegated such discussion, if it exists, to faint whispers. I'm as truly ignorant of the issues in this debate as I have ever been. Free speech by morons, having drowned out any possible rational discussion, simply does not allow me to have any inkling of the right approach. (Oops, there I go again, whining and crying over "right" and "wrong"). 

Any coherent discussion going on in the educational wars recently? Plenty of free speech and demagoguery -- any enlightenment -- any enlightenment in the future? Unlikely. Free speech by morons helping with that? I think not. You journalists have any clue you're just holding back on? What are the right answers? (Dang -- there I go again with "right" -- I do apologize). 

By all means, journalists, print media, TV pundits, keep up the good work, ensuring that everyone, no matter how misinformed or misguided or ignorant can have their say and hope, by some miracle (it will take a miracle), that that almost imperceptible whisper of knowledge from the some who truly understand the issues can be heard above the roar of the mob.

Lawrence Winkler. Wow. You really are every bit the elitest I took you for, contemptuous of the ability of people besides yourself to reach rational judgments [yes, hee haw, I made a typo earlier]. It's an embarassment to me as an American to see you quote Thomas Jefferson in support of your perspective -- that the American public is misinformed, misguided and ignorant, and must be led by the nose to what you call enlightenment.

Have I seen or heard any rational discussion on health care? Yes, I was just tonight watching Rachel Maddow deliver up loads of it.  I've seen and heard lots of insightful and perceptive reporting and commentary on this issue, and on education. I've also seen lots of fear and ignorance. And you know what? I was able to tell one from the other, without any help from you.

Are there crackpots and demagogues who take part in the national debate? Well, duh. But I've heard heard any I felt needed to be silenced, for the greater good. Part another way, I've never heard any "free speech by morons" that I consider as objectionable as the free speech I've just heard from you.

can we please make the distinction between buying an ad and writing an op ed?  The two arent the same at all.  And we can have a debate about whether bradley smith's rights 1st amendment rights  extend to hateful and frankly wrong speech like his but until a legal authority ie a court has said that his speech is no longer legally protected, it is. 

Also you make incorrect assumptions about myself, I am not a journalist, don't see that as a smear but i wouldn't want that coloring your already colorful mind.

I have to second Lueder's rejection of Winkler's interesting theories about historical role as a crypto-propopent of muzzling free speech.

If you actually look at the historical record Jefferson's if anything was wildly liberatarian when it came to anything other commerical development(because it would have threatened the role of his yeoman farmers). 

Saying Jefferson would have in any way coutenanced the restriction of free speech is absurd.

If we want to have a discussion about things the Herald prints which are offensive let's talk about the Shout-Out section published every wednesday where they publish reader generated musings for free many of which are rampantly sexist, racist and potentially offensive.  Thats a seat at the table Mr. Winkler not ad space.  Wanna muse about fusion? shout out about  and see it posted next to oral sex and vomit stories.

For the record i am UW-student who is no way associated with the Herald.

"My question then is, how can we trust a newspaper that is so poorly managed to deliver the news, which is often critical of the management of other institutions in the community, including the university?"

Im so confused! Why does anyone trust anything just because its printed? Just as you read the article denying the holocaust, you should read all peoples statements

Journalists don't report to tell you how to feel, they report to explain the situation. then your supposed to make your own decision.