04/01/01
Porn on the web
I don’t much like censorship. For any American newspaperman (and
I was a secular newspaper writer and editor for 35 years), censorship
raises the ugly specter of a government running even more amok
than ours seems to.
With censorship, there’d have been no Watergate, even none of
the stories about our more recent president. Countless tales of
smaller-time graft and scandal would have been suppressed.
That said, I’ve watched the current spat develop over a federal
law calling for filtering software on library and school Internet
connections to screen out the huge amounts of porn on the Web.
“Censorship,” screams one side, including the Chicago-based American
Library Association. “Protect our children,” cries the other,
including the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.
It’s an emotional conflict for the hearts and minds (and, apparently,
the souls) of Americans.
The filtering software, maintain supporters, would keep porn from
leaping, unbidden, to the screen of a child seeking, say, recipes
for “breast” of chicken.
The ALA, and others, call requiring the filters a first step toward
blocking adults from seeing what they want when they want. That’s
a constitutional promise, they say. Still, porn has long been
part of the human landscape, if not quite as freely available
as today.
As a kid, I knew where porn was. And where it wasn’t. It wasn’t,
for instance, at the library. So I tried a little test and looked
up Hustler, Playboy and some of other big names in sex in my library’s
card catalog. Not there. (Neither was one of my books, about miracles,
no less.)
Hmmm. So the library made a choice. I haven’t heard anyone gripe
that the lack of Hustler on a library’s magazine rack constitutes
censorship. Of course it doesn’t; there are plenty of places that’s
available. It doesn’t have to be in on a library or school computer.
That said, I suspect this battle isn’t over. Filtering software
may not be perfect, but neither should libraries or schools be
encouraging porn on the Web.
On another note, the section below this column (print edition)
is called in many newspapers “the glory box” because it lists
the names of staffers. A name is missing: Staff writer Michael
Wamble has left to become religion writer for a newspaper in Newport
News, Va. Michael was a committed and faithful reporter. He will
be missed.
Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager
Send your comments to Tom Sheridan
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