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Underdog Ethics
December 16, 2005
A friend forwarded me Randy "The Ethicist" Cohen's December 11 column from the New York Times Magazine. The querent, who identified himself as politically left of the left-wing of the Democratic Party (good man -- we need more of us out here!), reads for an organization that produces tapes for blind people. He felt uneasy because he had read some John Birch Society articles for taping. Mr. Cohen assured him that he'd done the right thing because he'd supported the free flow of information and the ideals of an open society. I wasn't so sure. After gnawing at the question for two days, I just spent an hour and a half composing a response to Randy Cohen. Now I have no energy left to blog with and (more important) I'm late for a party. Here's what I wrote to Mr. Cohen, with the URL for his column at the end.
I'm not entirely satisfied with your response to Mr. Evans, who felt uneasy with his decision to read John Birch Society articles as part of his job taping material for blind readers. As a freelance copyeditor, I can empathize with his reservations. When I copyedit a manuscript, I improve it. I make it, and its author, more credible than they would be if the book was sloppily written and riddled with factual errors, internal inconsistencies, and logical glitches. There are some books and some authors whose credibility I don't want to enhance -- indeed, would consider it unethical to enhance. I'm not talking about works I merely disagree with but about those that might well cause harm. I support the right of these authors to say what they want to say, and the right of their publishers to disseminate those works, but I'm not ethically obligated to help them do it.
Mr. Evans didn't say whether he was a volunteer reader or a paid one, or whether he has any input into what this organization chooses to put on tape. In any case, it's hard for me to believe that had he declined the assignment he would have been "censoring" the John Birch Society articles. Presumably the assignment would have been passed to another reader. Censorship would have to come from higher up -- from whoever decides what gets taped and what doesn't. (In the 1980s, working in a feminist bookstore, I met several blind women who complained that the material available to blind people, on tape and in braille, was heavy on evangelical Christianity, right-wing politics, and romance novels.)
Again speaking as an editor, I don't agree that Mr. Evans's situation is analogous to that of a librarian. A reader, or a proofreader, or an editor is more intimately involved with the text than a librarian who simply checks out a copy to a library patron. Ideally the librarian has some say in what the library acquires and can thus contribute to "the free flow of information." In my community librarians have occasionally had to defend this flow against patrons and town officials who say that this book or that book should not be acquired, or should be kept behind the desk. Had Mr. Evans decided against reading the articles, he would not have been limiting the articles' availability. His position would have been more like that of the library patron who declines to take a book out but does not object to its being on the shelf.
Finally, no matter how fervently we wish it were otherwise, information does not flow freely in this society, and in many ways this society is not especially open. No one who holds minority views or belongs to a relatively powerless group can afford to ignore this. As a leftist, Mr. Evans isn't ethically obligated to facilitate the distribution of right-wing literature. He isn't ethically obligated to refuse either, but if he had decided to conscientiously object to reading the Birchers' articles, he would have been acting ethically.
Bronwyn, this one's for you!
Randy Cohen's column can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11wwln_ethicist.html
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