Will Manley's Column

[Filtering Facts]

Here is Will Manley's great column from the October, 1997 issue of 
American Libraries. 


ARE WE FREE TO TALK HONESTLY ABOUT INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM? 
 By Will Manley

	The debate on filtering the Internet to block patron access to 
pornographic Web sites has become quite troublesome.  Actually, 
it's not a debate: It's a litmus test that measures commitment to 
intellectual freedom.

	If you toe the professional party line of giving children and 
young adults free and unfettered access to every X-rated Web site that 
the Net has to offer, you're a good guy, a defender of the First 
Amendment, and a champion of intellectual freedom.

	If you decide that in your particular local situation it is 
more appropriate from a public-relations and family-values standpoint 
to use blocking software, you're a bad guy, a craven coward who has 
violated sacred professional principles by caving into pressure from 
closed-minded conservative censors.

	Not only is this name calling (and you can imagine the names 
I'll be called as a result of this column) a weak substitute for 
engaging in rational discourse, it is also a wellspring of hypocrisy.  
I have labored in the library vineyard for 27 years and the greatest 
disappointment I have had about our profession is not our low pay and 
long hours but rather our unwillingness to respect the intellectual 
freedom of those who want to express themselves openly about 
intellectual freedom.

	On all other hot topics - technology, outsourcing, and the 
future of the book - there is little or no peer pressure to restrain 
your desire to rant and rave to your heart's content.  But if you 
really care about your reputation in the profession, you better watch 
what you say about intellectual freedom.  With just a few words of 
dissent you'll be branded a censor, and in library circles you're 
better off being accused of being a mass murderer than a censor.  
At least those accused of mass murder are given due process.  
It's the greatest of ironies  that intellectual freedom is the only 
professional issue in which it is not safe to exercise your 
intellectual freedom.

	All points of view that fall short of our extreme "give 
everyone unfettered access to everything" party line are branded 
as dangerous heresies that will lead us down the slippery slope to a 
repressive society.

	Of course, that's what we say.  What we do is something far 
different.  In public we preach full access; in private we censor.  
We get away with this because we call our censorship "selection".

	The best recent example of this hypocrisy was how public 
librarians finessed the sticky issue of Madonna's best-selling sex 
book.  The number of libraries that own that book is minuscule.  
Clearly it was far too explicit.  Very few librarians wanted to have 
to defend it in front of angry library boards, city councils, county 
commissions, or parent groups.  So they simply decided not to buy the 
book.  But this was not an act of censorship, it was an act of 
selection.  Every librarian that I talked to said that he or she 
passed on the book not because of its X-rated content, but because it 
was published with a metal cover and spiral binding that were not 
conducive to practical library use.

	The hypocrisy of this little white lie becomes obvious when we 
think about what would happen if Danielle Steele's next bestseller 
were to appear in a similar heavy-metal format.  No doubt we would 
buy it in multiple copies and congratulate the publisher for putting 
Steele into steel, a material that can withstand the abuse of the 
hundreds of patrons eager to get their hands on the book.

	Why did so many librarians lie about their real reason for not 
getting the Madonna book?  Quite simply, they were afraid of being 
called censors by their professional peers.  When I passed on the 
Madonna book I mad the mistake of explaining that its explicit content 
was inappropriate for a community library.  Consequently I was branded 
a censor.  It was a most unpleasant experience.

	My point here is not to advocate censorship, but to advocate 
honesty.  For too long our discourse on intellectual freedom has been 
a sterile exercise in peer pressure that ignores the 
often-unappreciated and little-understood difficulties of the 
librarian working in the crossfire of a cultural war waged between 
First Amendment extremists and cultural conservatives.  For those of 
us in the middle of this crossfire, it can be a harrowing experience.

	Next month I will explain why the issue of the filtering the 
Internet will finally force the library profession to debate the issue 
of intellectual freedom without the cover of past hypocrisies.  
The stakes have now changed, and our dialogue will have to get real.
 

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David Burt, Filtering Facts, HTTP://WWW.FILTERINGFACTS.ORG
David_Burt at filteringfacts.org