popular thinking

Talk about living in a two-newspaper town. Over the past few days, we've seen the two Boston dailies take completely different positions on whether to print slurs and expletives.

First, the scenarios. (Avert your eyes and ears now if profane language disturbs you.) President George W. Bush gets overheard Monday telling British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the G8 summit that Syria should "get Hezbelloh to stop doing this shit" and the crisis between Israel and Lebanon (still ongoing Wednesday night, mind you) would end. On Tuesday, John DePetro of WRKO-AM (680) in Boston took his smack talk to another level by calling Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (as in, the Big Dig) chief Matt Amorello a "fag" several times on the air.

How would the press treat these profanities? How would you describe them? Would you use the words or insert a substitute word instead?

CNN aired the Bush clip and repeated the statement afterward. Watch it here...


The Boston Globe chose a Washington Post story that included the word as is.
The Boston Herald chose an AP story that cut the proverbial profanity to "s---" and linked online to an AP video that censored the profanity.

On the WRKO story, the Globe went with (slur) to cover up the DJ's slur, while the Herald not only used the word, but also put a link online for readers to hear DePetro's words for themselves.

My own journalistic policy on profane language, especially when dealing with entertainers who routinely talk that way, is to substitute the word (expletive) in quotes for print purposes. Online, though, I may offer links original audio and video works that may contain profanities, and for those links I include an NSFW (not safe for work) warning. But in the two scenarios described above, I could understand the arguments for directly quoting the sources. In these cases, the slurs and profanities are part of the news. Readers, viewers and listeners should know exactly what was said so they can make up their own minds. As my old high school English teacher always reminded me, "context determines meaning." (Expletive) doesn't convey the same context or meaning as the actual expletive does.

So are both papers showing inconsistencies? Or do these decisions make perfect sense? What do you think? What would you do?