Political correction ...

In the newsroom, sometimes nothing is as offensive as using the word “p.c.” It makes our neck hairs rise as student journalists. We are not trying to write about puppy dogs and community, we say. We are not trying to make everyone feel great. We tell it like it is.

That attitude is one I am willing to expose, and I think a lot of journalists would relate — because alas, journalists are people too.

These past couple weeks, editors at The Post have put a lot of thought to what is p.c. and what is not. When is it necessary to bring up race, gender or disability, and how should a journalist do that?

Our flaws
These thoughts were mostly brought on by a blunder when the word “cripple” ran in a staff member's commentary (Between the Lines: Students Should Practice (Excuse Me) Escalator Etiquette) and our succeeding apology (Associate Editor’s Note: Flippant Flagrancy).

The mistake was unintentional in a rather lighthearted column, but offensive nonetheless. And when we say offensive, we don’t mean oh-we-hear-people-are-mad-so-we’ll-pretend-to-care offensive. Editor Brittany Kress said in an e-mail that the final sentence was unnecessary and offensive, and therefore did not belong in the paper. It’s safe to say that people noticed, including a a letter writer (Your Turn: Offensive word choice demeans people with disabilities ) and a bartender at The Union, where a bunch of us stopped in after work one day.

Sunday, Jan. 7, the apology letter was slotted to run next to a letter from a reader in the Monday paper. Right next to it, humor columnist Warren Locke used the word “crippling” to describe something. Crippling as an adjective simply means (in the Merriam-Webster definition that is our default dictionary) “being lame, flawed, or imperfect.” This is OK to use in some instances without being offensive. However, myself and the copy chief, who were both working late that night, decided it was disrespectful in any form on the page on this particular day. To be safe, we decided to interchange it with another word, until we could put “cripple” and its different uses into our stylebook. Some editors might not have handled the situation in the same way, but I decided it was the best choice. Maybe we were being too p.c.

What we learned is that a snarky, off-the-cuff remark might seem like it’s nothing to us, but it’s not exactly funny to everyone else. Someone who is obsessive-compulsive might not enjoy someone using “OCD” in a colloquial sense, for instance.

Avoiding the race card
Brittany and I, with help of a designer and copy editor, spent over a half hour trying to come up with a label headline (the first two words) for the interracial dating story last Friday. This shows how worried we can be about putting the wrong thing to offend someone. (Complementary couples: At OU, interracial dating promotes tolerance, presents challenges, broadens horizons)

It’s fairly common for us to get a letter from someone complaining that we didn’t refer to their race in the right way. What we try to do is just be consistent, and generally follow the Associated Press style for everything. However, this year we have made specific strides to be flexible. If we think the AP style is wrong, we’re not afraid to plug in a better one.

What about gender?
Gender can sometimes be tricky and less obvious to catch. The other editors at The Post know that I am likely to go on a tangent about this, but it’s still worth mentioning. Gender, similar to race and disability, probably shouldn’t be mentioned if it’s not pertinent to the story. But gender slips in a lot more often than the other two.

For instance, our refer (the teaser that runs at the top of the page) on Jan. 9 said “First female speaker sets tone for Congress.” I found it to be rather unncecessary, but Justin and Brittany disagreed. As Brittany said in an e-mail: “I can see why it might not be necessary, but it’s also not something that should be intentionally left out with the intent of being neutral or politically correct. I’m sure there were handfuls of other papers that ran almost exactly the same thing.”

Associate Editor Justin Thompson explained that because it was Nancy Pelosi’s first act in Congress and she was the first female speaker, it wasn’t out of line. It would have been inappropriate to say something such as “First female rebuts President’s plan.”

All of these decisions are serve as interesting case studies for debates that happen every day in The Post concerning gender, race and disabilities.

Matt Burns, assistant managing editor, told me it’s always better to error on the side of being p.c. “As journalists, sometimes what other people perceive as a lack of sensitivity we see as treating everything on the same level,” he said. “We need to realize that regardless of what we think, people think it’s insensitive.”

Feedback

• Have you noticed a time when you disagreed with how The Post or another publication chose to present gender, race or a disability?