6 days Ago
Arnessa Garrett, Thursday, January 4, 2024 Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Free speech is our proud birthright as Americans, and many of you have expressed dismay when a letter suggests we suppress opposing points of view. At the same time, letter writers often tell us that certain views are not worthy of being amplified by the mainstream press. In a media ecosystem where there are multiple outlets for news, there can be a lot of noise.
And like it or not, being published in the mainstream press does give one’s point of view the imprimatur of legitimacy. While we aim to publish a wide range of opinions, we have to have guardrails to ensure that we are sharing information with you that is fact-based and fair. Admittedly, those guardrails can change as new information comes to light.
But we take our responsibility seriously to be a place where you can rely on information that has been vetted and is shown to be accurate. Some do accuse us of “censorship” of unpopular views for that. But I would rather err on the side of caution.
We know our large and diverse audience is unlike what many people are gravitating to nowadays as we all retreat into our echo chambers. So it is more than likely you will be confronted with opinions you disagree with on our pages than elsewhere. To me, that means we are doing our job.
That brings me to our letters inbox for the week of Oct. 24-31. This was the last full week of letters in the run-up to the election, so it's no surprise that we received an eye-popping 89 letters.
Also no surprise, the majority of those — 28 — were about national politics, most urging support for one candidate or the other. The next most popular topic, which generated eight letters, was the comic strip Mallard Fillmore. After two readers wrote in to say the conservative strip was offensive and shouldn’t be published, more readers wrote in to say that they enjoyed Mallard Fillmore and its viewpoints.
Of the eight letters received, seven supported Mallard Fillmore, with most saying they didn’t support censorship of any kind. The next topics were the subject of three letters each: the sweep of homeless encampments in New Orleans, the impact of the Taylor Swift concerts in New Orleans and the state’s ongoing battle over the Ten Commandments law. With the number of letters we receive each week, we are running behind.
While we welcome your letters as always, we hope that as the political season wanes and the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, we can catch up as everyone spends time enjoying friends and family..
