Ye shall know them by their fruits...

Christopher Swindell, a journalism professor, believes people he disagrees with politically should be slaughtered by the US military. Apparently, so do the editors of the Charleston Gazette, who decided to publish Professor Swindell's death threats. Here are the screen shots, in case the editors decide to dump the professor's calls for murder down the memory hole:

Publishing death threats has not normally been a function of American newspapers - at least until recently. Readers were more likely to get long-winded lectures on the need for more civility in politics.

The Charleston Gazette is not the only American newspaper which thinks making death threats is acceptable editorial policy. In the Des Moines Register Donald Kaul called for the torture and murder of political leaders he opposes.. Remember: these are supposed to be respectable American newspapers, not crackpot KKK or neo-Nazi websites.

It would be easy to dismiss the angry ravings of Professor Swindell and Mr. Kaul as being of no consequence, and the decision to publish their explicit death threats as just momentary lapses in editorial judgement at the Charleston Gazette and the Des Moines Register, but that would not be wise. These were not sudden outbursts that were quickly regretted but a careful, deliberate series of decisions. There were numerous opportunities for sanity to prevail, but it did not. Someone made the decision to write these death threats. Someone else made the decision that they are acceptable journalism. Someone else again made the decision to publish them. And the wider world of journalism has not yet mustered up any sense of outrage over Swindell's and Kaul's calls for cold-blooded murder.

(There is another component to this story, and that is the world of education. Swindell is a professor of journalism. While I am not hopeful, I will wait and see if the college he works for has a shred of decency and integrity and fires him.)

Journalists as a group tend to lean to the far left politically. That by itself is not a problem, but there is an undisguised hostility towards anyone who does not share their worldview chapter and verse. There is nothing subtle about it: slanted editorials have long ago been replaced by slanted stories. For that reason I do not believe the actions of the Charleston Gazette and the Des Moines Register are some kind of outlier, but represent an escalation of hostilities fueled by a combination of arrogance and hatred of opposition.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Matthew 7:16 (KJV)