The Red and Black

Issue date: 9/30/97 Section: Undefined Section

Not all opinions are worth hear- ing. Trust me - I speak from expe- rience. Occasionally I'm asked why The Red and Black doesn't have a call- in forum that allows students to call a special number, say whatever they want to say, and then see it in print. Many metropolitan newspapers have this. It's intended to give readers a forum for voicing their opinions about what they read. Unfortunately, most don't require callers to leave their names to their opinions, which I hate. People who don't have the guts to attach their names to their opin- ions don't deserve to be heard. I don't think these "forums" add anything meaningful to public debate, either. Most of the time the callers are uninformed about the issues. For proof of this, we need look no further than The Macon Telegraph, my hometown newspa- per. A while back they ran a story on the city's high illiteracy rate. In a call-in column called "Straight Talk" that ran the next day, the concerned citizens of Macon let their voices be heard. Here's a sample of one caller's sheer brilliance: "I've lived in Macon for 10 years, and I've wondered how it is that this is such a stupid place. You got the racist bigots with their narrow- mindedness. You got the young blacks with the stupid copycat crimes that you read about in the big cities. . . . But when I read about the city's 30 percent illiteracy rate, I'm not surprised. If only three out of 10 can read and write, how else can they help but be stu- pid?" Hopefully most of you with a fourth-grade education figured out that a 30 percent illiteracy rate means that 3 out of 10 people can't read. But wait - it gets better. This response ran a day later: "In response to the Macon critic who's talking about how stupid Macon is: She goes on to say . . . 'I'm not surprised that 3 out of 10 can't read and write.' A 30 percent illiteracy rate means 7 out of 10 can't read and write. So I guess that means she is illiterate. . . ." Strike two. This person said the same thing the first one said. One day later a third party called in to sort this whole mess out: "In defense of the Macon critic: I don't agree with her opinion of Macon. I have to respect her intelli- gence. She was right when she said 30 percent of our illiteracy rate was 3 out of 10. It was the idiot that called in that's wrong. Seven out of 10 is 70 percent. They must be one of the 3 out of 10 who's illiterate." Somebody finally got the num- bers right, but the caller claimed that the first caller was also cor- rect. Not so. I ask you, dear reader, what is the point? Perhaps this little incident tells us that the entire population of Macon, literate or illiterate, could use a review course in statistics. I believe it also tells us that these phone-in columns are worth- less. They do not contribute to public debate over (what was in this case) a serious issue. They also reflect poorly on the community that pro- duces such insipid opinions. I can't make a better argument for the exclusion of such a forum from these pages than the one above. It goes against all journalis- tic standards and (more important- ly) common sense. Sadly, however, "Straight Talk" is one of the most widely read sec- tions of The Macon Telegraph. Our readers want an interactive forum. How can we provide it with- out insulting their intelligence? Look on page 10 of this paper and you'll find our answer - Ask Us, a weekly installment of your questions and the answers we find. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it so far. I love it. I've learned all kinds of things I didn't know about. What's really great about the feature is that it gives us a chance to connect with you, our readers, to find out what you want to see in the paper. And we get the percentages right . . . most of the time.

– Erik Tryggestad is opinions editor for The Red and Black. He's proud to be one of the seven out of 10 literate Maconites.

 

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