For one, like Tina said, there’s no such thing as bad press. I haven’t heard much from the The Inquirer camp about them losing revenue over this. But two, even if we posit for the basis of argument that revenue is germane to this discussion, I think it’s unfair to lump newspapers in as just another business.

There’s only one business that is explicitly given rights in The Constitution and that’s the press. There’s a fundamental reason for this; it’s so the press can actively promote dissent and criticism. From Paine to Zenger, the founders witnessed the importance of having a free press and the negative ramifications of having it stripped away. So, it’s hard for me to accept that informing the citizenry is a tertiary duty of a newspaper. I think that’s a newspapers main duty, regardless if most media outlets abandon it.

Secondly, if we follow the logic that “if people find one person (or opinion for that matter) so objectionable, perhaps the paper should respond to that readership and dump the guy,” we are setting a really dangerous precedent for eviscerating public discourse. Imagine how that standard could have manifested in the past or now for that matter.

If you were a columnist who wrote an anti-segregation article in the Deep South in the sixties–a position that would have made you about as popular as Yoo–should the paper have dumped you due to the objections of its readers?

Or today, If you are a columnist who writes a pro-choice column in a extremely conservative area, should you be removed from the editorial page because the readers are all pro-life?

By this logic, we would have no conservative columnists in Eugene or San Francisco and no liberal columnists in the Deep South. What would be the point of even having an op-ed page then? It would just be an echo chamber. Call me an idealist, but I think the point of an opinion page is having a diversity of ideas and letting those ideas combat each other. Yoo’s a smart guy (I doubt anyone would deny that) and he’s not writing columns for The Inquirer about torture, he’s writing them about law. I think that’s a real important distinction to make.

I’m not saying he’s the greatest hire in the world. But if the Inquirer decides he’s worthwhile, then they shouldn’t succumb to pressure from readers. A newspaper isn’t a brake repair shop or a used car dealership. The customer is not always right. In fact, they rarely are.

I like your use of the term “echo chamber,” Dan, because it highlights the idea that printing stuff that facilitates that effect only contributes to the delinquency of the readership. But sadly, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go where the demand is if you want a business to survive. If you’ve determined that your readership is mostly a group of liberal ignoramuses who want to see the same shit every day, then embrace it and give the customer what he or she wants–or find another readership that you can cater to profitably.

I think primarily the Philadelphia Inquirer is a business and is there to make money – the question of an informed citizenry is a tertiary one at this juncture. Sure, from a legal angle, hiring this guy is okay and I definitely think that it’s wrong for people to have a knee jerk reaction to this sort of thing. However, perhaps the Inquirer should be listening to its readership. If so many people have a problem with this guy, perhaps it’s a valid concern. Although journalistic opinion should challenge readers, if people find one person (or opinion for that matter) so objectionable, perhaps the paper should respond to that readership and dump the guy.

It’s easy to think about this issue as a simplistic, free speech issue, but I don’t think that it is. In the abstract, it’s a intellectually debatable issue. In the specific, however, it’s anything but. And think about this from the other side of the spectrum; if there was an Iraqi or Afghani paper arguing that it was okay to torture American military personnel (which, as an aside they probably do anyway, but Yoo and the Bush administration’s legal precedents will make this thing far easier to justify both domestically and internationally), you’d probably find the guy writing those articles morally reprehensible. And justifiably so. Putting aside my moral consternation for a second…

I think it’s also a business decision at the end of the day. If the Inquirer wants to print invective from an amoral scumbag (i’m editorializing, but let’s be honest here) – that’s their right. But it’s also my right as a reader not to read it and to boycott it (and encourage others to do so). Newspapers are dying for a lot of people because they’re cluttered with shit that spring from the “official” line of thinking. Simply put, they treat their readers like idiots and don’t challenge they by putting anything remotely true into their contents. And in this age of failing newspaper revenues, I’d posit that it’s decisions like this that are accelerating waning confidence in the press.

And if you want to talk about differences of opinion, let’s do that. Let the Inquirer print a columnist that openly states govn’t culpability in 9/11. Or one that accuses Israel of running US foreign policy. Or one that argues in favor of secession. It won’t happen. Yet, all these opinions probably much enjoy higher favorability than torture in the American consciousness, but they’ll never see the light of day in the paper – that bastion of “objectivity.” They’re outside the stream of “proper” discourse that’s been set up by the newsmedia (but hell, I think they’re all far more intellectually meritorious than torture). So, all opinions are equal, but some opinions are more equal than others.

And sorry to prattle on, but one more thing: Frankly, I don’t think it’s censorship in this instance. The Inquirer is responsible to their readership and trying to make a buck – not to some phony notion of “balance.” In the “marketplace of ideas” so frequently championed, the best and most noble ideas rise to the top based on their virtues, while the less noble sink in a cesspool of popular discourse. Objectivity as it were isn’t some god-ordained idea delivered to us on high. We created it and we define it. Let the people decide – and vote with their dollars as they say. As long as the press doesn’t come running to the American taxpayer, hat in hand, begging for a bailout because they print crap that people don’t want to read, let them print what and who they want. Just don’t expect people to swallow tripe based on some phony notion of free speech.