University of Virginia Library

Editor's Hypocrisy

Yesterday's editorial entitled
"Barber Bigots" would have been a
credit to The Cavalier Daily, it
would have been a credit to the
freedom granted thinking people,
and a credit to this University, if
only page two had not been
destined to follow page one. For a
sentence in the feature article
concerning Saturday night's concert
doomed the editor to hypocrisy.

That sentence read: "In the
meantime, Mr. Shipley went on, a
segment of the audience, mostly
Negro, had begun moving their
chairs. . ."

The statement was not put in
quotations by the paper, and
therefore the reasons that The
Cavalier Daily found it necessary to
point out racial distinctions of the
audience are far from clear.
Nevertheless, the implications,
although a bit more subtle than the
Barbers', are potent. And I wonder
if Mr. Gwathmey, who was so quick
to catch the irony that "occurred
within 100 yards of the Grounds,"
caught his own.

Clay Spencer
College 2

We regret that Messrs. Rochester,
Bryan, and Spencer would prolong
this matter for the simple reason
that nothing good can come from
prolonging it. We feel, however,
that we have a responsibility to
print letters we receive, and so we
have printed theirs; in printing
them, though, we cannot leave
them unanswered.

The confusion, we suspect, has
arisen from a lack of understanding
of the nature of a newspaper. The
news department and the editorial
department are two distinct
divisions of the paper's operation,
as are the sports and features
departments. Each department has
a different function and a different
responsibility to the reader.

The function of the news
department is to inform the reader.
A newswriter must present before
his readers the "whole story,"
whether or not it is pleasant. The
function of the editorial
department is to instruct the reader
or to comment on those things
which are the business of the other
departments. The editor-in-chief is,
of course, ultimately responsible
for everything in every department.

In this case, the news
department presented the news as it
happened with no value judgment
thereon. The reason for which it
"found it necessary to point out
racial distinctions of the audience"
is that they were relevant to the
overall situation described. In other
words, as unhappy as it is, there
were racial overtones in the activity
around the stage. This is evidenced
by the nature of the University
Union's charges against the two
Negro policemen who were on duty
there by reports that
Negroes who were told to clear the
area refused to do so — and rightly
so — until whites also cleared the
area, and by reports of what some
whites said to the Negroes. Thus
the unhappy fact is that there were
racial overtones.

The news department would not
have fulfilled its responsibility to its
readers if it had ignored those
overtones. It has a responsibility to
print the facts of a case whether or
not they are pleasing to us or to our
readers. Thus it was significant that
the crowd which approached the
stage was "mostly Negro."

The main point is this: the
simple report that the crowd was
mostly Negro implies no value
judgment; the fact that the report
was what it was — indeed, the fact
that the crowd was mostly Negro —
casts no aspersions on the crowd,
on the policemen, on the
improperly briefed ushers, on the
officials who "botched a great
show," or on anyone else. It's no
more than a fact: implications
derived from it or from the fact
that it was included, value
judgments made on it or on the fact
that it was included, are entirely
within the minds of those readers
who derive or make them,
respectively. They cannot fairly be
attributed to the author of the
story or to anyone else on the
paper. The news is what was
printed; if anything was unpleasant
it was the news itself, not those
who wrote it.

Thus the "irony" which Messrs.
Bryan and Spencer find in our
presenting that particular piece of
news along with the stand taken in
the editorial is not really irony at
all. It's a matter of reporting what
happened in one department
without comment thereon, and of
urging needed reform in another.
The only connection between them
is that they happen to concern the
same general issue.

Messrs; Bryan and Spencer will
be interested to know that we
anticipated charges of the sort
made long before that paper was
"put to bed." We did not feel,
however, that we had a right to
interfere with the news
department's reporting the news as
it happened just because it might
cast aspersions on our editorial
integrity in the minds of those who
are legitimately sensitive on the
matter.

We did and still do earnestly
believe what we wrote in the
editorial. We are glad to know that
there are people who feel as
intensely as we do on the subject.
Happily for them, though, they
don't have to report the so often
unhappy news. —ed.