7/06/00 1:25 p.m.
Au Courant!
A p.c. stunt from the nation's oldest newspaper sets a dangerous precedent.

By Michael Graham, political columnist and talk radio host in SC

fter carefully reading the front page of the Hartford Courant, perusing various wire stories and interviewing the paper's deputy publisher, I can confidently report the following: On Wednesday, July 5th, somebody apologized to somebody else for something to do with slavery. Beyond that is only conjecture.

That there was a news story is beyond doubt. Wednesday's front-page lead was "A Courant Complicity, An Old Wrong," in which the paper revealed that "From its founding in 1764 well into the 19th century, The Courant ran many ads for the sale and capture of human beings. It was accepted practice. Slavery was so woven into the nation's economy and social fabric that such ads were probably less controversial than gun or tobacco marketing would be today."

"We are not proud of that part of our history and apologize for any involvement by our predecessors at The Courant in the terrible practice of buying and selling human beings," said the newspaper's spokesman, Ken DeLisa.

But get past the hang-dog headline and the token shame, and what did The Courant actually do — other than set the dangerous precedent that media owners are responsible for the content of their ads?

First, note that the apology is not directed to anyone — not to slaves, their descendants, or the descendants of The Courant's 19th-century readers who died serving in the Union army helping to bring an end to slavery.

Secondly, and more interestingly, the apology also comes from no one in particular. Are the paper's current owners, the Tribune Company of Chicago, apologizing on behalf of The Courant's predecessors? Their immediate predecessor is the Times Mirror company, who owned the paper from 1979 until this year.

The fact is, The Courant has changed hands repeatedly in the last 200 years. At one point in the mid-1800's, it was owned by Thomas Day, whose views would be considered virulently racist today but who was in the mainstream of Western thought in 1855. Later, the paper became a major booster of Abraham Lincoln's and supporting his candidacy in 1860.

Which begs the question, precisely what is The Courant apologizing for? They did not issue an apology for any specific editorial stances taken by editors of the past. And when I spoke to deputy publisher Lou Golden, he was quick to point out that the slavery-related ads they ran were neither unusual or illegal at the time. "We weren't doing anything other newspapers weren't," he told me.

So, having established that the paper did nothing wrong (given the Zeitgeist of the moment), that on the issue of slavery and racism The Courant was as progressive as any national paper, Golden proceeded to apologize again.

"On our editorial pages, we have called on Congress to issue a national apology for slavery. We've also written about other companies that profited from slavery like Aetna (a Connecticut-based insurance company which apologized for issuing insurance policies on slaves). We felt we should hold ourselves to those same standards," he said.

So I asked him: "No doubt, The Courant has run ads in the past for tobacco, for guns, even for private schools which denied admission to Jews and blacks. Does The Courant intend to apologize for these?"

No plans at this time, he said.

"If you're really attempting to right a wrong committed by your 'institution,' do you intend to track down the descendants of these advertisers and refund their money in inflation-adjusted dollars?" I asked.

No plans at this time.

"Isn't this just a political-correctness stunt that will make the editors at The Courant feel better about themselves while muddying the history of your paper and exacerbating race relations?"

He declined to answer the question.

But there was one question that even Mr. Golden conceded was troubling, namely, the precedent that media outlets are responsible for the morality of the content of their ad spaces. After all, if The Courant must apologize today for legal, publicly accepted ads of the 18th century, then these same Courant employees must feel some responsibility for the content of the ads they allow to run today.

"Is The Hartford Courant in the business of limiting speech in its ad spaces to only those advertisers who are politically correct?" I asked Mr. Golden.

He declined a direct answer, but he acknowledged that it put newspapers and other media outlets in a precarious spot. How do you accept moral responsibility for someone else's speech without limiting their freedom to speak?

So I offered this example: "If PETA wins their political fight in the future, will The Courant apologize for every steakhouse ad currently running in the paper? What about hospitals that currently perform abortions, or ads for political candidates that support or oppose affirmative action."

"Hey," I demanded, "how about apologizing to America for Lowell Weicker?"

He hadn't thought of that, he said, but they currently had no plans.

Exactly. As is so often the case with political posturing by self-righteous members of the media, there was no thought of the consequences. Conservatives are already seeing the suppression of ideas in paid advertisements. In 1998, for example, three Santa Monica, CA TV stations refused to run ads by an anti-abortion group as part of a congressional primary. Similar stories abound about pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and other conservative messages being banned from ads in print and on the airwaves.

The decision by the current ownership of The Hartford Courant to swim with the au courant tide of political correctness was a cost-free step on the path of self-righteousness. But it has indirectly added another brick to the road away from a free press and the free exchange of ideas.