If you wrote a bad Yelp review of your employer’s product, you’d probably get fired. But newsrooms are weird. Some of them tolerate dissent like that. AL.com, for one.
John Archibald, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the state’s leading news website, wrote a column Tuesday calling out his own organization for publishing an Aug. 30 commentary by political consultant Tripp Skipper headlined “Auburn is getting a new mosque. Tommy Tuberville warned us to pay attention.”
The premise of Skipper’s piece was that elected officials of Auburn, where Skipper lives, have not sufficiently expressed their views on residents’ concerns about traffic, parking and the size of the new development. But most readers would conclude that the writer was endorsing Tuberville’s repeated public statements about dangers posed by radical Islam and that Skipper sees that claim as relevant to the Auburn mosque debate.
There are some mitigating sentences about “peaceful” Muslims and religious freedom, and Skipper seems to think he’s merely commending the governor candidate’s willingness to take a bold public stance and isn’t impugning the Muslims of Auburn. But the most innocent reading of the commentary gets destroyed if you read the headline and read deep into the article where Skipper quotes Tuberville saying, “The enemy is now inside the gates,” and then Skipper quickly juxtaposes “Meanwhile, back inside the gates” of Auburn. The fundamental decision to merge the mosque proposal and Tuberville’s views on Islam was doomed from the start, in my view.
Archibald* objected to “my company post(ing) a contributing columnist who seized upon the xenophobic, anti-Muslim sentiment of Tommy Tuberville.” He also objected to the nondisclosure that Skipper once worked as a campaign consultant for Tuberville. (Archibald makes many broader points, too, so I hope you will click and read his column.)
As for the original opinion piece, Alabama Media Group Editor in Chief Challen Stephens wrote in an email that the outlet’s goal for opinion content “is to be the public square to the extent possible for discussing various viewpoints on matters of public interest here. AL.com doesn’t dictate the topics nor the opinions. That applies to both staff columnists and contributing writers, like Tripp Skipper. Often, opinions are controversial. After all, they are opinions. And we invite replies and responses from within staff and from the public.”
Skipper’s connection as a consultant for Tuberville’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2019-20 should have been disclosed in the ending bio, Stephens acknowledged, while pointing out that it wasn’t a secret because Skipper has written about it previously. That role is now included in the bio for all of Skipper’s weekly columns.
I wrote this post not just because of Archibald’s remarkable column but also because there’s the bigger issue of determining what’s acceptable or not acceptable for an opinion piece. Stephens said AL.com follows “basic journalistic standards” and “would not knowingly publish falsehoods or personal attacks or hate speech or columns written by AI.”
What constitutes hate speech is subjective, which is why there are differences of opinion over Skipper’s latest.
It’s laudable to offer politically diverse views. Yet it’s not always easy for local Opinion sections with a liberal bent to find regular writers who are conservative, have deep knowledge of state-level issues, and have journalistic credentials. Stephens noted AL.com’s use of multiple conservative freelance commentators in recent years, including Skipper currently. Although this isn’t disqualifying, all of them have backgrounds in politics or public relations, not journalism. That heightens the role of editors.
I commend Archibald for writing his piece and AL.com for letting him do it (because many news organizations wouldn’t). AL.com is not disavowing Skipper’s most recent commentary. Regardless, self-assessment done publicly — even if by only one voice in a news company — is good practice. Sure, it’s a little embarrassing and more than a little weird, but ultimately it’s a boost for free speech and organizational integrity.
* Disclosure: He’s a friend and former Alabama Media Group colleague
Tom Arenberg is an instructor of news media at the University of Alabama. He worked for The Birmingham News and the Alabama Media Group for 30 years. He published this commentary originally as a post on his blog, The Arenblog.
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