Jim Brunelle Thursday, April 19, 2007

One day some schoolkids came through on a tour of the paper with their teacher as guide.

"And here," announced the teacher, his hand sweeping the roomful of editors and writers, "is where they censor the news."

I recalled this incident the other day when reading about the difficulties facing Robert Skoglund, known as The Humble Farmer, who has been hosting a weekly program on Maine Public Radio for nearly three decades now.

At issue is whether the hour-long show, which mixes old-time jazz with wry commentaries on the passing scene, will be allowed to continue. Skoglund has been warned by management to desist from mixing pointed political views with the regular humorous observations he calls "rants" to break up the musical offerings on his program.

Several of his supporters turned up at a recent meeting of Maine Public Broadcasting Network trustees to denounce what they see as a case of blatant censorship rather than a simple exercise of content control.

If, as A.J. Liebling said, "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," then perhaps freedom of broadcast expression belongs to those who pay for the microphone.

The owners of microphones ultimately must bear responsibility for what goes out over them. Making provision for the broad expression of political opinion is part of that responsibility but it is not necessarily open-ended.

It's perfectly proper for broadcasters to hire disc jockeys, weather forecasters, cooking show hosts, quizmasters and various other entertainment personalities and to expect them to stick to their specialties. Is it censorship to enforce that expectation by telling a disc jockey and even a humorous storyteller to keep his political opinions to himself?

Skoglund's problems began in 2003 when he let loose a lengthy rant denouncing the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and referring to President Bush a "war-mongering, rat-faced wimp" bent on blowing up half the globe.

"Every time I see him blabbing on TV, I wonder how anyone could possibly have been stupid enough to vote for such an idiot," he said. "I comfort myself by knowing that most of the people who went to the polls didn't." That brought a warning from MPBN management that a jazz-and-funny-stories broadcast was not the proper venue for such extreme comments.

Since then, Skoglund skirted the line only infrequently until last November, on the eve of Maine's referendum balloting on the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights, when he read a letter on his program from someone in Maryland denouncing the effects of a similar spending-cap measure in that state.

MPBN pulled that show and issued a certified letter of understanding to Skoglund detailing the sort of politically charged commentary it expected him to avoid in the future.

The (not altogether humbled) Farmer responded by dropping his on-air rants altogether and just playing music. However, for the benefit of his dedicated fans, he continues to produce a fully scripted version of his program that he posts on his Web site -- that's the microphone he owns, after all -- while the public fuss over his fate plays out.

The management of MPBN has been taking a big hit, unjustifiably I believe, for supposedly undermining Skog- lund's constitutional right of free speech.

There are legitimate restrictions on free speech, after all, that do no harm to the First Amendment. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there is no fire. Slander is still actionable. Terrorizing by threat, incitement to riot and perjury are all violations of law.

Skoglund's political rants certainly don't fall into any of those categories, but they do defy MPBN's legitimate right to establish policies of political neutrality for its non-public affairs programming.

The media, both public and commercial, have a responsibility to establish reasonable standards controlling the content of their products. Was the firing of Don Imus by CBS an exercise in censorship or a defensible punishment for exceeding proper limits on broadcast speech?

MPBN provides time during daily schedule for a balanced exchange of political ideas. Requiring the producers of programs in other parts of the day to stay off the soapbox seems reasonable.

As a former commentator on Maine public television myself, I'd be the last person to endorse an actual instance of censorship. But as a former newspaper reporter -- and, for that matter, a former radio disc jockey -- I know the difference between censorship and editing.

Jim Brunelle is a weekly columnist and has been commenting on Maine issues for more than 40 years. He lives in Cape Elizabeth and can be reached at jbrune@maine.rr.com.