• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 2, 2008

I grew up in an era known for its sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, yet I am still amazed how sensitive some people of my generation are about discussing some fundamental aspects of our society, especially sex, religion and politics. It's okay to allude to these subjects, but to openly share your point of view on them is, well, often taboo. It's something I've learned as a writer and editor over the years. Print something direct about one of those subjects and you're asking for trouble, because it's bound to offend someone, somewhere, sometime, and seemingly for the most innocuous reasons.

Ordinarily, I shy away from the subject of religion altogether, but one of my earliest taboo fallouts occurred when I was a cub newspaper reporter at the New Haven Register in Connecticut. My editor assigned me to cover a Passover Seder at a nursing home, and I wrote about the Haggadah that the rabbi used for the ceremony. A Haggadah is basically a retelling of the story of the suffering and perseverance of Jews under Egyptian rule. There is no set scripture, and there are many versions of the Haggadah, but the one used by this particular rabbi, like many others, referred to "four questions" that are typically asked by the youngest child attending the Seder. After my story was published, I was surprised when I was called in by my editors and presented with an irate letter from a reader calling for my dismissal because I had misreported a sacred element of a Passover Seder. My editors were doubly concerned because it involved a potential religious offense, until I pointed out to them that, despite my Italian last name, I am also of Jewish descent. I even had to get a rabbi to vouch for me.

I share that anecdote because it illustrates the acute sensitivity, the range of interpretations, and the potential emotional fallout certain subjects still generate in our society. Take the subject of sex. Once, while working for a TV industry trade publication, I was given access to a powerful new keyword-based TV search database. The system allowed me to plug in simple words or phrases and call up every single U.S. television station newscast that broadcast those words. To illustrate the power of the system, I typed in George Carlin's infamous "seven words," the seven words that the Federal Communications Commission had previously banned licensed broadcasters from airing. Amazingly, the system found occurrences of all seven words - even the dreaded C- and F-words - broadcast by local TV stations. Even more amazing was the backlash I got when I published a table ranking the hits for each of the words. I had assumed that the publication was written for an adult business audience, and that publishing the words in that context would not be seen as gratuitous. I was wrong. Some people flipped out when they saw those words in print.

The same is true whenever I've published stories about politics, especially ones that seemed to have a partisan slant. And while we've published stories that slant in either direction, I think we, along with many members of the media, get painted as liberals. I'm not sure what that means. I'm happy to discuss my personal political views with anyone, but as an editor, I strive to be fair and balanced. It's not always easy.

About the time I was studying journalism in college, in the early 1980s, the theory of journalistic objectivity began to shift. Some began to say journalists could not be - and therefore should not even try to be - objective about the stories and subjects they covered. Instead, we were instructed to be fair and balanced, to present both (or as many) sides of a story as possible to let readers discern what point of view to take for themselves. I still think that's a noble goal, and I still strive to present stories that way - even when I know with certainty that my perspective is the right one.