Free Speech Includes ‘Hate’

Frustration echoes with narrow-mindedness in the heavily restrictive code that a Christian organization has proposed to govern the content of theatrical movies and television entertainment.

Hollywood, especially television, has begged for this wild swing from its critics by cavalierly lowering its standards--and flaunting raunchiness--the way a prizefighter cockily lowers his gloves to expose his jaw.

The proposed code does include some worthwhile provisions, including one relating to the topic of tonight’s PBS documentary, “Hate on Trial.” More about that shortly.

Otherwise, the code is an absolute doozy, a do’s-and-don’ts list mostly out of “The Twilight Zone.” This chaotic flight from reality is driven not only by anger and discontent with unresponsive institutions, but also by a narrow ideology as undesirable as the opposite extreme.

Yet last Saturday’s boneheaded endorsement by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony gave the code--which would be voluntary--an influential champion.

Although the dissatisfaction is understandable, this is one of those times when the cure, if broadly applied, would be infinitely worse than the disease, chilling creativity and curbing freedom of expression.

Drafted by the Atlanta-based Christian Film and Television Commission, the new code in effect revises the old Motion Picture Code that regulated Hollywood moviemaking from 1933 to 1966. Implicit here is the notion that the entertainment media has unilateral power to influence behavior, as if it were mommy, poppy, teacher and pastor to the entire nation.

Most of the code’s tenets are preposterous. For example:

* No movie shall “lower the moral standards” of the audience. That assumes a single morality for the entire nation.

* No “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures.” But which Solomon decides what’s “lustful” or “suggestive”?

* As much as possible, “correct standards” of life shall be presented. But who defines “correct”?

* “Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden.” That’s code for “no gays.”

* There will be no “ridicule” of “any religious faith.” Thus the foibles of organized religion are off-limits to satirists?

* No cops, private eyes or bank guards are to be shown “dying at the hands of criminals.” Is making violence an abstraction on the screen supposed to rid the nation of violent crime?

Some of the provisions do have a surface appeal. The code earns applause, for example, for proposing: “Words or symbols contemptuous of racial, religious or national groups shall not be used so as to incite bigotry or hatred.”

Thus, racist slugs like white supremacist Tom Metzger and his son, John--the subject of tonight’s provocative “Hate on Trial”--would be denied the kind of propaganda forum they sometimes enjoy on TV talk shows whose lifeblood is combat and controversy.

“Hate on Trial”--airing at 8 p.m. on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15, and at 7 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24--is hosted by Bill Moyers and vividly puts hate on display.

The 2 1/2-hour program centers on a 1990 civil case against the Metzgers in conjunction with the murder of a young Ethiopian by three skinheads. The suit was brought by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.

A jury found that the Metzgers incited this 1988 slaying in Portland and ordered them and their associates to pay $12.5 million to the victim’s family. Last December, in an unrelated case in Los Angeles, Tom Metzger suffered another blow when he and two co-defendants were sentenced to six months for their role in a cross burning in the San Fernando Valley.

“Hate on Trial” interweaves lengthy televised segments of the earlier civil trial with commentary by a Moyers-moderated panel of lawyers, activists and journalists. They discuss not only the Metzgers’ First Amendment rights--the central legal issue of the trial--but also the access the Metzgers have had to TV.

For example, you may have seen one or both of the Metzgers, or members of their loony-but-dangerous White Aryan Resistance crowd, with Geraldo Rivera or Oprah Winfrey or Sally Jessy Raphael. Ku Klux Klanners, neo-Nazis--pick your talk show, as ignorance continues to get a hearing on much of TV.

One of the convicted skinhead murderers in the Portland case testifies that he first saw John Metzger during an episode of “Geraldo.” Later, we see an excerpt from that 1988 “Geraldo” episode in which a clash between the taunting John Metzger and the reacting black civil-rights activist Roy Innis erupted into on-camera violence involving a studio audience packed with skinheads.

The physical clash began when the volatile Innis attempted to throttle Metzger after rising to confront the white supremacists on the panel with him. As Innis rose from his chair, Rivera could be heard to say, “Go ahead, Roy!”

Why, Moyers asks his panel, should the Metzgers be tried for inciting violence “if Geraldo is not?” It’s a key question, but one that gets no clear answer here, leaving you to conclude that the legal lines of distinction are as blurry as the ethical ones.

Talk shows and other media have the right to give white supremacists and other dangerous demagogues a forum; that’s the price of a free media being a sometimes irresponsible media. But as panelist Daniel Levitas notes, having the freedom to do something is not synonymous with having an obligation . This is where good judgment is supposed to intervene.

During the Portland trial, we hear that the Metzgers use appearances on talk shows to recruit members. This is hardly a revelation, for the media are inevitably in the position of giving free publicity to the very evils they attempt to expose. How do they inform without also advertising?

However, such introspection is a stranger to most talk shows, which simply go for the ratings without calculating or caring about the possible consequences.

Panelist Catharine MacKinnon notes tonight that these talk shows tend to legitimize the illegitimate by approaching such topics as race “as if there is a debatable issue whether whites are superior to blacks and whether Jews wash.” And almost always, Levitas says, “there is an attempt to stage a confrontation . . . so that heat rather than light is shed on the subject.”

After suffering a broken nose when hit by a chair during his notorious “riot” episode, that old heatmaker Rivera has aired shows about the incident and criticism of the incident, and now has reportedly taped a show for later this sweeps month pitting Innis against a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Yes, as if racism were a debatable issue.

“Hate on Trial” ends with Tom Metzger, having lost the case, giving this chilling speech to the media: “I have planted my seeds. They’re already in the ground. We’re embedded now, don’t you understand? We’re in your colleges. We’re in your armies. We’re in your police forces. We’re in your technical areas. We’re in your banks.”

Justice is sometimes ironic, however, if not always swift, fair or complete. The financial judgment against the Metzgers is vastly beyond their present means. Thus, the court has said that a portion of the money these white racists earn--for a minimum of 10 years--must go to the son of the black man whose murder they were said to have instigated.