"NIGGER" :A Case Study in Using a Racial Epithet

The CNN anchor was a study in euphemisms. As Headline News went "around the world in 30 minutes," returning inexorably to the O.J. Simpson murder trial one October day, writers presented anchor David Goodnow with a new way around the word that rocked the trial.

The slurs from retired Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman did not flow easily from the mouth of CNN's on-air talent this day. It came out as "n-word" or "racial epithet." At one point, Goodnow said the officer had hurled his insults at a group of "n's."

This wasn't the first time journalists had to figure out how to say "nigger" without offending people. But Fuhrman's titillating, slur-laced tales of corrupt policing in Los Angeles combined with Simpson's international celebrity to force the issue into the face of media decision-makers across the country and around the world.

The result was a mixed bag of euphemisms and dashes with a healthy dose of real life. How, news organizations wondered, do we allow viewers, listeners and readers to feel the full impact of a racial slur while not perpetuating the injury that such words can still cause?

Like most ethical dilemmas, the paths to a conclusion were many.

'Absurd' euphemisms

"We changed our policy on it," said CNN Executive Producer David Bernknopf. "First we started by using it as 'the n word'." "Then we decided, 'Who are we hiding this from? If people know what we are talking about, let's say what people are saying and hope people are mature enough to deal with it.' "

The euphemisms began sounding absurd, Bernknopf said. "It started sounding like a joke. We were being a little paternalistic, a little protective. But it's silly to think that we could protect people from a word that's being used every day."

People hear the word and say the word often, Memphis Commercial Appeal Deputy Managing Editor Otis Sanford said. Why cover their ears and eyes now? The Commercial Appeal didn't. The newspaper decided to use the whole word, just as it did when local members of a fraternity hurled "nigger" at a black man while they beat him and his white friends earlier this year.

"The context has to be right," Sanford said. "We should report exactly what was said. No sense in dancing around and trying to be nice. Newspapers can't sanitize this world."

A powerful word

But the word has power. More, perhaps, than all of the profanity that gets into the newspaper and onto the airwaves with increasing frequency. "I know its power because I know history and how it would be used," Sanford said. "It was meant to degrade people."

It was just that power, Bernknopf said, that pushed it over the CNN threshold. It was the same power that kept it out of the newspaper and off the air elsewhere. That dichotomy defines the core of the debate.

Saying anything short of nigger, Bernknopf and others said, would not deliver the full impact -- the full truth -- of Fuhrman's words. Some have argued that it was the power of the word, all six letters, both syllables, that ultimately fixed the direction of the Simpson trial. To leave it out or disguise it in any way, journalists said, would be to eliminate a critical fact in the case.

"The words coming from (Fuhrman's) lips in any context was enough to hang him," said National Public Radio senior editor Greg Smith, whose organization used the tape without bleeping out the word. "He used it aggressively, over and over."

But even in a direct quote, coming solely from Mark Fuhrman's lips, "the word itself can still be offensive," Smith said.

What's the harm?

What is the harm beyond hurt feelings? And isn't the word in such common usage that its harm is minimized? Won't the word ultimately lose its power if the media airs it more frequently? The answer lies in language and history, said Antonio McDaniel, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

"The word has specific meaning," McDaniel said. "It is a solid rallying call for racists of various colors. It is a conceptualization of African people that others have perpetuated for years. There is a degradation of the position of black people in society. Use it as long as you appreciate the gravity of what's being said."

History belies the notion that using the word repeatedly will rob it of its destructive power, McDaniel said. Just as the most profane words in the language, though used frequently, remain offensive in most contexts, so "nigger" retains its most sinister meaning, he said.

"We need to place that word in the category with the worst words in the language," he said. "Just because you are desensitized to it doesn't mean that it loses its meaning."

Young people living in a culture saturated with violence from the neighborhood to the newspaper to prime-time programming see nothing wrong with violence, McDaniel said. Likewise, repeated use of "nigger" may make its use more common but no less devastating, he said.

"People are saying it in their living rooms, that's true," he said. "But that doesn't mean they want to read it on the front page of the New York Times."

A search for solutions

Thrust into long discussions and great angst by Fuhrman's words, journalists looked for alternatives that included the euphemisms and went beyond them.

The St. Petersburg Times in Florida and The State in Columbia, S.C., took the route of many newspapers when they decided to use "n-----" or other euphemisms for every reference to "nigger" that appeared in news stories about Fuhrman.

Times World Editor Chris Lavin said editors recognized that "the word causes pain to people and has a unique history." The paper, he said, had to ask itself, "Is there an overriding reason to cause pain to readers?"

At the State, News Editor Diane Frea said the paper now groups "nigger" with other obscenities, requiring top management approval before the word can appear in print.

"I talked to a colleague who said, 'Every time I see that word in print, it's a slap in my face,' " Frea said. "It's not the paper's place to be slapping our readers."

At television station KRON-TV in San Francisco, Managing Editor Lisa White said her station's decision developed through similar collaboration.

"The news director said we need to talk with some of the minority members of our newsroom and see how they feel about this," White said. "One of our anchors, Pam Moore, who is African American, said it would be very difficult for her to read the word, and we relied a lot on her view."

Anchors, the station decided, would not say the word. But managers decided that "we wouldn't make any attempt to censor, sound-wise, the words from the trial, to bleep out the word nigger from our tapes," White said.

"There wasn't much questioning of that at all."

The station also decided to allow graphics to display the whole word. Viewers could see the word "nigger" in a graphic, but what they heard from the anchor was "n-word."

While there was dissent in the newsroom from those who thought that the station was trying to "sanitize" the news, the decision was firm.

For news organizations grappling with this decision, context was everything. White said the "explosiveness" of the word in the context of an admittedly brutal police officer made its utterance more incendiary. But KRON did decide to say "nigger" when reporting on efforts to remove the novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from school reading lists.

That issue of context, White said, prevents the station from having a "blanket policy" regarding epithets.

Consider the harm, talk

Though journalists disagree on how the word should be handled, most say that it helps to talk -- as early and with as many people as possible. It helps to consider the potential harm, to understand the context, to decide whether it is more important to use the specific epithet or whether it will suffice to tell viewers, reader and listeners that someone used an obscene word.

Editors should set a high threshold for using the word, sociologist McDaniel said. "The editor should feel the pressure and weight of this decision as though he's doing something profoundly important, because he is," he said.

The decision should not necessarily produce a precedent, CNN's Bernknopf said, just a better process.

"If it came up tomorrow in relation to another case where the word nigger was used as part of the story we would get into a whole new conversation and start from ground zero again as to whether it was appropriate to use the word," he said.

"I don't think there is any precedent other than that we talk about the matter."