His Non-Civic Duty
I’ve known Brasler since we shared a dorm in college. I recall a heart on a sleeve and enthusiasms a little too pure to survive the grinding harshness of a big-city news desk. But Brasler created his own news desk, and he’s been educating teenagers there for nearly 40 years. “The vision of journalism I give my students is so different from the mainstream,” he told me. “I have such a bigger picture of journalism than it’s usually practiced. I think a newspaper in particular isn’t just something that reports the facts. A great newspaper is two publications in one–the publication you see in print and the publication between the lines.
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“And the publication between the lines captures what a community is, what it believes about itself, and how the people treat each other–its fantasies, its hopes, its dreams, its faults. It’s much more of a living organism than ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ and ’20 people killed.’ That’s the biggest comment of the judges all the time–‘When we read you we think we visualize your school.’”
Yes, he said.
But Brasler knows that. “Censorship’s a major issue in high school journal-ism–it’s rampant,” he said. “But the part not told is that with freedom comes maturity and responsibility. I browbeat the students about being fair, accurate. I don’t edit the paper, but if I see libel I say it’s libel–and they take care of it.”
Satire comments on reality, which distinguishes it from the various forms of humor–the traditional TV sitcom is one–that comment on unreality and as a result are politically safe, if rarely funny. The reality at the root of the Texas situation was an incident in October 1999 in the town of Ponder. Christopher Beamon, a seventh grader assigned to write a Halloween paper, produced a riveting horror story that had him opening fire and shooting a couple of students and his teacher. The same teacher gave him an A and asked him to read the story aloud in class. Then he was arrested and, on the authority of district attorney Bruce Isaacks of Denton County and county judge Darlene Whitten, held five days in a juvenile facility.
What the court was looking for but didn’t find was the wink or playful elbow in the ribs that accompanies so much good-natured joshing. It was all a joke, but the Observer failed to signal clearly enough that it was all a joke. There was a serious lack of what the court called “obvious clues.” Farley’s piece appeared in the news section “with no disclaimer”; she used real names, put fictional statements in quotes, and wove in real-life details from the Christopher Beamon incident that inspired her satire. There was even a photograph of a little girl.
