In a letter published on Dec. 16, a former elected school board member supporting then-President-elect Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was backed by “anti-Christian, anti-U.S. globalists” led by George Soros, a wealthy businessman who was described as a “Rothschild banker.”
Many readers called the letter anti-Semitic in its description of Soros and his supposed control of Clinton and then-President Barack Obama in a way that raised questions of Jews’ loyalty to their country and propagated international banking conspiracy “theories” that have been a staple of anti-Semitic writings across history.
We said in an editorial published on Dec. 30 that although we believed the letter was thinly disguised anti-Semitism our readers were better served by confronting ignorant or hateful ideas.
We now realize we were wrong and apologize for the pain the letter’s publication caused.
Readers who objected to our decision to publish the letter cited the pain suffered by Jews across the centuries based on vicious falsehoods such as those referred to in the letter.
Many of those who called or wrote, or with whom we met personally, recalled the horrors of the Holocaust, still fresh in their minds either through personal experience or the experiences of friends and family. The author of this editorial — the child of a Holocaust survivor and named after a grandfather murdered at Auschwitz — understands this all too well.
Some who disagreed with the publication of the letter also said the rhetoric during the past election season and the national rise in hate crimes since the election added to their concerns.
We are committed to not adding to those concerns. We will not publish letters in the future that are inflammatory like the one published on Dec. 16.
The decision on where to draw the line in publishing letters to the editor is an admittedly subjective one that has bedeviled daily and weekly newspapers since the nation’s founding.
As we said in December, we are believers in the marketplace of ideas that is at the heart of our First Amendment and, as such, our newspapers offer a forum to our readers that grants them latitude in what they say and what subjects they address.
This has also led to some difficult decisions about what to publish and what not to publish.
This is not to rationalize or equivocate about our responsibilities. Just to acknowledge the care that is needed to allow a robust debate to continue while not further fueling the flames of bigotry and intolerance.
In the instance of the December letter, we now recognize we made a serious error in not taking proper account of the potential harm certain ideas can cause, as well as the depth of the community’s feelings. We express our profound sadness for the discomfort this may have caused.
We very much appreciate the dialogue that we have had with many members of our community. It will help us better navigate these difficult choices in the future.
Now, more than ever, this nation and this community is in need of a vibrant press.
Although we are the first to admit that we make mistakes, we are proud to be part of that great tradition.
