Letters to the Editor

No Signature Required
Ban on anonymous editorial letters may hinder public discourse

by Dwayne Steward
Features Writer
Perspectives
Thursday Oct 11, 2007

Newspaper editor Bill Reader perused a letter to the editor that had just arrived from a concerned citizen in his community. He was hooked by the writer’s passion. The writer seemed to be knowledgeable about the topic and had spent a great amount of time formulating his opinion. The letter could have shed new light on a social issue and added to the public discourse.

Reader came to the letter’s end — by that time having already decided how and when he planned to print it — but the letter signed off with, “Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen.” Because Reader’s newspaper had a decades-old policy against publishing unsigned letters, instead of the op-ed page, the letter landed in the trash can.

Reader, who encountered that situation as the opinion page editor at the Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania, cites research that says that may happen at 85 percent of newspapers in America due to the conundrum of anonymity associated with letter submissions. To be published, most submissions require a name. A long-held belief suggests that anonymous letters are sent out of malice or spite — a myth Reader is trying to dispel through his research — but one that has become the basis for the widely accepted policy requiring letter writers to be clearly identified.

Reader, now a faculty member at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, and two colleagues conducted a national survey in 2004 and found that 35 percent of those who have never submitted a letter would if they did not have to include their name. Another of his research projects, published in 2005, argues that the signature-required policy is based on editors’ false ideas of responsibility and democratic speech, and has no real foundation in journalism history or goals to promote public discourse.

“Having a name doesn’t change the responsibility,” Reader says. “When I was an editor, I had people give me letters with their names that I definitely couldn’t use. But I also got many letters that were brilliant from people who didn’t sign their names, which I also couldn’t use.”

Though cowardice may or may not be the underlying factor as to why some people want to write anonymous letters to the editor, it shouldn’t overshadow the value of providing public venues for frank discussion.

“There are all kinds of things we use anonymity for to get at the truth: suicide help lines, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, confession practices in the Catholic Church, closed door government meetings. Why not newspapers?” he asks.

In an article published in 2005 in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Reader challenged
editors to be more open-minded and look at the issue from a practical and historical perspective.

“Editors who reject anonymous letters … perpetuate another myth: that letters submitted anonymously have little potential value and are submitted by people who do not deserve to participate in public discourse. That, in turn, violates another ethical principle, that journalists should ‘give voice to the voiceless,’” he writes.

In six research projects to date, Reader has investigated the use of pre-written letters
by advocacy groups, public attitudes toward controversial letters, and National Public Radio’s goals for its on-air “comments from listeners” segments. Reader now is analyzing confrontational rhetoric in letters printed during times of major social unrest,
such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, the Red Scare, and most recently the gay marriage debate. He hopes to soon write a book about these and several other issues related to letters to the editor.

Reader believes that the letters to the editor section of newspapers illustrates the fluctuations in America’s personality over time. The letters provide insight into the country’s “history, public discourse, and identity,” Reader says. “Amidst rapid and continuous change within newspapers today and over the past few years, letters to the editor have been America’s only constant. So much can be learned from them.”