"The University of Virginia’s student-run newspaper is among 14 recipients of the Jefferson Muzzles — a dubious honor bestowed to entities that are deemed to have acted counter to the principles of free speech.

Sponsored by the Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, this year’s crop of the Jefferson Muzzles include broadcasters CBS Radio and MSNBC, the Texas State Democratic Party, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

The 2008 recipients will be announced today. One of the “winners,” the Federal Communications Commission, will receive a “Lifetime Muzzle” for decades of what the Jefferson Center considers to be inconsistent regulation of “indecency” on the nation’s airwaves, which has led to a “profound chilling effect” on broadcasters.

For example, more than 150 TV stations declined to air the World War II film “Saving Private Ryan” out of fear that the FCC would levy heavy fines for the movie’s violent imagery and battlefield swear words. Though the FCC did not hit any stations with fines in that case, it did condemn an “NYPD Blue” episode about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that featured swear words. A call to the FCC for comment was not returned.

In the Muzzles’ 17-year history, there has been only one other “Lifetime Muzzle” recipient: Rudy Giuliani in 1999, for what the center called at the time an ongoing pattern of stifling of speech and the press as mayor of New York City.

This year’s sole local recipient was the 2007 managing board of UVa’s student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily. The students were selected because Cav Daily editors forced the resignation of cartoonist Grant Woolard after his comic strip “Quirksmith” sparked a sit-in protest of 200 students outside the paper’s newsroom last fall. Woolard’s strip, titled “Ethiopian Food Fight,” depicted nearly naked and emaciated African men fighting each other with sticks, pillows, furniture and other items.

“They forced a cartoonist out of his position essentially because people were offended,” said Robert O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center and a former UVa president. “I hate to fault student editors and I hate to fault a student newspaper. But they reviewed the cartoon. They published the cartoon. And then when there’s an outrage, the sacrificial party is the cartoonist.”

Herb Ladley, a former UVa student who was the Cav Daily’s editor in chief during the brouhaha, wrote in an e-mail that he believes it is a cheap shot for the Thomas Jefferson Center to take aim at a newspaper operated entirely by hardworking students.

“It shows the utter frivolity of an organization that claims to speak for Thomas Jefferson that they would go after a college newspaper and a group of students who work hard every single day to do something productive,” he said. “It is further disconcerting that they would focus on speech, in this case a cartoon, that had no intrinsic value. The Cavalier Daily promotes freedom of expression every day, as a sounding board for issues of importance of students. That’s free speech in practice, and if the Thomas Jefferson Center were serious, they would recognize its value.”

O’Neil likened the Cavalier Daily case to the firing of radio host Don Imus by CBS Radio and MSNBC after Imus made derogatory and racially insensitive comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The broadcasters knew Imus had a tendency to be offensive, O’Neil said, but when offended people complained, they threw him under the bus. In both the Imus and Cavalier Daily cases, O’Neil said, organizations that benefit each day from the privileges included in the First Amendment did not live up to its ideals.

Others getting Muzzles:
— The Texas State Democratic Party, for refusing to allow presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to appear on the state’s primary ballot because Kucinich would not sign a pledge promising to “fully support” the party’s eventual nominee.
— The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for staging a faux news conference about FEMA’s assistance during California wildfires. FEMA employees posed as reporters and asked fawning questions, while legitimate journalists were given only 15 minutes of notice before it began.
— For initially denying a personalized license plate that read “GETOSAMA,” the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.
— Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, for introducing a bill that would require the FCC to develop a policy stating that the broadcast of a single word or image — regardless of context — may be considered indecent and punishable.
— A judge in Lancaster County, Neb., Jeffre Cheuvront, for barring the use of the words “rape,” “victim,” “assailant,” “sexual assault kit” and “sexual assault examiner” by witnesses, including the victim, during a sexual assault trial.
— Two school officials in Burlington, Conn. — Lewis Mills High School Principal Karissa Niehoff and Region 10 Superintendent Paula Schwartz — for barring a student from running for class office because she posted critical comments about school officials on a blog.
— The Scranton, Pa., Police Department, for charging a woman with disorderly conduct after she screamed obscenities at an overflowing toilet inside her own home.
— The administration of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, for finding a professor guilty of harassment and for placing a monitor in his classroom after the 50-year-veteran professor explained to his class that Mexican migrant workers are sometimes pejoratively called “wetbacks.”
— The president of Valdosta State University in Georgia, Ronald M. Zaccari, for expelling a student who protested the school’s construction of two parking garages by writing a letter to the editor of the school newspaper, posting fliers, contacting members of the state Board of Regents and writing about it on Facebook.com.
— U.S. Attorney Donald Washington and/or acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Baker, for charging an 18-year-old man in Jena, La., with federal hate crime charges for hanging nooses in the back of his pickup truck during a civil rights march.
— Finally, Sarpy County, Neb., Attorney L. Kenneth Polikov, for filing charges of flag mutilation and negligent child abuse against a protester at a military funeral. The defendant’s son, a minor, placed a U.S. flag on the ground and stood on it during the protest.

The Jefferson Muzzles, O’Neil said, are intended to both entertain and enlighten people about the need for free speech protections. O’Neil said he also hopes they encourage potential censors across the country to think twice before muzzling speech.

“At the very least, we hope that they stop the people named from doing the same thing again,” he said. “School administrators and others in responsible positions are probably at least vaguely aware of this criticism and hopefully they’ll be discouraged from doing similar things.” " (Brian McNeill, The Daily Progress, April 8, 2008)