Self Censorship

I love being primarily a health care reporter. The potential to make my editors squirm shouldn't ever be underestimated.

This week I did this kind of trend story about treatments for incontinence; if you turn on a TV, sooner or later you'll see one of those ads about drugs to urinary incontinence (those "gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now" songs are SO annoying), and there's even surgeries that can help stress incontinence and urge incontinence.

And yes, there's such a thing as anal incontinence. Fairly self-explanatory.

So writing this story involved talking to a few physicians about the bladder, the anus, sphincters, bodily fluids, all sorts of things. It was kind of absurd. During each one, I could almost see myself from above, realizing just how crazy it was. Here I am, this journalist taking everything very seriously, and these physicians and PR people too, and part of me just wanted to stand up and shout, "Pee! Hahaha! Poop!"

Writing the story was so much harder than I thought it would be; I've written about things that I think make my male editor in chief cringe, like the cervix and sex and other stuff, but this one was wretched, and it's mostly because I have a horrible habit of cursing.

I didn't actually curse very much prior to my senior year of college and working at the student newspaper. I didn't have a problem with people cursing, and I said "damn" and "shit" and "ass," but I didn't use them too often, and I hardly ever said "fuck."

Then I became EIC and spent a whole year almost literally living in the newsroom around a lot of stressed out, potty-mouthed people, and within about two months I had the worst mouth of them all. I curse all the time now in casual conversation. I don't do it in interviews, but I do it around the office; I would never do it in front of my parents, but my sister and I use a lot of curses when we talk to each other. It just happens.

So writing this story felt so incredibly hard because I didn't want to say "accidents;" I wanted to say, "You shit your pants." I didn't want to talk about stress incontinence; I just wanted to explain that you'd sneeze and pee yourself a little bit. Using polite language just felt like it got in the way of conveying a clear message to readers. Surely our middle-aged, upper-income readers say "shit" when they're in their corner offices once in a while.

The story was the last one I wrote; I kept putting it off because it was hard to find a way to diplomatically talk about everything. I finally felt OK about it and sent it on to my editors, telling them it was probably the most awkward thing I'd ever written, and they agreed (although they said I did a good job of wording everything).

There's nothing like a little self censorship for the freedom of the press.