The Backstory: Which swear words are OK? Stuff's policy on profanity

Thursday, 27 May 2021

Sophie Smith shared a video now going viral on social media that captured 2-year-old daughter Ivy's expletive-laden reaction to seeing a goat her front yard.

The Backstory is an occasional column from Stuff Editor in Chief Patrick Crewdson offering behind-the-scenes insight into stories and newsroom decisions. You can get The Backstory as an email newsletter.

When the adorable toddler Ivy went viral for exclaiming, “It’s a f…ing goat!”, many people thought a 2-year-old swearing was hilarious.

But that’s not a universal reaction. Her mother, Sophie Smith, told Stuff this week of the flak she copped as a parent after her daughter’s reaction to spotting a stray goat in her yard was shared on social media.

The same spectrum of views is visible whenever we use obscene language in stories on Stuff. To some people, profanity is part of the rich fabric of human expression, and swear words may be used as freely as punctuation. To others, those words carry an offensive payload and have no place in polite society.

Journalists confront this when an interviewee gives us a juicy quote that wouldn’t have the same impact censored. Consider Sir Edmund Hillary’s famous reaction to conquering Everest. It loses its sentiments of exhilaration and exhaustion when rendered as, “We knocked the b…… off.”

A choice phrase can add impact, character or drama. Or, it can just offend.

Each media outlet sets its own style for which naughty words it will publish or broadcast. For Stuff, the entry on profanity in our Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics says:

Stuff reaches a broad and diverse audience. Our content should be suitable for a wide range of ages and sensibilities, which means avoiding profanity and obscene language.

Unless profanity is integral to the meaning or impact of a quote or phrase, the best option is usually to omit it. When profanities are used, they should be censored with an audible bleep in videos and ellipses in text. Profanities should not be used in headlines, intros, social posts or video captions, even censored.

Mild profanities that are broadly accepted by New Zealanders can be used uncensored if they add to the meaning or impact of a story, but in most circumstances should still be avoided in headlines, intros, social posts and video captions.

We take this stance – admittedly, quite a conservative stance – because Stuff is read everywhere from schools to retirement villages, and in a diverse range of ethnic and religious communities.

In search of general acceptability, we’ve taken our cue from the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s research into which words New Zealanders find the most offensive.

But our policy is a guide, not an immutable law, and editors are free to vary our style if the story demands it.

Some readers (and some Stuff staff) argue we should relax our standards. They say society has loosened up and – to borrow a colleague’s phrase – we’re being “unnecessarily coy” when we edit swear words out of stories, or neuter them by replacing letters with dots.

Others will sternly tell us to wash our keyboards out with soap whenever bad language appears in a story.

Here’s one for the 90s kids. Compact discs containing naughty language used to carry one of these labels. Maybe they still do, but who buys CDs now?

The BSA’s fascinating research shows certain obscenities – such as religious references – appear to be losing their sting.

Only 31 per cent of Kiwis surveyed considered s… to be totally acceptable in all scenarios, making it less offensive than Hillary’s b…… on 24 per cent.

The F-word remains an A-grade obscenity, with only 15 per cent willing to accept it in any situation.

So while it might be funny when Ivy the toddler spots a “a f…ing goat”, you’re unlikely to see that word uncensored on Stuff soon.

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