AMY GOODMAN: Allen Ginsberg has not been the only poet to support Mumia Abu-Jamal. In our previous segment, we were talking with University of Massachusetts professor and poet Martín Espada, like Mumia Abu-Jamal before him, Martín Espada had been describing how his own words were banned from the airwaves of National Public Radio. Producers at All Things Considered asked him in April to write a poem on a newsworthy topic, a kind of news story in the form of a poem. He chose, fatefully, to write about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. But NPR, which canceled a series of commentaries from Mumia Abu-Jamal only three years ago, refused to air Espada’s poem, called “Another Nameless Prostitute Says the Man Is Innocent.” Kathy Scott, the director of communications for NPR, told reporters it was not prudent journalism to air a poem [about] Mumia.

Martín Espada, here you are, a man who’s won the American Book Award. You’ve gotten a great deal of attention and acclaim. You were asked by NPR to do the poem, though not on specifically this topic. Were you surprised by the censorship?

MARTÍN ESPADA: Well, I leave that kind of conclusion to my readers and my listeners. I felt that the poem was complex, that the poem is not simply a polemic or propagandistic piece. It’s not what I think of as a commentary. If it were, then I would not bother with images, metaphors, similes, assonance, alliteration, oxymoron, line breaks, stanza breaks, and all the other poetic devices at work here. It’s a work of art. At least it’s an attempt at a work of art. And I think censoring art is dangerous business. And certainly, once we begin to censor art, where do we stop? And furthermore, what makes the decision by the people at All Things Considered to censor this work of art any different from those who would censor Robert Mapplethorpe or other controversial artists in recent history? It’s a very, very dangerous thing, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: So, where do you go from here? Would you consider suing National Public Radio? But, of course, if you do, then they wouldn’t allow you to share your poems on the airwaves, because they’d say you’re in litigation.

MARTÍN ESPADA: Well, first of all, being a lawyer, I’m well aware of the time, money, energy and grief involved in litigation. And this is not how I think about the poem or the controversy. In fact, I’d be interested to see how Mumia’s litigation turns out, because if his First Amendment rights are vindicated, then perhaps I would have a legal claim. But even then, I’m not sure that I would pursue it. To me, that’s not quite the issue.

I understand certainly why Mumia has filed his lawsuit, and he, to me, clearly has a breach of contract claim. The First Amendment claim he’s making is very interesting, because it involved defining National Public Radio as, essentially, a quasi-governmental agency, since it receives government funding and is subjected to the pressure of government officials, such as Senator Bob Dole, who was vociferous when NPR intended to air Mumia’s commentaries, and Dole’s pressure was instrumental in those commentaries being canceled. Now, if it is determined by the court that NPR is a quasi-governmental agency, then there would be some state action here in terms of censorship, and NPR would be subjected to the strictures of the First Amendment. That remains to be seen. I think this is certainly an open question.

But someone — as another attorney with the ACLU here pointed out to me, “Well, if he has a claim and it turns out to be valid, maybe you do, too.” But I want to reiterate, I think that that’s not — that’s not how I’m approaching this. I’m approaching this from the perspective of a poet who has a poem here that’s been censored. And, you know, I can’t express — in fact, words cannot articulate for me how that feels to have been censored so openly.

You know, I’m not naive. I am fully aware of the fact that editorial decisions are made on a political basis every day. But rarely is the curtain lifted so that we can actually see the machinery at work. And so, it feels very strange. It also feels strange because I would expect that this could happen with ABC, NBC, mainstream corporate media, but when so-called alternative media censors, or what we think of as alternative media censors, then the impact is devastating, I think, and not simply in terms of my own situation, but in terms of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is the person, I hasten to point out, who has the most to lose in this situation.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting that NPR uses the excuse of it’s in litigation, this time with Mumia Abu-Jamal, because when Pacifica decided to air the latest commentaries of Mumia Abu-Jamal, this a few years after — and National Public Radio commissioned the commentaries, but at the last second, you know, pulled them when they got tremendous pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police. When Pacifica said that they would air them and also actually asked for the commentaries, that they have locked away in a safe, since they didn’t want to air them, we say, “Why not let Pacifica air them?” they also gave the reason of it’s in litigation. But I think that was more about their — that was more about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case in court being in litigation, his own case, you know, being on death row. And, of course, it seems that the only way that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case will not be in litigation is if he’s executed. That’s the only time the litigation will end.

MARTÍN ESPADA: Well, certainly, there is an ominous portent here. You know, it has been put to the staff of All Things Considered that perhaps that’s what they’re waiting for. And I believe it was Dennis Bernstein of KPFA who asked them, “Would you air this poem as Mumia’s obituary?” And he did not receive an answer.

But consider what this policy implies. Well, first, they censor Mumia by refusing to air the commentaries. Then he exercises his First Amendment right to try and remedy that violation by going to court. And then NPR compounds that violation of his freedom of expression by refusing to allow others to comment on his behalf. Consider the chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights. It’s striking. It’s very striking and sad. And I want to point out here that I think this is not only sad for Mumia Abu-Jamal or for a poet who can’t get his poem on All Things Considered, it’s sad for NPR. It’s sad because I think that NPR could be so much more. And I believe, in this particular situation, the people there have lost all sense of perspective or proportion. And when fear motivates the coverage of the news, then we censor ourselves, and that’s the most troubling censorship of all.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting that they also say that this is not how they wanted to revisit Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case, with your poem, because that suggests that they haven’t covered it since they basically impounded his commentaries and put them in a safe. But there have been a number of developments in the case since then, so this is not the way they’re revisiting the case. Presumably, they’ve been covering his case as he went to court, as the witnesses came forward, or perhaps they’re not.

MARTÍN ESPADA: Well, I am aware of a couple of instances where they — where NPR has aired news reports, what they would think of as hard news, concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal, since the controversy over his censored commentaries. Everyone who’s heard those reports — I have not — pointed out to me that they were extremely negative in character. They were, in effect, harsh criticisms of Mumia’s position, albeit characterized as hard news.

What was different about my poem is that it’s a poem very sympathetic to Mumia, where the politics are very clear in that regard. And I wonder — one of the things that occurred to me is, if this poem had been a poem questioning his position or a poem which took no position on his situation, would they have aired it? Very possibly. You know, if it’s a poem which would have cast doubt on his claims of innocence, would they have put it on the air? Perhaps they would. It seems as if that may have been a factor in deciding not to air this poem.

AMY GOODMAN: Martín Espada, I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened with Democracy Now! when we tried to air the commentaries of Mumia Abu-Jamal. We did air them, but all the public radio stations owned by Temple University, a dozen of them in Pennsylvania, dropped us, because Temple said it was inappropriate to air Mumia Abu-Jamal’s voice. But they cited NPR as precedent, saying if it’s inappropriate for NPR, it’s inappropriate for us. So the ramifications of this kind of censorship go beyond NPR. It sets an example for stations around the country, for media around the country, not to mention a message to journalists and artists, that this is not the kind of thing you cover if you want the imprimatur or the avenue of NPR.

MARTÍN ESPADA: Absolutely. Censorship is cancerous. The cancerous cells of censorship multiply far beyond anything we would expect, and they eat away at the body we call the media.

AMY GOODMAN: Martín Espada, we want to thank you very much for joining us, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts. He’s been called the Latino poet of his generation. His fifth book of poetry, Imagine the Angels of Bread, won the American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. We’ll be back in a minute.