IPSWICH — An apparent effort to avoid controversy over the current health care debate led employees at the Ipswich YMCA to stop showing Fox News Channel on televisions in the gym this week, after several members complained that it was promoting "hate speech."

But the decision, made while the director of the County Road facility was on vacation, has been reversed, said Jack Meany, executive director of the YMCA of the North Shore, which includes six facilities in Essex County.

"We're very careful as an organization to be apolitical," Meany said yesterday, shortly after learning of the situation. "The Y, at its best, is a big tent and everyone's welcome under it."

Ray Morley, an Ipswich selectman and the owner of a local bed-and-breakfast, said he was shocked when he went to the Y to work out and heard about the policy from an employee.

"They gave in to a group of liberals and censored the television," Morley, who calls himself a conservative, said.

What touched off the controversy was a letter signed by four Ipswich residents who are Y members, which appeared in the local weekly newspaper Thursday.

The letter cited the role of the Y in promoting health, then went on to criticize Fox News for its coverage of the health care debate and called on the Y to drop the channel from the lineup available in the gym.

"We remain concerned that the 'unhealthy' debate on health care and health insurance is being abetted by organizations such as our own Ipswich Y that, despite its own stated mission, perpetuates access to the airwaves and audiences of some of the most negative elements of the health care discussion," the letter, signed by Carolyn Britt, Nancy Popp, Maria Wilkins and Patrick Patterson, reads. "This is not a case of freedom of speech — this is a member organization with a stated mission that is directly opposed to the ranting that it imposes on members."

The letter appeared in the Ipswich Chronicle.

The gym has three flat-screen televisions, Meany said, and members who are working out can request that a staff member tune to a specific channel. There are headphone jacks at each piece of equipment, and members can plug in and hear the sound from any of the screens — or ignore them.

"If the Sox are playing, people want to watch the Sox," Meany said. "If the news is on, people want to watch the news."

The choices are usually not controversial — the Y doesn't subscribe to premium channels like HBO, and staff members are advised to use their discretion when it comes to sexual content or violence, particularly if there are younger people present.

But the Y doesn't make selections based on politics, Meany said — or, at least, isn't supposed to.

The four letter writers, who could not be reached yesterday afternoon, contend in their letter that it's impossible to ignore "scrolling headlines and angry expressions" on the televisions when they show Fox News. "Even if it were, the fact that the Ipswich Y is still supporting the airing of angry, nonsensical debate is still at odds with the organization's mission."

"If a survey were done and most members wanted Fox News on," the letter writers say, "then those of us who find this unacceptable would have to make new choices."

Meany said staffers "saw the letter and they thought, 'Let's quell this controversy.'"

But, "You don't want to get into a situation where one person's rights interfere with others," Meany said.

Bill Wasserman of Ipswich, a member of the Y's corporate board, called the situation "a tempest in a teapot."

"I don't have any objection to Fox News being shown," said Wasserman, a retired newspaper publisher who describes himself as liberal. "I think if there are three televisions and Fox is showing on one of them, there's not a problem."

Meany said he was told that employees had also stopped showing Fox's cable rival CNN, though a staffer there said that was only under consideration yesterday and that CNN was still being shown.

Morley, who said he watches both channels, said he was troubled by the thought that one complaint could lead to censorship.

"They took away our right of choice," Morley said. "This is how we begin to lose our freedoms."

A spokesman for Fox News Channel did not return a call for comment by yesterday's deadline.

Asked what he would say to the four members who wrote the letter, Meany said he'd want them to know that "we would like to provide people with a choice."

"If something is on there that you find objectionable, you don't plug in your headphones and you don't have to look at it."