[133] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
the Tech & Re: Conjunctivitis
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Fri Apr 20 17:00:29 2001
Message-Id: <200104202100.RAA22841@minerva.mit.edu>
To: Samuel Andrew Hires <bugpowdr@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 20 Apr 2001 04:54:52 EDT."
<p04310102b705a29d0f4d@[18.237.0.33]>
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Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:00:07 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
>
> Aimee Smith writes the worst opinion column in the tech since
> I have read. Worse then my HS paper, 5 times worse the Stacy Blaugh,
> I have never ever met anyone that agrees with her fucked up,
> sensationalist perspective...
Don't worry, Sammy, you have the likes of Catherine Santini and Matt Craighead
to more than balance me out on the "right-wing"....
and I am sure your writing criticism is in hot demand by all... and I do
live solely for the approval of young men like yourself...
But you raise an excellent topic, The Tech. I wonder why the tech failed
to print the following letter and also a recent column on FTAA? Of
course there is always media bias, and free speech means free to
approach the censorship pen of the editorial board of the respective
media outlet, but the more we KNOW about that bias, the better we
can read between the lines...
---letter than was NOT printed, yet a giant cartoon (at least 4x the size
normally used) did appear, so the old "space constraints" line isn't
so convincing--------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Eds,
While following your own editorial guidelines may not always be easy,
I found
it revealing to explore your most recent exeption in contrast to what you
refused to print a month ago. The article that you chose *not* to print, due
to strict adherence to journalistic guidelines of conflict of interest, was an
informational piece about the fact that a nationally known speaker on
date-rape, Katy Koestner, was coming to campus on Feb 15. The article gave
background about the speaker as well as the week long series of events about
safety in relationships. The editors apparently found out that the article's
author was involved with a loose coalition that was organizing the events and
was therefore deemed biased. Rules are rules, and I understand the concern.
You could have made up for that necessary, yet difficult decision by sending
an
uninvolved reporter to cover her talk. Perhaps it slipped through the cracks.
And besides, as some of your editors told me, you felt you had already "done
enough" on that topic. I accept that exercising editorial control is not
censorship.
Yet, when it comes to protecting your own interests as an editorial
board, the strict adherence becomes quite flexible. The article "Students
Protest Advertisement By Stealing Brown Newspapers" in last Tuesday's Tech was
written by members of one of the two parties in the controversy, The Brown
Daily Herald (BDH) staff. The controversy is between the BDH and students
participating in civil disobedience (CD) to protest the papers editorial
choice (or lack thereof as the all-white editorial staff claims) to print a
racist add by a wealthy hate-mongerer who is not even a member of the Brown
community. It is very hard to get the view of the students who felt angered
enough to resort to CD tactics because, surprise surprise, they refused to
comment to a representative of the offending organization. The fact that you
chose to ignore the BDH staff's conflict of interest exposes a tiny glimpse of
the structural bias of the Tech editorial board, also a predominantly white as
well as predominantly male organization. In view of this example, the refusal
to print the article about Katy Koestner alluded to above, blatantly suggests
that the Tech editors are quite prepared to misuse their power and cloak it by
some feigned dedication to their rather flexible form of "journalistic
integrity".
Anton Van der Ven
