Dear editor,
Earlier this month, Leah Bjornson wrote an article titled “Bright ideas for shifting your body clock” — an article discussing one individual’s sleep-related work.
What bothered me about this article is that it directs readers to a service and even provided the website of the service. My issue stems from my experience of not being permitted to include web addresses of activist groups — such as No One Is Illegal — in my articles written for The Peak. What message does this convey of what our student newspaper stands for?
The organization I just referred to helps provide resources to combat racist immigration policies. They are an organization that represents the other side of “the story” — that is the side of immigrants who are imprisoned, who will never have their own voice heard in the media, and who are stripped of their rights. However, the newspaper would privilege the voices of paying advertisers over a manifestation of their own voice.
I’m not saying newspapers don’t need money to operate, and that accepting money for publishing advertisements doesn’t help make this possible; but I expect a university publication to acknowledge that to refuse to “advertise” the website of an activist organization while advertising services and products either in their articles or in ads themselves presents not just a contradiction, but a political choice.
Now to be fair, I have written and read many articles in The Peak advocating support for one cause or another. In that sense, The Peak is “political.” It still makes no sense, though, that the paper should shirk away from “advertising” a political cause while publishing the website of a service and also publishing actual advertisements.
Newspapers often make decisions like this to remain “objective.” There is a point, however, when one must stop being “objective” and start being fair; that the paper spreads the word of a service in this way, and not a cause working toward the goal of making real people’s lives better, is evidence of a severe perversion of the paper’s concept of its responsibility to the public.
I’m not saying The Peak has somehow perpetrated this in a conscious way, or that the editors individually lack a sense of responsibility; I would simply like to see the editors prepared to ask themselves — and others — the hard question of what message they are sending, and to aspire to be even better journalists than they already are.
Those of us saying objectivity is an important value must also agree that news and opinions media — some would say especially opinions media — play an important role in our democracy. Furthermore, it’s the news’ responsibility not just to convey the news, but to keep those who could potentially abuse their power in check.
To the ends of resolving this contradiction, I recommend that the editorial board of The Peak take the necessary steps to evaluate its political responsibility, and to put into place explicit, accessible guidelines as to what this responsibility is or is not. Does this paper want to be respected for entertainment value — or for daring to make a statement every now and then?
Sincerely,
Joseph Leivdal
SFU student
