Dear Joseph,
Re: “Letter to the editor –
Sept. 30, 2013”
In your letter to the editor published two weeks ago, you discussed the unfairness of the inclusion of a site link in the article “Bright ideas for shifting your body clock,” claiming that by providing direction to a service The Peak was not upholding its policy of being impartial. Although your point is an important one, we, the news team, would like to take this opportunity to outline our policies and explain our actions.
You claimed that “it makes no sense” that the paper would refuse to advertise a political cause, while still publishing the website of a service, as well as actual advertisements. To us, it makes all the sense in the world.
We do not advertise political causes because, as independent and unbiased news reporters, we cannot reasonably align ourselves with anything political. Not only would this inhibit our news reporting, but could bite us in the future if we have to objectively report on a related event.
Providing web addresses of activist groups is different from giving students a link to a website which is the exclusive focus of a non-solicitous article, such as “Bright ideas.” The article links students to a research initiative by an SFU professor, not a cause, which happens to provide a free service.
While we won’t cover the existence of activist clubs, we can cover their effects or events, provided they are noteworthy and relevant. Your club is combating racist immigration policies? That’s not news. Your club held a rally of hundreds of people on campus for your cause? That’s news.
This week we’re running a story about a huge event that was organized in part by Sustainable SFU. While we don’t follow their activism with continuous stories, covering the event was right up our alley.
You also critique the idea of objectivity in news, stating that “there is a point . . . when one must stop being ‘objective,’ and start being fair.” In news, there is never a point to stop being objective. Objectivity is fairness. If we started aligning ourselves with causes that we personally agree with, we would be accused of not being fair to others. Once we stop being objective, our credibility is lost.
This is the very reason why The Peak wasn’t able to support the movement to close down SFU campuses for the Truth and Reconciliation Committee when we were approached to do so. However, we did cover the TRC’s closing event, the Walk for Reconciliation, which saw tens of thousands of people walking together through downtown Vancouver.
Our responsibility to the SFU public isn’t to educate them about your cause, at least not in the news section. It’s to provide unbiased, fair coverage of happenings on campus. We cannot champion causes, however obvious they may seem, because that would mean giving up that mantle.
Finally, you suggested that our editorial board take “necessary steps to evaluate its political responsibility, and to put into place explicit, accessible guidelines as to what our responsibility is or is not.” We’ve actually already done that. In our Submissions Policy, it’s stated that “The Peak will not publish content that is sexist, racist, or otherwise hateful or prejudiced.” This statement is published on the second page of every paper we print.
The news section does not have a political responsibility, beyond adhering to those guidelines, and doing our utmost to cover the political events on campus that affect students’ lives. It’s why we run coverage of SFSS and GSS elections, and it’s why we printed a guide to the most recent provincial election.
Our paper does make political statements — lots of them — but you won’t find them in the news section. For that, you’ll have to look in opinions, features, and humour.
Here’s a recommendation for you: please don’t equate us not heralding the causes you champion with The Peak not publishing political content, or not being fair.
Sincerely,
Alison Roach & Leah Bjornson
News Editor and
Associate News Editor
Thank you for your snide reply Alison. You have not done much to address my criticism which states that the news does in fact have a social responsibility – other than trumpeting news objectivity, again. I also never said that The Peak must educate people about “my” cause. This isn’t about “my” cause. Your passive aggressive response does little than muddy up the water – typical liberal reactionism to critique.
Objectivity is NOT fairness. Every solid media study on objectivity has in fact shown the opposite. Not all sides are made equal. I doubt very much that you have thought long and hard about the opposing viewpoint on objectivity – PS a nice statement on the second page does not fulfill your social responsibility.
I must say that I am aware of the work you have done for The Peak and I greatly respect much of your reporting. As far as I am concerned you are, and will continue to be, one of the best reporters this paper has. However I am incredibly disappointed by this response. My involvement as a contributor is slowly becoming a source of embarrassment.
Hello Joseph, I apologize if our response came across as snide, it was not meant to be so. While we appreciate your opinion on the role of social justice in media, I believe we have a fundamental difference of opinions in the role of the news section.
We have always worked to fulfill our mandate of objectively covering university politics, education news, SFU research, and student life. Within that purview, we have also tried to include issues that are relevant to students, such as environmental, economic, and social issues. We respect the role that opinion and advocacy plays in the newspaper, but we do not believe that that role extends to news. All that being said, your critique has definitely got us thinking about the foundations of our news section.
Thank you,
Alison and Leah
Why not have a “campus crawl” similar to briefs of club-related/activism-y/not huge news pieces but still interesting information about stuff going on on campus, regardless of scale? Not with an endorsement of what the groups are doing, just an objective portrayal of interesting issues being tackled, things discussed, and or being done with more detail than the Calendar makes possible (which, although I think we all love its jokes, I don’t think gets read as much as a more detailed but still micro-sized blurb would). This seems like an easy way to incorporate unbiased information about campus goings-on that would appeal to a more diverse audience.
way to completely miss (or ignore) every valid point brought up by the original letter, editors.
The Peak has Features, Opinions, and even Humour sections that encourage critical thinking, advocacy, and social responsibility from writers. Given that we’re a student newspaper, we tend to publish a lot of divisive viewpoints, strong opinions and heated political arguments — just not in the News section.
In Joseph’s original Letter to the Editor, he claimed that objectivity does not equate fairness, and in his comment on the Editors’ response, he argued that studies have supported this claim. However, without objectivity, News stories essentially devolve into informative Opinions pieces, angling and obscuring events in order to support the personal agenda of a given reporter. If these studies he mentions are accurate, who is to say that articles advocating for a particular argument will be any more “fair”?
The reason that the paper devotes a section to unbiased reporting is in order to give SFU students information that matters to them without biases that could obscure the finer details and blur the bigger picture. Like any of us, Alison and Leah have biases of their own, but their duty as news writers is to minimize these biases as much as possible in their reportage, and to remain transparent observers.
Though Joseph is entitled to his opinion that News should have a social responsibility to advocate for marginalized viewpoints and making “statements”, any attempt to do so would doubtlessly ostracize readers of The Peak who do not share the views expressed. The Peak already allots plenty of space for polarizing viewpoints, debates and arguments, most of which tend to advocate for marginalized groups — the News is meant to tell the objective, neutral and balanced truth, and to give readers the freedom to form their own opinions on subject matter that pertains to SFU student life. This is the Editors’ responsibility to the public: to be inclusive to as many readers as possible, and to tell each and every side of any given story.