To the Editor, Pres. von Arx and Dean Pellegrino:
The Society of Professional Journalists is concerned with the unfolding events at Fairfield University involving the student newspaper, The Mirror. Most recently, news of potential ethics violations and sexual harassment claims stemming from the controversial “He Said” column has garnered wider attention. We urge Fairfield University to refrain from penal action or other sanctions against the newspaper as a result of these claims. We realize that Fairfield is a private university, and that such institutions have wide control over student organizations and campus activities. However, as a respected institution of higher education cognizant of the value of education and debate, you should also recognize the need to protect and foster free speech. Punishing and drastically reordering an entire newspaper in the aftermath of an unpopular opinion does not send a healthy message about the value Fairfield places on learning.
Further, punishing an individual editor, adviser or columnist, whether in this situation or in the future, sends a similarly unfortunate message about how you treat freedom of speech, expression and the press.
Heavy-handed actions by Fairfield against The Mirror will make way for a dangerous trend to continue – that unpopular and perhaps misunderstood opinions can be silenced by administrative control. The silencing of free speech this produces would be deafening.
Rather than reacting by punishing The Mirror, we encourage the university community to learn and grow from this incident. What kinds of issues do students want addressed in the newspaper? What are the ethical obligations of a student newspaper? How can a media outlet such as a newspaper act as a public forum and foster positive debate and conversation? These are discussions we encourage the Fairfield community to have in the future.
Fortunately, the Society is comprised of thousands of individuals, many of whom belong to local chapters throughout the country. There is no student chapter at Fairfield, but there is a professional group in the area, the Connecticut Pro Chapter. If you would like to have more in-depth conversations about the role of news organizations on campus, we encourage you to involve the chapter. The chapter president is Cindy Simoneau. You may reach her at 203-400-0454 or csimoneau@ctspj.org.
Sincerely,
Kevin Smith (SPJ President), Neil Ralston (SPJ Vice President of Campus Chapter Affairs), Luther Turmelle (SPJ Region 1 Director), Cindy Simoneau (SPJ Conn. Chapter President)
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1) The mirror is not run by professional journalists. It is run by students who have been known to falsify information, misquote students, factuly, and staff, plagarize, and simply poorly express their thoughts.
2) “He Said” is not news – it is entertainment. The author must have found it funny, but the 3 editorial members who read all that is printed should have picked up on this. The administration did not seek to “punish” the Mirror or its contributors until student concerns were made known and documented.
You say this should be a learning experience. Perhaps you fail to see that it has been such. The students can learn that the administration does indeede support them when they make a stand. The Mirror should learn that they CAN NOT make a blanket generalization and think that the entire student body will agree with them, even if their ideas are expressed under the guise of “humor.”
Sounds like a teachable moment to me.
I disagree. A) The mirror is used by students as part of their portfolio when applying to larger media outlets, so yes the mirror is semi-professional B) By making that statement about the mirror you are making a blanket generalization. The mirror has had several very talented, very skilled writers come out of it. Yes quite often they have poorly written articles but people like Dan Stanzyck, Kristen McManus, Ryan Blair, Chris Haliskoe and others are very good writers. C) I don’t agree with whats written in the article at all. My point is that as a media outlet it should be free from censure, from anyone. HE said is intended for its entertainment value, right, got it. It is meant to provoke. Should the editors have used better discretion? yes, absolutely. But they didn’t and despite this fact, it shouldn’t be left up to the administration to say what can and can’t be written.
It boggles my mind that university students and staff are upset about the column. I wonder what their reaction would be if they read an unannotated version of “A modest proposal” by Johnathan swift. Look up satire, particularly Juvenalian satire.
The column in question has more potential value than most of what passes for journalism these days, and the politically correct are too blinded by their own dictatorial rage to see the worth in the column in question.
The Univeristy is the client. The Mirror is a seperate supplier (or so they claim – they apparently don’t get money from the students but the school pays for them somehow?). If the client is not happy with the product the Supplier is supplier (or the Producer is producing) they are able to go to another supplier (or producer) and get a new item. Oddly enough, we have that nice ablitily in America – if we don’t like something, we’re not forced to support it, with money or anything else, unless it’s decided by the government that we have to or there’s no other opinion.
Thankfully, this little “newspaper” doesn’t fit into either their catogories.