ON CAMPUS
campusreview.com.au
State of the fourth estate
Is news for truth or political gain?
By Wade Zaglas
L
ong known as the Fourth Estate for
its commitment to objectivity and
balance, journalism has come under
attack at two US universities after protests
were reported by student newspapers.
According to several experts, the
protests, which happened at Northwestern
and Harvard Universities, make it clear
“there is a growing generational preference
for prioritising political goals over objective
truth and balance”.
At both universities, student journalists
came under attack for endeavouring
to report the protests objectively rather
than paying more attention to the
protestors’ causes.
Several experts believe such attacks
reflect a generation that believes the
news media are “politically slanted” and
that are sceptical about concepts such as
objectivity, truth and free speech.
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Kathleen Culver, director of the Center
for Journalism Ethics at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, said: “The idea is not
that news journalism is supposed to be
free, fair and independent – it should be
on my side.
“And I think that’s highly problematic
within a democracy,” she told Times
Education.
Although a sceptical view of news has
been widely studied in recent years –
particularly in the era of Trump and ‘fake
news’ – the newspaper revolt at both
universities show that it has infiltrated even
the highly educated.
At Harvard, the student council and
hundreds of community members
lambasted its student newspaper, The
Harvard Crimson, for asking a government
agency – Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) – to comment on a
protest against it. The protest, organised
by a group called Act on a Dream,
called for the abolition of the ICE. The
Washington Post reported that “this
standard editorial practice” of requesting
comment was excoriated by the group
in an online petition, saying it showed
“cultural insensitivity” and ignored the ICE’s
record of “surveilling and retaliating against
activists”.
Meanwhile, Northwestern University’s
student newspaper The Daily Northwestern
apologised after publishing photos
of a protest against former Trump
administration attorney-general Jeff
Sessions. The newspaper was also heavily
criticised for “how they contacted some
participants [of the protest] for comment”.
Professional journalists criticised
the apology, seeing it as pandering to
particular political views.
More than 1000 signatories scolded
Harvard’s Crimson, including Aaron Van
Neste, a doctoral candidate at Harvard. He
wrote that the newspaper should “consider
the ethics of their alleged neutrality in the
face of atrocities committed by [the ICE]”.
Patricia Manos, a doctoral student in art,
wrote that calling the ICE for comment
would alert “them to the presence of
undocumented students and workers
on campus”.
The editors of the Crimson, however,
said they “respected” the protestors and
community members’ concerns and
provided no details of the participants
to the ICE. The editors of the student
newspaper later met with critics,
refusing their thinly veiled demands to
stop contacting people with different
political views.
Universities are seen as a bulwark
against attacks on the truth and differing
perspectives, and Culver covers this
in a media law unit she teaches at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. For
instance, she challenges students to
consider other perspectives by asking
them to argue against their preferred
political views on issues including
abortion. She believes other universities
could be conducting similar exercises
to challenge their students to consider
alternative views.
However, Matthew Baum, professor
of global communications at Harvard
Kennedy School, is sceptical, arguing that
students normally arrive on campus with a
“pretty well formed” set of values.
“I cannot imagine a course
that a university could teach that would
alter this perspective fundamentally,”
he said. ■