Western Herald Website Censored?
The Western Herald ran a story about the parking lot complaints that Dustin and I have been organizing. The article did a great job of expressing how many students are in support of our efforts and the final plans for our effort, something that other local media hasn’t really covered.
When we went to add a link to the article to the press section of the greenspace website, we discovered that the online edition of the Herald omitted the article, even though the rest of the front page articles were there. The negative editorial about the lot was featured, and listed as the most popular article.
I called up the office and spoke to someone who said they would talk to the proper people about the omission. I also left a quick email for the web editor. Today the article is still not up, so I find it hard to believe that this is a simple mistake on their part.
If the Herald is allowing WMU to control them by not letting them post articles critical of the administration (which would show up on the page all students use to access online resources from WMU), then they obviously do not show the journalistic integrity that should be taught to all of the Journalism majors at our university.
UPDATE: The Herald is going to be putting it up online. They claim it was an honest mistake.
Steve Z. Says :
I love how the picture they used next to an article starting with “two Western Michigan University students” has Corrin clearly wearing an Eastern sweatshirt front and center. Seriously though, if the administration did censor the Herald’s website that, as you pointed out, is the very height of hypocrisy. If you want your journalism program to have any credibility you cannot prevent the distribution of a factually correct story. The constitutional right to publish any non-libelous article was entrenched into American democracy in 1735 with the acquittal of John Peter Zenger. Keep posting on the situation and keep fighting the good fight on both fronts.
1735 is the correct year, the lawyers cited the unwritten British constitution. And what the hell did they build anyway? You can’t get much of a structure for $120,000.
2007-10-14 01:52 Permalink