I was surprised when I looked at the Spectrum's article "SA Scales Back Communication with Campus Media" on Wednesday, Sept 3, 2003, and found that SA had changed its interview policy, insisting that they take questions in the form of e-mail instead of granting face-to-face interviews. This was surprising because I didn't think that SA could do anything more foolish than what it's tried to do in the past - give themselves tuition waivers, pull all it's funding from Sub-board, etc. - but I guess I have been proven wrong.
A person can only assume one of two reasons behind an organization's decision to take this approach. First, the organization and its members have been misquoted constantly and frequently, and therefore barring personal interviews will prevent such misquotes from appearing in print. Alternatively, the organization wants to have total control over what information makes it into the hands of the students, and how that information is delivered.
It seems fairly obvious, just by looking at the policy, that the first reason does not apply here. If it did, SA would bar all face-to-face interviews, yet it's been clearly stated that "the policy will apply to all campus publications except for Visions, the SA newsletter." Certainly people at Visions are just as capable of misquoting people as are the students who write the articles for The Spectrum, so why the difference? Because SA controls Visions and therefore can edit the content at will, which I'm sure it does.
So what are the implications of this new policy? The Spectrum has already demonstrated one - the incredible difficulty in getting timely answers to questions: "We've been waiting for four days for answers that would have taken 20 minutes," said Managing Editor George Zornick in the article. This would have been a big problem during the early days of the Sub-Board/SA struggle. Most students would have known nothing about it before they left for summer had The Spectrum not broken the news.
Secondly, any "breaking" SA news will likely come to us via Visions, a magazine which has proven to be inadequate in the field of "investigative" and "unbiased" reporting. (See the article late last semester regarding the spending of FSA, as well as this semester's first issue's take on the Sub-Board/SA struggle). Neither of these articles approached anything that one could call "journalism;" both articles were thoroughly filtered through SA and had SA's distinct spin on things. Visions should not be a reporting magazine. Visions should be exactly what it's called: a newsletter. Newsletters follow a very defined format, by giving updates on current events and discussing groups or points of interest for the student body; they don't do 'reporting'.
George Pape and the others on the executive board need to understand that when they say stupid things or make rash decisions, someone will be there to catch them. The Spectrum has often served that purpose for the students, and it should continue to do so. Therefore, keeping SA responsible to reporters with The Spectrum, Generation magazine or any other student publication is vital to the student body. This is because SA has control over so much money and has so much influence on our campus.
The information about SA and its activities should properly go to The Spectrum, where the editorial board may then make critical comments as they see fit. SA's attempt to control criticism and bad press by twisting the faucet of information until it becomes a weak, unreliable drip is unacceptable.
