During the history-making events that occurred at the university last week, we did the right thing and covered both sides.
When running a newspaper, it is imperative that writers not go flocking only to the side that they agree with. If news writers only wrote about the topics they agreed with, the state of media would be nothing but bias-riddled slop.
When trying to cover events fairly, we have to consider how events happen and what “caused” the news in the first place.
The video of a student attempting to hold a sign in protest while posing for a photo with the university president made its’ rounds on social media last week – and was posted on The Globe’s Instagram page for news purposes.
What is not posted on our Instagram page is the fact that the video was posted by someone who held a practicum position with The Globe last semester, but had not submitted anything this semester.
This individual was personally asked by the student protester to film the interraction between Marlin Collingwood and the university president. Their act of filming the interraction was done as a friend to the protester and not as a representitive of the student newspaper.
Because this individual represented student media, it is important to note that duping a potential source to do something potentially newsworthy is not ethical in any way. As journalists, we have a responsibility to report on news accurately and fairly without fabrication.
When someone becomes part of the story and is not just covering the news, it is completely unwise to use anything they make. This is a legitimate ethical concern, which is why we agreed as a staff to not use content by a photographer that ultimately became part of the story.
On the other side of the equation, this person also took many photos at the protest which were objectively very good. Our editorial team spoke extensively about whether or not we should have ethically printed them.
Although the situation raised ethical issues, we do not want to blame the person who took the photos or “burn” them for what happened.
At the end of the day, nobody is perfect. This person should not get a ton of flak for what happened, and are welcome to contribute to The Globe as a staffer in the future.