Every so often, a particularly contentious issue arises in our coverage and the comments section of the Daily's website is flooded with angry criticisms assailing the quality of our reporting.
And that is too often where the conversation ends. This presents a frustrating disconnect between on-campus media and their readership. At Tufts, readers can sound off through anonymous online message boards. They can even write letters to the editor. But readers have traditionally lacked a means of communicating directly with the editors of their publications, of engaging in a dialogue with them. In other words, readers had the tools to criticize campus media, but they lacked a way of actually holding the publications accountable.
Enter the public editor, a position created three years ago that falls under the Media Advocacy Board (MAB), the association of student media organizations at Tufts (the Daily is loosely affiliated but not a member).
The public editor acts as an ombudsman between the readership and campus media. The position was created to provide an objective representative for the student body, someone who can do more than merely comment on the issues that are covered in the Daily, The Tufts Observer and all the other media outlets on campus. The public editor is supposed to analyze the quality of journalism of on-campus publications on behalf of the readership, to use his or her knowledge of journalistic principles to suggest how campus media can better serve its audience.
The MAB will soon be selecting a new public editor, and we believe it is important to establish concrete guidelines for what kind of commentary should and should not fall within the scope of his or her duties.
It is crucial that the public editor have a great deal of knowledge about the ethics of reporting. He or she should be analyzing campus dialogue through the lens of his or her own journalistic expertise. The public editor's role is to analyze, not to give a personal opinion.
Consider some of the work of this year's public editor, graduating senior Jacob Kreimer. In his Dec. 2 op-ed in the Daily, "Stranded on the moral high ground," Kreimer remarks that the Daily's policy of printing uncaptioned photos of destruction in Israel alongside op-eds on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could improperly impact how readers perceive the writing.
Kreimer's observation is astute: The Daily's photo policy demonstrates just one of many areas where journalists can accidentally introduce bias into conversations in which we should remain objective. Reporters have a great deal of power over how issues are perceived in the public consciousness, and it is the job of the public editor to ensure that that power is not being abused.
Yet in the same piece, Kreimer admonishes students for publishing excessively contemptuous op-eds about the conflict and urges them to engage in less polarizing dialogue, going so far as to suggest that those who disagree take each other out to eat to discuss their opinions.
Kreimer's call for more diplomatic conversation is admirable, but it is not the job of the public editor to dictate the tone of or facilitate dialogue on campus. The public editor should limit him or herself to commenting on the media's coverage of the issue, not the issue itself.
Jeremy White (LA '09), who in spring 2009 was the first pubic editor, shows how such expertise benefits a thorough review of campus media policies. In an April 2009 blog post, "Reporting Bias Impartially," he examines the Daily's coverage of an incident in which a freshman student allegedly verbally and physically assaulted members of the Korean Student Association.
Crucially, White does not take a position on the incident itself, nor does he make suggestions for how students should go about engaging in racially sensitive discussions. Instead, he analyzes the Daily's reporting of the incident — the sources the reporters used, the tone of the writing and the decision by the editors to withhold the name of the freshman student — to assess whether or not the Daily succeeded in remaining objective.
The Daily would have benefited from this kind of scrutiny this semester, when students on the website's comments forum and on our op-ed page accused the Daily of acting as a "mouthpiece" for the administration through its coverage of NQR's cancellation and the incident on the library roof on April 20 ("President Bacow's scarecrows: Of joints, TUPD and our wayward president" by rising junior Ben Van Meter, April 26). This is exactly the kind of controversy that calls for the public editor's input, to examine the complaints of the student body and offer an analysis of the Daily's coverage that the average reader cannot provide.
This is, to be sure, a tall order. The public editor must walk an extraordinarily fine line between analyzing campus conversation and injecting his or her personal opinion into it. In selecting a candidate for the position next year, we encourage the MAB to find a student who has a strong background in the standards of journalism and who is prepared to rigorously — and regularly — apply them to campus media.
