Saturday, April 16, 2005
A simple question
A simple question for the Mendota Beacon: what is integrity? More specifically, what is journalistic integrity?
Apparently, this question is much more difficult than one would imagine, much less act upon. Even though the Beacon is a fledging publication, many of its actions in the past two months of its existence causes much questioning of the journalistic and moralistic capabilties of its staff. Among some of these grievances are its failure to properly find legitimate sources of information, cybersquatting, inability to jump to reasonable conclusions from already shakey or nonexistent evidence, and its willingness to hide beneath the anonymity of "Staff Reports" when resorting to cheap tricks like slander and fabrication.
No publication is entirely truthful nor perfect in collection and dissemination of information. Yet few publications that have aspirations for higher goals such as long-term sustainability and gaining larger readership bother retorting to such low-brow tactics as the Mendota Beacon has since its inception. We welcome the Beacon to the UW-Madison campus as a journalistic representative of the conservative crowd, but if they want to be taken seriously they need to start moving in a different direction.
Apparently, this question is much more difficult than one would imagine, much less act upon. Even though the Beacon is a fledging publication, many of its actions in the past two months of its existence causes much questioning of the journalistic and moralistic capabilties of its staff. Among some of these grievances are its failure to properly find legitimate sources of information, cybersquatting, inability to jump to reasonable conclusions from already shakey or nonexistent evidence, and its willingness to hide beneath the anonymity of "Staff Reports" when resorting to cheap tricks like slander and fabrication.
No publication is entirely truthful nor perfect in collection and dissemination of information. Yet few publications that have aspirations for higher goals such as long-term sustainability and gaining larger readership bother retorting to such low-brow tactics as the Mendota Beacon has since its inception. We welcome the Beacon to the UW-Madison campus as a journalistic representative of the conservative crowd, but if they want to be taken seriously they need to start moving in a different direction.
// posted by ML @ 9:27 PM 
Comments:
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an example:
so there ARE arguments for the war in iraq. sane, sensible arguments. i may disagree with them, but i can at least respect them.
the beacon staff, however, in their staff editorial "an open letter to the walkout folks" chooses to disregard those arguments and go for a "you dumb hippies are just jealous of how great W is and all want to have abortions" argument. this is staff editorial mind you, not some random crazy writer.
this is typical of what they do-- take a complex issue and simplify it into a simple "liberals hate jesus" or whatever relationship. if i were a conservative, i'd be ashamed.
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so there ARE arguments for the war in iraq. sane, sensible arguments. i may disagree with them, but i can at least respect them.
the beacon staff, however, in their staff editorial "an open letter to the walkout folks" chooses to disregard those arguments and go for a "you dumb hippies are just jealous of how great W is and all want to have abortions" argument. this is staff editorial mind you, not some random crazy writer.
this is typical of what they do-- take a complex issue and simplify it into a simple "liberals hate jesus" or whatever relationship. if i were a conservative, i'd be ashamed.
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