I'll just come out and say it -- I'm awfully sick of conservative readers complaining about the VanCougar's objectivity on the opinions pages and that we don't give them a voice.
The opinion page represents the view of its writers, who happen to be liberal. I am more than willing to take on a conservative columnist if their work is well-written, thoughtful and reasonable to balance out the page. Guess what, though? Not a single conservative has shown interest in writing columns for the newspaper. Now whose fault is that?
We haven't made a conscious decision to hire ONLY liberals and NO conservatives; Brian and I don't care who comes through the office doors, just as long as they're excited to work for the newspaper and become a better journalist. The cartoons on the office windows might suggest otherwise, but we can be quite civil with those harboring beliefs that do not necessarily reflect ours; conservative or not, I'd love to work with anyone interested in journalism.
Two of the three letters to the editor thus far have been conservative, and I've not turned away a single letter to date. In the upcoming issue, we will definitely be printing at least four letters FROM CONSERVATIVES!
I've said it once, and I'll say it again -- we are absolutely biased on our opinions pages, BUT THAT'S IT!!! Brian and I take every effort to ensure a story is told completely and objectively as possible, and I sincerely believe that is reflected in the writing. Why else would there be a full-length article on Justin Riley, a REPUBLICAN candidate? If we were biased in our news, we woldn't have touched him with a ten-foot pole, unless that pole could be used for bashing. Not to mention, a good portion of our staff comes in to copy edit each issue and looks for not only grammatical and spelling errors, but biases and blatant opinion writing, as well.
And has anyone taken the time to read the latest issue at all? I addressed this very issue in my column, resolving to stop with the conservative-bashing that is starting to even wear on me a little bit. And for that matter, has anyone read the election special? How about the majority of the news articles this year? We address both sides of every issue to the best of our ability ... in the news, features and community sections of the newspaper; is it not possible to separate the opinions section from the rest of the issue?
If conservatives want a voice, they should write more letters; they should apply for columnist positions, instead of complaining anonymously on the blog or stashing nearly half of the recent issues away in the nether regions of campus.
The cartoons on the window ... first of all, they're CARTOONS meant to JOKE about subjects or POKE FUN AT OTHERS. If readers are that upset about COMICS, come on, loosen up a bit.
If you want a forum, The VanCougar is it. Send us letters. Apply for columnist positions. Idle complaining and anonymous blog comments aren't doing a damn thing to make the paper better than it already is. I'm tired of hearing that The VanCougar is running a platform that doesn't give a voice to anyone sharing a different belief. Brian and I are absolutely proponents of the first amendment ... it's just that very few have come forward to share the platform.
-Matt Wastradowski
Managing Editor, The VanCougar
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7 comments:
Honestly I can't believe that a political cartoon could cause such an uproar on campus. I server my country for almost 9 years in the Air Force and am proud of the time I gave, but come on. That cartoon was not making fun of nor disrespecting the soldiers that are giving their lives to protect our freedom, it is merely a political jab at the politics behind the Bush regime and anyone that takes it otherwise is very narrow minded.
The same constitutional rights that are being apparently fought for overseas are now being bashed back home...freedom of speech...freedom of the press... if you don't like what you see, just remember that the soldiers giving their lives for what I think is a rather pointless war started on the lies of our president are fighting for these rights. I'm rather angry that someone decided on a whim what I could and could not read. If you want to talk about a crime, how about CENSORSHIP!! I don't mind that people are upset about the pictures, but how dare you take away my right to look at it and make my own judgements. If you don't like it, DON'T READ IT!!
Jodi
I know I didn't delete the comment; I wasn't upset by it and completely understood where you were coming from. Thanks for the feedback and sharing your opinion with us, by the way.
Matt
And yeah, to agree with Shane, I want to keep this as civil as possible. In the future, all irresponsible comments will be deleted. Let's keep this clean.
The point I was trying to make in my recent post was not what the paper should or should not publish, but that someone removed all of the copies of the paper taking away my right to read them. I was not attacking anyone's point of view nor was I berating anyones opinion. Everyone has a right to how they feel and here is a good place to state that, but attacking my opinion while trying to defend your own is not the right way to go about it. I was not yelling at anyone, nor will I go home and yell at my dog. I was merely exercizing my right under the constitution (as were you) to express my opinion. If I offended, it was not my intent, but please don't use this as a way to attempt to put me in my place.
Jodi
I hate to disagree with you once again, but to say that someones (anyones) post is unnessary is completely out of line. If everyone under the constitution had the right to free speech, then nobodys view should be called "unnecessary". Is it only unnecessary because it does not agree with the views of everyone else, or because I said it in a way that was perhaps a bit more brash? It seems to me that because of one comment in my first post (something about being narrow minded??) that you have no desire to hear what I really have to say here. I think that Sithocrates and I were very close on our views of the cartoon (I put the Bush spin, he put the Kerry spin), but still we both agreed that it had nothing to do with disrespecting anyone.
I also stated in the first post that I had nothing against vetrans, being as I am also a veteran (9 years).
So, I'm going to attempt to state my point again and see if I can get it right for those who took offense to my post. Please be open minded when reading....
What I think most people don't understand about the military is that when you enter you swear an oath to defend this country. That oath includes giving you life if its necessary. I know, because I took that oath and I did it willingly, as have many other soldiers. My beef with Bush is that he lied to get us into a war that we perhaps didn't need to fight at the time. I'm still trying to ascertain how we went from the war on terror against Osama to chasing Sadam and his imaginary weapons of mass destruction. It's my opinion that Bush's deceipt had cost us too many great lives and what I got out of that cartoon was that perhaps if our fallen comrads had the chance to voice their opinion in the next presidential race they would pick another candidate . The people who are killing our brave men and women are the same people that Bush says we are there to help, and I have to wonder if they really WANT our help.
So, back to the task at hand...most of the paper stacks around campus were taken from the stands and thrown either in the trash or recycle bins shortly after they were distributed because someone thought that the cartoon contained in their pages was so offensive that NOBODY should see them. That is what I meant by censorship. The copies were recovered and put back on the news stands, but it really upset me that anyone would (as I said) take away my right to read the paper because they didn't like one thing contained in it's pages. Thank you for pointing out that there were many copies, that comment brought light to the fact that I didn't explain what I meant very clearly.
I thought that the coverage of the elections and all of the other stories in the paper were very non-bias'd and whoever decided to throw away those papers tried to dispose of a lot of good information....information that I myself may have found valuable to make my decision in the upcoming election....
Anyway...for those who are interested, I hope this has shed some light on anything that was unclear in my previous posts.
Sithocrates, your post was awesome and thank you so much for sharing you views with us and for being more articulate with the ideas I was unable to convey.
Keep up the good work on the paper guys!!
I'm liberal. I dislike Dubya, the war in Iraq and your cartoon.
The cartoon was awful. Not tasteless how-dare-you awful, just plain awful. It made no insightful commentary, was not funny and was not even drawn well.
I'm all for freedom of speech, but would it kill you to put a little thought into it your "speech?"
I'm sorry but no body "pulled the wool" over yours or anyone elses eyes...
Now who is playing the victim?
Also, generalities are the weakest form of argument stephendail.
It seems to me us "liberals" have good reason to flaunt our rights in face of people like you. You are seemingly much more concerned with "argument and attack" than civilized conversation.
This is all I have to say about that. Can we stick to real discussions now?
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