Standing up for the Manitoban

Bias is in the eye of the beholder

Tessa Vanderhart, staff

There are lots of things we can’t say in the Manitoban. The most recent example: there was no way to state the obvious in news editor Magally Zelaya’s article this week on voting irregularities in the UMSU election. To be specific, there is what seems to me to be blatant evidence of election fraud — students who swear they have not previously voted being told that according to the list, they have indeed voted — but as there is no hard proof, nor an objective complainant, we could not state this perfectly logical idea in the article. Therein lies both the beauty and the folly of “news” stories: people expect them to be objective, and as they have spent absolutely no time thinking about how news comes to them, they see this statement of probable fact, of a third viable option, as bias.

Stephen J. Ward, chair of the University of British Columbia journalism school and Canada’s expert on journalism ethics, writes on his website journalismethics.ca that journalists have three sources of duties: the general duties of a citizen, the social duties that accompany the privilege they have to ask questions in society, and the responsibility to consider the implications of their reportage.

Further: “A question in journalism is “ethical” if it asks the following questions: Is the action consistent with journalism’s public purpose, which is based on some view of the good for citizens and society? Does it violate or enhance the principles that express this public role?”

I present these words to you because I strongly believe that the Manitoban, in this specific case myself and news editor Chelse McKee, fulfilled the ethical requirements addressed by Ward to the very best of our abilities, and in no way harmed the person or campaign of the Regressive Conservative slate in the UMSU election.

The allegations levelled against the Manitoban, in letters to the editor (pg. 10) and in my e-mail inbox, are that we published the story “Regressive Conservatives: a joke slate?” in an act of deliberate bias, influenced by worry that if elected, they would cut funding to the Manitoban.

Frankly, it was odd that UMSU candidate Pierce Cairns continued to threaten the Manitoban after I told him, nicely, on our first meeting that the Manitoban is fully autonomous from UMSU, financially and editorially. But because of that legally binding agreement, I can assure you, there was absolutely no threat levelled against us by the slate.

I assigned McKee to write a story addressing the question on every student (that cares about the election)’s lips: are the Regressive Conservatives a joke slate? According to UMSU bylaws, as the story clearly stated, they were not. However, to say that this is not a legitimate question is ludicrous. If the Manitoban were to not report on the legitimacy of the slate, frankly, we would be failing students — it hardly seems more pressing that we run a boring, and more easily biased, description of the campus debates than a story, with interviews and research, that addressed what was on (some) students’ minds.

In addition, I should add, it was a particularly issue-less UMSU election, and as Cairns himself asserted, part of his campaign intention was to stir interest.

I remain truly disappointed by pitiful response to the Regressive Conservatives’ self-acknowledgedly boundary-pushing campaign. I foolishly thought that political debate and humour would garner many more votes than the 9.7 per cent Cairns received.

Whatever the effect — probably just additional publicity — the Manitoban staged no attack on the Regressive Conservatives. I thought, and continue to think, that we acted in the best interests of our paid subscribers, the students, in asking an interesting and unanswered question.

I contend that the worst kind of bias is the bias of omission: the bias that we would have been forced to commit this week, regarding the UMSU election, had I not managed to work it in to this editorial. This means limiting our stories to the same interviewees, the same viewpoints; following the three-sources rule I hegemonically attempt to apply to the paper, and never taking it farther; failing to find the fourth or fifth or sixth viewpoint, either because no one is expressing it, because we are lazy, or because we, as journalists, are in a privileged position — we have more facts than the general public — and it’s the gravest injustice not to use them, not to ask questions and seek answers.

This is what is wrong with bias in news — not asking someone seeking public office a question that he doesn’t approve of.

On March 26 at 5 p.m., the Manitoban will have its first-ever open house, followed by a semi-annual general meeting (it will not be legally binding). If you have concerns, come and air them. We will be discussing having a student ombudsperson or persons, a public editor, seeking next year’s student representatives to our board of directors, and hearing your concerns.

And if you still don’t like the Manitoban, to paraphrase how we put it last year — take a look at the ad directly below this article.