I feel obligated to address the Oct. 3 article, “Middle East tensions spread to U students.” As journalists, you have a responsibility to all of your readers to provide fair and objective reports about the events you choose to cover. This article is just the most recent example of skewed reporting and I refuse to let it go.
The article portrays last month’s confrontation between the Anti-War Committee and the Friends of Israel as nothing more than a Friends of Israel plot to sabotage the Committee’s event and to intimidate those present. Friends of Israel was exercising its right to attend an open meeting, its right to distribute its own material and its right to express its own views.
The First Amendment guarantees those rights to everyone, not just those people whom the committee, or anyone else, agrees with.
The Daily chose to print obvious political rhetoric attacking the supposedly cruel and nasty Friends of Israel. An Anti-War Committee spokesperson was quoted as saying that the blocking of the door to a public event was to “keep our events safe and to keep our speakers safe,” implying physical harm was imminent, and comments concerning an incident in April about “a history of showing up at our events to disrupt them.” Statements attributed to Friends of Israel spokesmen, however, were limited to procedural complaints concerning the recent event and frustration with being continually targeted as aggressors. I can think of no reason why an article that encourages a peaceful resolution in its conclusion would choose to include any destructive political rhetoric, let alone pick a side.
You, those in charge of bringing news to the students, staff and faculty of the University, have clearly failed your readers in this regard. I implore you: Either print factual, balanced news articles and keep opinions to the editorial page, or, if it’s impossible for the staff to stop passing off personal views as news stories, leave controversial events alone and stick to those fluffy human interest stories everyone likes so much.
