The Graphic – Staff editorial: Taser this … Colorado State University

This editorial from Pepperdine shows good, clear writing, unlike the four-word CSU editorial that has been in the news recently. It emphasizes the fact that the editorial does not simply contain a vulgar charge aimed at the president, but that…

When students at Colorado State University in Front Collins opened the Sept. 24 issue of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, their student newspaper, an oversized and attention-grabbing headline shouted at them:

“Taser this … F*** BUSH.”

In the space where a 600-word editorial should be, this ambiguous (and asterisk-less) phrase was printed instead. It was recklessly displayed with no accompanying story, no explanation of the editorial board’s intentions and no rationale for the gratuitous display of profanity.

The editor’s statements about wanting to support free speech would hold more weight if some of those arguments had been included in the 596-word lacuna.

I haven’t looked into the charter for the CSU student paper, but if someone does have the authority to fire the editor, then he or she should seriously consider it. I would seriously question the journalistic integrity of an editor who not only passes off a four-word bumper sticker as an editorial, but who also manages to make it look like the editorial is somehow blaming Bush for the tasering incident. (If Bush were somehow exercising his diabolical influence on that security officer, wouldn’t he have gotten the guy to taser Kerry?)  So this is either a Michael Moore-style implication that two different facts are related just because they are true (a kid got tasered and lots of people hate Bush), or the author does not have the basic compositional skills necessary to notice the seriousness of such a logical fallacy.

More likely, those responsible for the editorial were just, well, irresponsible.

Those were an expensive four words, in terms of advertising money lost, credibility damage to the paper, and to the editor’s future career plans.

6 thoughts on “The Graphic – Staff editorial: Taser this … Colorado State University

  1. What’s the blogosphere for, if not exchanges like this, Gregg? Try to do that in the MSM!
    Sorry about those error messages — they’re simply annoying, rather than crippling, so I haven’t felt motivated to do much about them. I’ll delete the extra posts.

  2. ok – I tried to post four times and got error msgs, then finally went thru, so I went to see if it was up, and ALL posts were there. Feel free to delete.

  3. Dennis, Points taken. I ran across your blog incidentally while looking into the CSU incident.
    My initial impression of your comment was that mainstream news is about money (truer than ever since Jack Welch took the helm of GE), and that there is no connection between the BushCos heavy handed foreign policy and police state tactics at home (eg: A. Gonzalez torture memo / spikes in domestic police abuse and illegal arrests). While it’s perhaps impossible to scientifically prove a correlation, the psychology (pathology) seems fairly apparent from a cause/effect perspective.
    Besides that, my patience for war/fascism/empire/police state tactics has run out, what with the fact that our democracy is all but dead given that “we” have little to no representation in the fed govt – yet we are still taxed (unconstitutional).
    And yes, my opinion of MSM journalists could not be any lower. Were they (and their bosses) doing their jobs – reporting objectively for the public good (as originally required in exchange for the use of OUR airwaves) a lot of our current fiascoes, crises and quagmires could have been avoided or mitigated.
    I consider MSMs apathy, malfeasance and corruption to border on criminal. Now I see it seeping into NPR and PBS as they are now taking large sums of money from Boeing, ADM, Dow, WalMart, et al. Once they’re dependent on corporate (or govt) money, how are they going to remain objective? Ugh.
    Anyway, I now better understand your position… thanks for the reply.
    more thoughts on media issues here if your interested:
    http://ehrlum.com/newsletters/winter06/letter_editor.htm
    p.s. I notice that your email address is “encrypted” on your contact page, but the source code contains your actual address. Bots that crawl the web to collect email addresses also scan the source code, so you might want to remove it from there as well.

  4. Gregg, thanks for posting your opinions.
    I hope you understand that I agree that a student-editor should have the right to publish an editorial that makes a strong political statement, and should have the right to decide whether to publish something that is offensive.
    It’s possible to “speak the truth to power” while also demonstrating the ability to write a coherent argument that makes specific points. The CSU editorial made a strong statement, but did not include the kind of specific claims that you included in the comment you posted here. It’s possible to engage intellectually with the comment you left on my blog, but the CSU editorial simply makes an emotional statement, and that’s where I find it particularly weak.
    It is possible to call for and celebrate journalistic integrity while at the same time refusing to bow to corporate pressures. I don’t think that criticizing this particular editorial choice is the same thing as saying that all journalists should bow to corporate power. And as for my reference to money, I wanted to point out to my students that people who choose to exercise their first amendment right to the freedom of speech will still have to deal with the consequences, whatever those consequences may be.
    Your references to news “readers” and “well-coiffed, toothy ‘media personalities'” suggest you don’t have a high opinion of TV journalism, and my students will tell you that I share your opinion there.

  5. “Those were an expensive four words, in terms of advertising money lost, …, and to the editor’s future career plans.”
    Well put. “Journalism” students need to learn to tow the line, maximize revenues (and future salaries), and become mindless sycophants for the Corporatocracy. For this and this alone will allow the well-coiffed, toothy “media personalities” to climb the ladder and earn the big bucks.
    This is fully apparent watching “news” readers regurgitate gov’t propaganda while cuing up corporate VNRs, but we can never too many sources revealing the true agenda of BigMedia.
    What I think you’re missing in the Bush implication is not that Bush directly (or thru his God) controlled the fascist cop, but that his actions at home and abroad are bringing the police state to America at a greatly accelerated pace.
    (true)conservative Paul Craig Roberts lays it all out here:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09252007.html
    &
    http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01242007.html
    I hope you can connect the dots. We need all the help we can get before Bush attacks Iran and locks patriotic Americans down in the domestic gulag system…
    http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/022106a.html

  6. Simply said- An editorial should maintain its dignity, the author is solely responsible for such careless mistakes.

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