PAC found offense with the overall negative tone of the article and issued a statement asking for The News Record to retract its article. Hours later, The News Record announced that it would not retract its article.
All caught up? Good. There’s a lot to sift through in terms of safety at ONOFest, TNR’s original article, and the fallout on social media.
I have no doubt that PAC and UCPD are looking at ways to prevent this violence at future events. And the reason that I have no doubt is because right there at the beginning of PAC’s letter, they stated unambiguously that safety is their #1 priority:
However, that doesn’t excuse the way that the article was written or the inappropriate reaction of the TNR staff on Twitter following backlash from the student body. And we really need to stop the petty name-calling:
Let’s dig into the original article itself, and why so many took offense to it.
The leading line: “ONOFest, a university-paid event, turned bloody and violent Saturday night.”
You’ll be forgiven if the image that came into your mind is that of a war-torn Sigma Sigma Commons following some sort of enormous melee. Because that’s exactly what the title and leading line suggest.
In reality, UCPD reported that 2 injuries had occurred. The News Record article mentioned more injuries and violence that apparently went unreported. And to be clear: no act of violence is acceptable. But really, is that title or leading line representative of the event? Or is it just sensationalist reporting?
Back in September, I had to sit down with the then-Chief Reporter to explain why it wasn’t okay to make up that the NightRide App “nearly crashed after a communication breakdown”. Despite removing some of the completely non-factual components of this story, TNR left the headline-grabbing leading sentence. The excuse? Something along the lines of how a leading line’s purpose is to attract readers. It didn’t seem to be a concern that the leading line shouldn’t sensationalize what had actually happened.
In February, I contacted the TNR staff multiple times with no reply and eventually had to confront the Editor-in-Chief at the News Record office in order to correct made-up quotes in an article about Senate’s vote on divestment. The quotes, attributed verbatim to me, were so off-point and sensationalist that I was actually contacted by an extreme right-wing online news outlet seeking comment about how I’d been harassed and threatened by Fossil Free UC.
The catch? I never said those things, but the made-up TNR quotes made it sound like I had. I was lucky enough to have taken an audio recording of the meeting, and TNR revised its article when confronted with what I had actually said. Unfortunately, there’s no editor’s note acknowledging that the article had to be corrected.
To be sure, we’re all students and we all make mistakes. But these are just two of several examples this year alone where TNR presented information in a sensationalized or even completely non-factual way. It seems to be more like a culture issue than honest mistakes.
Anyways, that’s enough about sensationalism. Let’s get back to the article in question…
Notice also the dichotomy with the language used in this article versus the article for the fall concert (below). I was there- there was plenty of pushing, shoving, pot smoking, and even some fighting that I saw. Do you see how differently these events are portrayed, even just by the wording of the article title?
But to me, the most embarrassing part has been The News Record’s staff’s inappropriate reaction.
Rather than acknowledge any fault, The News Record has taken an arrogant holier-than-thou-because-we-are-journalists stance. It is especially ironic that members of TNR’s staff including many editors and the Editor-in-Chief have taken to bullying and harassing anyone with criticism on Twitter (see the tweets at the top of this article), then turn around to complain that they are the ones being censored.
The News Record is not and should not be impervious to criticism. Professional papers take criticism in stride, even sometimes publishing opposing views in their editorial sections. But instead, the TNR staff has mobilized on Twitter to ensure that all criticism is stamped out. In their follow-up article, they go to extremes (highlighting not even a tweet – but a favorite of a tweet) to shame members of the student body who have been critical of their reporting.
That’s not exactly unbiased reporting that represents the “student voice”.
Do you think you’d ever see a writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, The New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal behaving like this on twitter? Do you think you’d ever see their entire staff doing this? The Editor-in-Chief has tweeted at me 13 times in the past day alone, and for the most part, the tweets are accusatory and acidic. That’s not professional journalism.
The senior staff including editors, the Chief Reporter, and the Editor-in-Chief are all paid by the University of Cincinnati. That money comes from the general fee paid by all students – about $131,000 in total. They also use UC resources such as several offices in Swift Hall. You and I – all of us – are paying for a bi-weekly newspaper that sensationalizes stories, ignores racial undertones, and intimidates critical students on Twitter.
To be transparent, when I was Student Body Vice-President, I received a stipend. I considered myself accountable to the student body. Plenty of students went out of their way to hold me accountable when I was in office, and I learned & grew from their feedback.
I’m not saying that the TNR should lose their funding (please stop insinuating that I am; I’ve literally never said that).
Theoretically, since we’re all paying for this newspaper, The News Record should be representing our voice. But is TNR accountable to the student body? In this instance, rather than listening, we see the TNR being aggressively defensive and self-promoting.
And it’s not hard to find other examples where The News Record has been inappropriately self-centered in its reporting.
In this March article about the University Funding Board, the president of the Mountaineering Club is quoted over and over as a club president upset about how UFB’s funds were managed. He’s actually the only club president quoted. The article doesn’t disclose, however, that this person is a regular TNR contributor and photographer. Why was this article passed off as “news” instead of the TNR editorial that it actually was?
But obviously, it has gone nowhere. There’s still sensationalism and self-promotion all over the place. And when TNR staff members attack me personally on Twitter, I feel compelled to respond.
If you’re reading this and you’re on the TNR staff – please don’t take offense. I was also upset when the Enquirer posted a false narrative about crime on and around campus. I just really don’t like it when papers make the news instead of reporting the news.
I don’t want TNR to be de-funded. I’m not sanctioning or ignoring violence at a campus event. I’m not saying that TNR shouldn’t report on safety issues.
What I’m saying is this: the tone in the ONOFest article was inappropriate. This tone, particularly the slant towards sensationalism, has been present many times in the past. And TNR refuses to acknowledge it and instead has responded inappropriately towards fellow students.
I hope that this is the wake-up call that The News Record needs. We all pay for the paper. And we deserve better.