The Daily Dartmouth's Journalistic Failure

By Matthew Tokson | Monday, May 28, 2001

On the Monday following the derecognition of Zeta Psi fraternity, the Daily Dartmouth published an article in its news section by Kelly Cameron entitled (and oddly capitalized) 'Most students back College's decision, some wonder about the Greek system's fate.'

The article was an analysis of student reaction, both Greek and non-Greek, to Dean Redman's decision to permanently eliminate Zete. Many student quotes were included to support the article's conclusion that 'Most students who spoke with The Dartmouth last night said that they support the College's decision to derecognize Zeta Psi fraternity.'

While this particular statement was hard to argue with, it was far less clear that most students not spoken to by the Daily Dartmouth really supported the College's harsh punishment of Zete. The Daily Dartmouth had gotten away with it again, slanting its news coverage in order to cast the administration's actions in a positive light. Only this time someone caught them at it, someone with hard proof that the Daily Dartmouth was utterly wrong.

Who was the whistleblower? None other than the Daily Dartmouth's own online poll, which asked Dartmouth students 'Should Zeta Psi fraternity be derecognized for printing the 'Sex Papers'?'

Of the 1134 students who responded to the poll conducted online both before and after the college's decision, 56% opposed derecognition, 39% were in favor, and 5% were unsure. In other words, the very headline 'Most students back College's decision' was utterly false—the exact opposite of the truth. This information was readily available not only to Kelly Cameron but also to the entire the Daily Dartmouth editorial staff prior to the publication of the article. Are we really to believe that no one involved with the article bothered to check the results of a poll they themselves were conducting that dealt directly with the article's topic?

Well, maybe. The Daily Dartmouth does have something of a reputation for negligence, for misquoting students and misstating facts (more on this later). But beyond this, the Daily Dartmouth has repeatedly shied away from its poll results, which have shown time and again that Dartmouth's students are on the whole deeply opposed to the policies of its administration.

The most famous of the Daily Dartmouth's polls was its initial poll of the entire student body following the announcement of the Student Life Initiative, which showed that 83% of Dartmouth students supported the Greek system. While this poll and a similar follow-up poll were discussed in actual news articles, countless other polls displaying student opposition to administrative acts have not been acknowledged at all.

There are far more interesting examples than I can mention here, but a partial list of questions to which distinctly anti-administration responses were given includes 'Do you agree with the recommendations presented in the steering committee report??' (68% No to 24% Yes), 'Is the College right in mandating the removal of permanent bars and taps from Greek houses by the end of Summer term?' (75% against to 20% in favor), 'Should the College ban the use of fireplaces in students' dorm rooms?' (77% against to 17% in favor), and 'Do think the social and programming sanctions imposed on Psi U are appropriate?' (70% Too Harsh, 19% Yes, and 7% Not Harsh Enough).

Do you see a pattern here? The Daily Dartmouth apparently doesn't. Its coverage of the campus events referred to above has been resolutely 'neutral'. In other words, it has remained uncritical of the administration's unpopular, anti-student actions while occasionally getting its facts wrong where those facts might portray the administration negatively. This has occurred recently not only in the article mentioned above but also in Victoria McGrane's article 'Zete not covered by free speech,' which incorrectly reported that Zete's private and (meant to be) humorous newsletter would be considered libel if the 'news' it printed was false. Eager to portray Zete's brothers as undeserving of First Amendment protection, McGrane fails to consider the Supreme Court's 1988 ruling that parody or satire, when it is 'not reasonably believable,' retains First Amendment protection against charges of libel. She might also have noted the simple fact that defamation must involve both public communication, which the Zete newsletters did not (see TDR, 5/14/01), and also malicious intent—which is why lengthy trials are often necessary. Nevertheless, the Daily Dartmouth claims to read the minds of the Zeta Psi brothers; McGrane, as a 'journalist', convicts them of criminal defamation. It's 'a crime which earns the offender a class B misdemeanor,' she notes. Even Melissa Heaton's lawyer, who McGrane references, isn't nearly as certain.

The Daily Dartmouth could have sent its reporter to interview various jurists on the subject and reported their differing views. But the paper didn't concern itself with objective 'D-style' reporting in this case; they asserted their own (uninformed) judgment.

The Daily Dartmouth's reluctance to represent the concerns of its readers or to question Dartmouth's undemocratic leadership is unfortunate. But even less excusable in the official student newspaper of Dartmouth College is its tendency to misquote and misinform. Aside from the two Zete articles that were factually incorrect, The Dartmouth Review has recently pointed out several factual mistakes in Daily Dartmouth articles, specifically in its April 30th article about Chi Heorot and its May 2nd article entitled ''Past five years marred by hate crimes directed toward Asians'.

The paper is somewhat infamous among students for its misquotes, a problem that I recently experienced firsthand. In Tracy Landers' May 15th article 'Students, profs discuss free speech,' I am quoted as saying, 'I feel like the Zetemouth is institutionalized sexism, while describing the Choates as 'ghetto' is more of a gray area...Should people be held responsible legally for what they say? I don't think so.'

I never said these words. The quote is a sort of inaccurate summary of my remarks. I found the Zetemouth stupid and tasteless, but I don't think that it was example of actual, discriminatory sexism. And I don't think that describing anything as anything is a 'gray area'; I believe that people have the right to describe whatever they want however they want. But the problem here is not that the summarization was inaccurate, but rather that it occurred at all. The blame lies both with the reporter, who promised to email those who were quoted in order to confirm her quotes and then failed to do so, and with the Daily Dartmouth itself, for sending its reporter to an event to gather quotes without a tape recorder and for creating an environment where such misquoting is prevalent and permissible. Ms. Landers is certainly not the only the Daily Dartmouth reporter to have misquoted a student.

Indeed, I think that don't think that the Daily Dartmouth's problems stem from an inept or biased staff. Many of the students who work (hard) at the Daily Dartmouth are good friends of mine, people whose ability and intelligence I respect. But its institutional policies, its lax standards of accuracy and its dependence on the College doom it to journalistic failure year after year.

Perhaps the Daily Dartmouth's biggest problem is the fact that it publishes 5 days a week despite being situated at a fairly small college in an extremely quiet town. This often leads the paper to become a sort of glorified events calendar especially when, as usual, nothing of note occurs on campus. Wednesday's top story, 'Bell, Hagopian discuss Mideast' is one of countless examples.

But the biggest problem with the Daily Dartmouth's daily format is that the paper is forced to rely on the administration to provide it with enough news to fill its 10-plus pages per day. It is this reliance above all else that causes the Daily Dartmouth's pro-administration bias. Indeed, a high-level editor of the Daily Dartmouth admitted to me recently that the paper is reluctant to criticize the administration, if only because it could not survive in its current daily form without the administration's full cooperation and support. The Daily Darmouth is officially 'student-run and independent of Dartmouth College' as it claims on its website (though it is not America's oldest college newspaper, as we revealed in TDR 10/16/00). But it is only 'independent' in the most technical sense; Dartmouth College controls its offices, owns its phone-lines, provides it with content, answers its questions, and links its website to the College's. Its claims of independence aside, the Daily Dartmouth is not nearly as free as, say, the Columbia Spectator (or The Dartmouth Review) to criticize the administration of its college.

It's unfortunate that a change from daily publication to a summer-term-like Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule isn't likely for the Daily Dartmouth anytime soon. Not only would the paper be able to rely less on the administration as a content-provider, it would also give its writers more time to check their facts and confirm their quotes.

Decreased deadline pressure might also help improve the quality of the Daily Dartmouth's writing. The 'D-style' currently used echoes the writing style of the Associated Press, apparently in an effort to keep the paper's reporting as objective as possible. This is, it goes almost without saying, a mistake. The style works for the AP because its reporters are covering significant news stories from around the world, stories that are factually interesting in and of themselves. Unfortunately, this type of story occurs very rarely at Dartmouth College. A much more fruitful approach would be to (as most campus and national papers do) attempt to frame stories in a meaningful context rather than merely reporting them as though they were earthquakes or plane crashes.

The Daily Dartmouth shouldn't have an anti-administration bias, but certainly questioning the administration's policies in the context of overwhelming student dissatisfaction would be appropriate. The Daily Dartmouth is, after all, our student newspaper; shouldn't it be especially geared towards the concerns of Dartmouth's students? Why hasn't the Daily Dartmouth ever produced a controversial story through its own investigation, as the Review has done countless times? Dartmouth's administration has more than enough faults and commits more than enough injustices to fuel a hundred such investigations. Isn't a newspaper's job to expose these injustices, to champion the hard truth at every opportunity?

The Daily Dartmouth's problems have serious implications for the quality of information on campus. On the day of Zeta Psi's derecognition, the Daily Dartmouth posted an article on its website less than an hour after the College itself made its announcement in an online press release. Apparently the paper felt obligated to post whatever information it had as soon as possible (a more balanced update featuring Gene Boyle's comments followed later that night). Unfortunately, the Daily Dartmouth's need for promptness and reliance on Parkhurst resulted in the ultimate triumph of administration interests over journalistic integrity: the Daily Dartmouth's article was in fact Dartmouth College's press release, its paragraphs merely reordered (a few deleted), and the word order completely unchanged. The Daily Dartmouth published the College's press release and passed it off as their own independent, objective work. The subsequent update is irrelevant; the first 'news' most students read was written by the administration's Office of Public Affairs. Truly, the Daily Dartmouth failed Dartmouth students in this instance.

At a college where, according to the Daily Dartmouth's online poll, only 6% of students believe that the Trustees are genuinely concerned with student opinion in deciding what policies to enact, the student newspaper has a duty to represent student concerns and to maintain a healthy skepticism of an unpopular administration. At present, the Daily Dartmouth is a chore to read, and what one reads there cannot be wholly trusted. Perhaps a ray of hope can be found in the paper's recent article about allegations of racial discriminations in the Admissions Office, 'Administration silent on problems', which was critical of administrators for refusing to speak to the paper about this awkward issue. Still, the Daily Dartmouth must learn to question Parkhurst even when it is speaking to them.

The Daily Dartmouth's Journalistic Failure

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