Last week, The Cavalier Daily lost its executive editor. Jeffrey Eisenberg stepped down from his position after the rest of the paper's Managing Board decided that he could not serve as both executive editor and counsel for University student Adam Boyd, who was charged with an honor offense. This decision came late, but it is better late than not at all.
I wrote a column in September about the conflict of interest inherent in Eisenberg's dual roles, and advised him to give up his position as counsel in the case, which was opened to the public. At that time, the Board opted to allow Eisenberg to continue serving as Boyd's counsel. The Board removed Eisenberg completely from the editorial process of any stories, columns or editorials related to the case. He also was removed from discussions of how to cover the case. And in the interests of full disclosure, the paper began running editor's notes explaining Eisenberg's role in the proceedings alongside news stories on the case. But it wasn't enough.
In the last three weeks, it became clear to the Board that the conflict was crippling the paper's ability to cover the news thoroughly and without compromise. At that time, Eisenberg stepped down from his position as Boyd's counsel. But he decided to resume that post last week after new developments occurred in the case, and on Thursday, he was asked to resign as executive editor.
I maintain that the issue simply should not have dragged on as long as it did. The Managing Board never should have agreed to Eisenberg's involvement in the case once it became clear the trial was to be open. The remaining four members of the Board recognize that in hindsight.
Now that the situation has been rectified, The Cavalier Daily must concentrate on fair, balanced and thorough coverage of the trial. The paper also must determine how it will compensate for Eisenberg's departure. At the moment, the Managing Board is not planning to replace him. There are six weeks of publication left in this semester, and elections for the new staff will take place early next semester.
Editor-in-Chief Brandon Almond says the remaining Managing Board members will take over Eisenberg's editing duties. The lead editorials will be researched and written by the Board members and possibly members of a yet-to-be-determined editorial board. The editorial board is not a new entity to the paper. Virtually every spring semester for at least the past six years, the executive editor has convened an editorial board made up of opinion department staff and some interested staffers from other departments. The editorial board members research and write the editorials on a rotating basis. The opinions reflected in those editorials are those of the now-four-member Managing Board.
As is the case with most former executive editors, Eisenberg will write a weekly column for the paper. The views expressed in that column will be his own.
The staff has their work cut out for them. Operating without a Managing Board member is very difficult. Their plan seems workable, and I trust it will hold up for the remainder of the semester.
Slanted reporting
Before getting into my weekly kvetch-fest, I'd like to commend the staff for last Wednesday's Housing Guide. It's a terrific idea, and offers a much-needed resource to first-year students trying to navigate the often-confusing off-Grounds housing process. In the future, I'd like to see the staff add reviews and comparisons of both University and non-University housing options.
The Housing Guide, unfortunately, did not make up for an unbalanced story that ran the same day on the Focus page, or for a very slanted story that ran Monday on the Business page.
The Focus story was about the quality of student health care at the University. It discussed the Student Health Center's staff and available resources, but no comment from anyone at the health center. This is an enormous oversight. And worse, the article included the following sentence: "For whatever reason, medical sexual assault response is by protocol not handled within university health systems."
For whatever reason? Phrases like this should never, ever appear in news articles. First of all, the language isn't very professional. But more importantly, it is the reporter's obligation to find out the reason. This is particularly true in the Focus section, which is supposed to provide in-depth, analytical coverage of news stories.
The Business story was similarly lacking in balance. The article was purportedly a news story about criticism of liquor advertisements by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but it read like an opinion column. There weren't nearly enough cited facts, and those there were weren't detailed enough. For example, the lead of the story read: "Teenagers today are increasingly subject to malt beverage advertisements." Says who? In two places, the reporter used statistics to back up her claims -- which, again, were far more opinion than fact --but never explained the numbers. Whose statistics are they? Statistics aren't always objective, and their utility depends greatly upon the organization collecting them and the method used. And as I've stressed before, both should be cited whenever statistics are used.
In addition, there was no comment from anyone representing the alcohol industry or their advertising agencies. The reporter only quoted a MADD statement and a Commerce professor. This is not acceptable reporting.
I urge The Cavalier Daily's editors to be more vigilant in guarding the balance of their stories and their pages.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at
ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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