BY
While The Record respects and encourages contrary viewpoints to articles and editorials, factual assertions of overt bias in how this newspaper gathers information and reports news must be addressed. In a guest column this week Daniel Kirschner, President of Law Review, makes several factual assertions about The Record that deserve a response.
First. The Record acknowledges that the staged photograph of a woman crying on the steps of Gannett should have been labeled a photo illustration. We thought students would readily recognize this photo as an artistic expression, not as an actual depiction of a woman upset with the Law Review. We now recognize how such artistic expressions should be made clearer in the future.
Second. Normally – and these past five Wednesday nights have not been different – editorials and many articles are still being written late into the night. Specifically, it is not true that our editorial and Law Review article for the September 25, 2003 issue were written before Kirschner was asked about releasing the data from the gender disparity studies. These pieces were still being written hours after Kirschner was questioned, and had Kirschner agreed to release such data, we would have certainly held our stories to incorporate this new information.
Finally. It is true we did publish three pieces about the Law Review last week and did not ask for Law Review comment. But one piece was a letter to the editor and another was a guest column. The Record does not show such pieces to other students and ask them to comment prior to publication. Furthermore, these letters and guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of The Record. As to the final piece, The Record editorial for that week, we challenged the Law Review for refusing to publish its gender disparity data, something that had already been discussed with Kirschner the previous week. In other words, The Record was talking about an issue that had been confirmed by Kirschner the previous week.