Campus media report on Iraq, but ignore those with experience

The University of Georgia's award-winning student-run newspaper Red and Black is no stranger to reporting and commenting on America's situation in Iraq. However, whatever "balance" in reporting they may have been previously paying lip service to has been cast off with this week's events.

On Tuesday, April 4, the paper ran an editorial entitled "Troops in Iraq not praiseworthy." The column, written by a student and endorsed by an editorial board which contained an aggregate of zero military veterans, included such statements as "[these troops] should not be placed in the same class as or valued like the sacrifices made by the veterans of many of our past wars. Does all of this devalue the lives lost and the sacrifices made in the War? Of course it does," and "For many, this will be a hard pill to swallow, especially those who have been personally involved in the War. Everyone reading this should be angry. But, you should not blindly direct your anger at those who bring this fact to light. Instead, you should direct it at those who are responsible for causing this mess."

The paper then abandoned any pretense of objectivity by completely ignoring a speech made by an actual Iraq War veteran the next day. Jeff Emanuel, a Special Operations veteran of the war and member of the Joint Task Force responsible for the rescue of POW Jessica Lynch and the capture of Saddam Hussein, addressed a packed room of UGA College Republicans Wednesday night, speaking on the first stages of the war and on the subsequent occupation. Not only did the campus paper refuse to mention the upcoming address during the week before it was scheduled to be held--although they were repeatedly notified--but there was also no representative of the paper present at the speech.

When contacted about the lack of promotion, the paper's Associate News Editor, Rebecca Rudolph, told UGACR Chairman Katie Flanigan that the paper was forced to "run several corrections" this week, and thus did not have print space to promote many student events. However, though they apparently did not have the space to present an alternate, experienced view to Tuesday's reckelssly uninformed opinion column, the Red and Black apparently did have enough space to promote such things as "African Nite" ("dispel[ling] the myths about African culture"), the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgendered student alliance's demand for special treatment, the factuality of the movie "V for Ventetta," Athens Brew-fest, and the performance of the melodrama "The Devil's Disciple."

This is both enlightening and dissapointing. The best that can be said is that now, at last, the mask is off--and the Red and Black has publicly abandoned any pretense of objectivity and journalistic integrity, revealing its purely partisan stance.