I'd like to take a moment at the beginning of this letter to say that I am neither supporting Obama nor McCain. I believe this whole election has gotten entirely out of hand, and I sent in my absentee ballot weeks in ago having checked a third party candidate.
The Collegiate Times, while not having formally endorsed a candidate, may as well have. I feel like each time I open up the CT to the opinions page and find an editorial concerning the election, it inevitably sheds brilliant light on Obama while disgracing the McCain campaign. While I do not agree with racist portrayals of Barack Obama, neither McCain nor Palin has said anything along those lines. And while they may need to distance themselves from that sort of awfulness, they aren't going to do it because of a CT article.
Instead, all the Collegiate Times editorial staff has done is write multiple heavily leftist biased articles that have little verification and nothing to say about what McCain or Palin has done, good or bad, but simply what other people around the country have done.
They state they are tired of negative campaigning, and yet their article is simply an article putting McCain and Palin in a negative light. Support whomever you wish, but please keep the bias out of the news. The individual's opinions are there to make their points; the editorial staff is not supposed to be endorsing candidates. I understand that many people on the CT editorial staff support Barack Obama; however, not all do. Let's try to keep the campaign fair and peaceful on this campus; it can start in one of the most widely-read publications at Virginia Tech.
Carolyn Kidd
senior, music & economics
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Right on sister!
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And on thursday and friday's CT they mention Biden coming to southside VA but nothing about Palin's visit to Salem.
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I don't think that latter was an endorsement to begin with, but why can't the staff endorse a candidate? Every other newspaper does so, why should the CT be any different? It's an editorial...in the opinions page...
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No matter how much coverage the CT does, it's never going to satisfy both sides. Republican George Allen made the front page on Tuesday with a minor note about Obama in Roanoke at the bottom. There's just no pleasing some people.
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It all depends, anon, on the reason behind newspapers endorsing candidates. The fact of the matter is, the CT isn't the Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, San Fransisco Chronicle, etc. Nor should it be - it's a student newspaper, catering to the interests of the students of Virginia Tech. We expect bias from the likes of the editorial staffs of professional newspapers, but I think there's a reasonable expectation of even-handedness from the editorial staff of a student newspaper given the diversity of the political opinions of its more-or-less captive readership. It's fine for the editorial staff to have opinions - that's their job. But it's wholly unprofessional of them to print columns which skew sharply one direction. This isn't a question about the REPORTING (because from what I've seen, the reporting is fairly centrist). It's the opinions page which has always slanted far more left than the rest of the paper - and that's an issue the editorial staff needs to solve.
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I'm guessing anyone can contribute a guest column to the editorial pages? Go for it if you feel your side/opinion is adequately represented!
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As someone who has submitted a guest column and who reads the CT almost daily, I have to say there's a slight/moderate lean right in the journalistic pieces (I admit I am left biased myself though). I don't quite understand the rationale for accepting guest columns/op-eds. I think the last 2 were absolutely abhorrent. I see many more shock pieces from the far right (abortion = Nazism, gays are subhuman, etc). But without seeing all the submissions they get it's hard to say whether this is a result of the submissions being made or that the selection is more rightist. There has definitely been no implicit or explicit endorsement by the paper. If the reports of the campaigns are harsher on McCain it's because McCain is in panic mode and running a really awful campaign on almost every level right now -- I say this having watched 99% of the news coming out of both camps and applying every ounce of objectivity I have as a scientist. I have even seen a fair amount of criticism of McCain from Fox lately.
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To an extent, I agree with you Patrick. I think the opinions page in the CT tends to lean heavily to the left with its regular columnists, mainly because there tends not to be a plethora of right-leaning journalists in general, much less in institutions of higher learning. That's a discussion for another day though. McCain has run a fairly inept campaign - as has, in my opinion, Obama. They're both clowns of the highest degree, and it's a shame we'll have to suffer through 4 years of either one. Notwithstanding, at issue was the previous column describing 'underhanded tactics of the McCain campaign' which managed to highlight only one salient point - some McCain supporters shout things which ring of bigotry and hatred, and McCain doesn't stop his speeches to chastise people over whom he has no control anyway. At the end of the day, some people are just dumb - but there's a lot of dumb people pulling for Obama too. It's one thing for an editorial board to have an opinion, but it's another thing entirely to simply discount less appealing acts of one group in order to highlight the inappropriate acts of another.
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McCain disgraced himself with his campaign. The CT didn't. It's just reporting the facts.
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Running an inept campaign is not the same as 'disgracing oneself with a campaign.' Both campaigns are wholly inept, neither candidate deserves the office, and anyone who thinks that the world will be a better place with either of these clowns running the show needs to go back and look at the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, and the first half of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency (before the war started). The point is, it'd be nice for the CT to report on the inconsistencies (which do exist, quite prominently. . . reference Biden's comments this past week) of the Obama campaign, but they gloss over them.
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The letter wasn't really about McCain or Obama, but more just the CT...
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I agree with Carolyn!!! And I do think it is absolutely crazy that the CT didn't mention about Sarah Palin coming to Salem. Looks like the liberals on the staff didn't want to take the chance of many VT students going to watch her and get swayed from voting for Obama. Well, keep trying CT because my vote is going to McCain!
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Patrick B, can you please share your time travel secrets with us? There must be some sort of trickeration going on if you can handle 99% of both campaigns and be a scientist. How do you even have time to write on here with that much devotion? You must truly be a special man.
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Bias to be kept out of news?! Why, that's absurd! And if you disagree with the PEOPLE that publish our paper, don't read it. If you find it to be consistently ill-researched and slanted, look somewhere else. It was so full of crap last year that I stopped reading except to see if a co-authored Letter to the Editor had gone through today.
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PLEASE spare me people... a Presidential Candidate WAS HERE just over a week ago - did you know that?! NOPE. Bob Barr, Libertarian Candidate for 2008, spoke to a big group. But the CT left out not only that he was coming, but only posted an insulting picture of him after his visit.
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