Bush's OSU visit and the O'Collegian

[MichaelC]

Article from Tulsa World

Student journalists say they were told to hold the story pending the university's OK.

Oklahoma State University's public relations chief told the student newspaper staff this week that if it published a story about President Bush speaking at commencement, he would call the journalism school and complain.

To the staff of The Daily O'Collegian, it sounded like censorship.

The discussion took place before the White House officially announced the president's May 6 visit, and the newspaper wanted to report about the weeks-old rumors about Bush.

"I told (the reporter) if they decided they were going the run the story, I was going to call the department head, and it would have been his call what he would have done," said Gary Shutt, director of communication services.

But the newspaper is independent -- a company incorporated in 1926, said Tom Weir, the journalism school's director. He has no power over it.

If any OSU employees had control over the paper's content, the university would be liable for it, Weir said.

"I don't think the university wants to get into this business," he said.

Lenzy Krehbiel, the O'Collegian's co-editor
in chief, said Shutt told a student reporter that in some cases, including this one, Weir should have control.

Shutt said he, OSU President David Schmidly and the O'Collegian had an agreement that the newspaper would be the first to hear about Bush but that it could not publish information about the visit before the official word came.

"Schmidly told the (O'Collegian's) editorial board we were under strict orders. . . . We could not talk about it publicly, or it could jeopardize the visit," Shutt said.

The nonacademic world sees the O'Collegian as part of the university, he said.

"If the White House was saying we shouldn't publicly announce this, to have it in the student paper would be like the university announcing it," Shutt said.

The newspaper staff understood their agreement with OSU administrators differently.

Krehbiel said the paper agreed not to publish the story before the White House announcement unless reporters were able to confirm the presidential visit through sources other than OSU.

The newspaper didn't publish the story because it got information only third-hand -- not on-the-record and first-hand, Krehbiel said.

She wasn't terribly surprised at the turn of events because student journalists recently have been "talked down to" by administrators, she said.

In the newspaper offices, she often hears: "I want to complain. Where's the grownup to talk to?"

The visitors don't realize that she and Co-Editor in Chief Jason Roberts are the final decision-makers at the paper, which Weir described as a working lab for students, who, like journalists at other newspapers, will make mistakes.

Weir and the editors think this incident points to a lack of understanding of the First Amendment. Newspapers are meant to inform and to be "watchdogs" over the government, which is spending citizens' money, he said.

Schmidly would not sign a statement recognizing the O'Collegian's independence earlier this semester, but the journalists are working with him on the issue, Krehbiel said.