The Crimson: Getting Biased?
Posted on February 16th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
Fifteen Minutes, the Crimson’s weekend magazine, publishes an interview with Judith Ryan today. (Ryan is, of course, the professor who has put the no-confidence motion on the agenda for the 2/28 faculty meeting.)
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the questions were written by the Crimson’s pro-Summers editorial board.
And not just the questions; the article’s subhead reads, “The thoughts of a malcontent professor.”
That’s an interesting word, malcontent. It means “dissatisfied” or “rebellious.” Ryan is certainly the former; I’m not sure that standing up for the interests of the faculty makes her rebellious. In any case, malcontent clearly carries a negative, unflattering connotation, and I think it’s a loaded word to use to describe her, especially in a headline.
Some of the questions are equally loaded. Rather than asking what Ryan thinks the second motion of no-confidence might achieve that the first didn’t, questioner Sam Teller asks, “Donât you think itâs Summersâ right to continue working until he resigns or is fired by the Corporation?”
As if to imply that professors should just sit back and let the Corporation take care of everything. After all, to quote a certain Crimson editorial, they are “ultimately employees.”
Teller then asks, “How much should the opinion of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) matter, given that the rest of the Universityâthe majority of the Universityâhasnât experienced any sort of similar uproar?”
This is, of course, almost verbatim from the Crimson’s pro-Summers editorial. The implication, of course, is that the FAS opinion is basically unimportant.
A little later on, Teller asks, “Some Summers supporters have described the Faculty as âdrunk with power.â How would you respond?”
I’ve been following this issue pretty closely, and I haven’t seen anyone use those words. Could Teller be using the old, “I’ve got a hyperbolic phrase I want to use, but I don’t want to be the one saying it, so I’ll just put it in the mouths of ‘some people'”?
In addition to “malcontent,” Teller also describes Ryan as “radical,” “confrontational,” says she “must enjoy seeing her name in the big papers,” asks if she feels “qualified” to be “leading the charge,” and wonders what it took to “push [her] over the edge.”
Go ahead, Samâwhy don’t you ask Professor Ryan if she’s any good at science and math?
For her part, Ryan handles this pretty graciously. But the Crimson really needs to be more careful about showing its biases. Is the faculty “drunk with power”âor is Sam Teller just drunk?
And Teller seems to be forgetting the most important point of all here: Unlike anyone associated with Mass Hall, unlike anyone on or associated with the Corporation, Judith Ryan is speaking to the press, speaking to the community. Maybe she’s doing that not because she “must enjoy seeing her name in the big papers,” but because she feels she has a responsiblity to do that, particularly in a university community where the freedom of speech and open exchange of ideas should be valued above all else.
If that makes her a “malcontent,” then let us hope that Harvard produces more such rebels.
A newspaper reporter should value such willingness to speak one’s mind, rather than suggesting that it is bizarre and irresponsible.
13 Responses
2/16/2006 11:40 am
In the context of an unedited interview, though, isn’t there some value to confrontation in producing more illuminating answers, a la Deborah Solomon every week in the NYT Magazine?
2/16/2006 11:54 am
Actually, I have mixed feelings about those Deborah Solomon interviews. They’re entertaining, but they sometimes feel deliberately confrontational—and no, I don’t think that’s always the best way to produce illuminating answers. Sometimes it just puts people on the defensive, ensuring that they give more guarded, cautious answers.
Also…the interview is unedited?
Some of the questions were playful—what three words best describe President Summers—and they didn’t bother me. But the questions that are more serious do feel extremely loaded.
2/16/2006 12:00 pm
Wait, my favorite question is this:
FM: You, Professor Matory and President Summers—a woman, an African-American, and a Jew, respectively—have been the most prominent combatants so far. Do you see any significance in the fact that this conflict has centered on individuals who not so long ago would not have held positions of power at Harvard?
Possible answers might have been: “Yes, we (minorities and women) are naturally more likely to be malcontents, unlike those wise old blue bloods” or “Perhaps you’re implying that we should simply be content with being professors, since we wouldn’t have been able to even a few years ago. You’re right - I’m just whining.” What a weird, loaded question.
2/16/2006 12:18 pm
The Crimson is extraordinarily biased, so much so that we fellow students are embarrassed about their antics. They do not speak for us! The fact is that the Crimson’s editorial board is “drunk with power.” Larry Summers has given them so much inside access and such an impression that they are running Harvard that their sense of importance has gone to their heads! Let’s face it: the editorial board is just a bunch of malcontents who don’t do their work for classes and therefore don’t want there to be any requirements.
2/16/2006 1:33 pm
It’s not “biased” for The Crimson editorial board to take a position on the Summers thing, nor is it an indication that they think they are “running Harvard.” Obviously they’re going to take an editorial position.
The Crimson should do a poll of the student body on the Summers question. It would be interesting, also, to do an alumni poll, but I suppose it would be logistically very difficult because The Crimson doesn’t have a comprehensive list of alums from which to take a random sampling in the way that they do of students.
2/16/2006 1:50 pm
Of course it isn’t biased for the Crimson to run an editorial. Nobody said that. What I suggested was that the pro-Summers position of the ed board was creeping into news coverage.
I’ve thought about the poll of the alumni and the students. It’s an interesting idea, and I have no real objection to it. (Not that anyone would or should care if I did.)
The only problem is that the students don’t pay very much attention to what’s going on with Harvard administration. Just give them a student pub and get rid of the Core, and they’ll make you man of the year. And the alumni certainly don’t know what’s going on.
Heck, as Bob Rubin showed, as of last spring even the Corporation didn’t know what was going on.
2/16/2006 2:42 pm
do you realize that FM is NOT part of crimson news coverage? it’s a magazine…
2/16/2006 4:21 pm
Alumni may not know what’s going on…but their donations are relatively important to the school, so it could be one gauge of whether Summers is likely to be actually hurting Harvard financially (as you’ve suggested).
(The previous poster, not you, suggested that The Crimson ed board was biased, seemingly just for writing in support of Summers).
2/16/2006 5:07 pm
Professor Ryan was also done a disservice by the New York Times article on Tuesday. It was more subtle but still less than respectful. The article quoted Summers supporter Professor Ed Glaeser and introduced him as a professor of economics. In a follow up paragraph he was referred to as “Dr. Glaeser”. Then the article quoted Professor Judith Ryan and introduced her as a professor of German. In a follow up paragraph she was referred to as “Ms. Ryan”. Is Professor Ryan’s PhD somehow less worthy of the title Dr. than “Mr.” Glaeser’s? Professor Ryan is courageous and the Crimson and the Times are both disrespecting her, one blatantly and one subtly. Professor Ryan is saying publicly what most Harvard professors believe and say privately to each other.
Signed,
A Harvard Professor
2/16/2006 8:33 pm
Times policy is to use the honorific preferred by the subject, and reporters are supposed to ask. So it’s very possible that Ms. Ryan chose that designation, perhaps because Dr. Glaeser sounds pretentious.
I think it’s important for everyone who takes potshots at the Times—and, more frequently here, the Crimson—to remember that the reporters in question do their best to be professional, and when they err, it is almost certainly not because they have an agenda. Claims of bias get thrown at journalists all the time, and that’s important to keep them on their toes, but readers should know that there’s really nothing more important to these reporters than avoiding bias and reporting as neutrally as possible. So the criticisms so easily dealt here (more by the commenters than by Richard) are probably seen by their targets as brutal attacks on their very professionalism. Which is fine, but just know that it’s not a light matter to any reporter.
—A journalist, obviously
2/16/2006 11:34 pm
To the journalist: All good points, and let us hope that the reporter did ask, and that that explains the difference in titles.
I think reporters do try hard to be non-biased, but often with little success, largely because they biases they focus on tend to fall along a simple left-right dichotomy, whereas the biases in play at both the Times and the Crimson usually have much more to do with a deference to power and an empathy with people of their own social class or background.
2/24/2006 6:06 am
Unfortunately, as you love to pick apart the interview you missed what was mentioned above: FM is not part of the Crimson news or editorial board it is separate publication. It’s mainstays are attempted humor and a change of pace from the typical daily.
Teller asked loaded questions in order to get interesting answers. He pushed in order that Ryan would give new responses instead of typical ones. Given FM’s indentity as a weekly magazine and its character (if you’d read it before this particular article), one shouldn’t be surprised at the question style.
The Crimson certainly doesn’t speak for the student body. I’d be the first person to say that I cringe when I read staff eds that say things like “students appreciate.”
That said, you made a pretty big analytical error in singling out Teller’s peice for a source of bias. If you were to see his prior pieces in FM, I think you’d realize very quickly the style and goofy humor he tends to employ.
He wasn’t probing Ryan to make her look bad, he did it to make an intersting FM piece. The off-the-cuff interview with a faculty member is an FM mainstay.
Oops…
4/20/2006 2:30 am
It’s a tough call, especially because of FM’s unique niche as a not-quite-news magazine. One editor once told me that the best short piece they ran last year was about an art student who filed off bits of The Carpenter Center (granite building at Harvard) and ate them. On the other hand, the long pieces FM runs tend to be serious, unbiased, and often highly politically correct (women in the army, transgendered students in dorms, Crimson alums who covered race relations in the South during the 1960s, etc.). FM is certainly not in the business of making stuff up just to be funny, but it is closer in spirit to People than to Time Magazine in that its purpose is entertainment. Since it makes use of real news towards this purpose there is an argument to be made that it should be more upfront about its goals, especially as not to confuse once-in-a-while readers who aren’t clear on its agenda. However, it is safe to stay that the Harvard student body is familiar with FM.