Why to checkout press releases before asking questions

This is a lesson to why press releases can be terrible sources of reliable information.

I received a press release a week ago from Kaplan, a business that prepares students for the LSATs. The release said the UW Law School was the 8^th highest in the nation for the number of student applicants.

With the security threat to the school, I found this information particularly interesting, and I began to wonder if the school had seen a decrease in applicants, because of the security threat.

The threat I’m referring to is the report of graffiti that had a threatening message. Police haven’t released the actual threat, but they said it referred to Nazis and guns. Since the incident a UW Police Department officer has been guarding the entrance of the William H. Gates building, only letting in law students and staff.

So it wouldn’t be all too surprising if it’s affected enrollment.

The press release said that the most recent data showed that the law school has received 672 applicants. I went to the official law school Web site and discovered that they actually have received 2585 applicants for the 2007 school year, and have admitted 587 students.

The scary part was I was about to call the director of the school to inquire about this wonderfully false information. Checking facts really is important at all stages of the story.

 Law school statistics

The Daily law school threat story 

New dean has socialist leanings

Although the new College of Arts and Sciences dean, Ana Mari Cauce, was forced to leave her home country, Cuba, because of the communist revolution in 1959, she suggested strong socialist leanings.

Cauce’s father was the minister of education under Batista’s regime, which was overthrown by Fidel Castro’s revolution. When I asked Cauce if she had ever returned to Cuba, since she left at age 3, she told me she didn’t return, because her parents would have taken it as an insult.

When I asked her to explain, she thought hard and responded in a tone of exaggeration, “My parents and I have slightly different political views.”

She then went on to say that she liked what the Cuban government was doing with things like healthcare and education. She also said she thought the government as a whole was bad.

Cauce said her father was passionate about education, and they butt heads over Cuba, because she saw the new government as making it possible for more people to get an education, while he loathed Castro.

I wrote in a Daily story that her brother, Cesar, was killed in the Greensboro Massacre. However, I didn’t include the bit that he was an organizer with the Maoist Communist Workers Party.

I never asked if she was a communist or a socialist. She expressed a great interest in helping minorities and people from low-income families, and approval of social changes within Cuba’s communist party.

It will be interesting to see if any of this comes out as she starts making decisions about allocating funds.

Reviving rumors of splitting the college of arts and sciences

With the selection of a new dean, some faculty started talking about splitting the college into four parts.

In last Tuesday’s Seattle Times story “UW Names New Arts and Sciences Dean,” beat writer Nick Perry addresses the discussion of splitting the college of arts and sciences into four schools.

The college has about 25,000 students, which is more than any university in the state. It also makes up about 70 percent of UW student degrees.

I looked into the conversation for a Daily story idea when I was talking to Norm Arkans, the executive director of media relations and communications, about the new dean. He said Phyllis Wise, the provost and executive vice president, put together a committee on the topic spring 2006.

Kathy Woodward, director of the Simpson Center of Humanities, and Tom Daniel, biology professor and chair, lead the committee.

“She [Wise] asked the committee whether the university was optimally organized to do its work,” Arkans said. “The conclusion was it didn’t necessarily make sense to move the college around in different ways.”

He said the college was doing fine as a whole and went on to suggest that Cauce might want give the individual colleges more autonomy, but had no interest in splitting it up.

In a June 2006 press release, uweek.org quoted differing opinions on the matter.

One was from Sarah Nash Gates, the executive director of the Drama School, “I believe the college has done a good job for the programs in the arts, although I’m not sure all my colleagues would agree.”

The press release presented the issue as something professors were pretty split over. It’s interesting that the new dean brought a refreshed attention to the issue, as Wise already explored the idea.

 

Ethical dilemmas regarding Amanda Knox story

As many learned Nov. 6, a UW student on an exchange study program was arrested for murder and participation in an act of sexual violence in Perugia, Italy.

It was a hot story, and from the chaos a controversy of ethical dilemmas quickly boiled to the surface.

The news tip hit our desks a few hours before the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I had stories up on the Web, but London tabloids were among the first to pick up on the gruesome murder.

For the first hour, the news room was buzzing with random facts about Knox, and some were browsing through her Facebook profile. We were both excited and disgusted at the horrific descriptions of the crime scene.

A Daily reporter, who also interns at King 5 News, heard about the event when the copy chief was explaining her research to the rest of the newsroom.

King 5 had requested the reporter come into the office that evening, and she suspected that it had something to do with the Knox story.

So in excitement, she quickly announced that she was going to tell King 5 the details we had about Knox, including giving the agency access to the Facebook account.

Only students with accounts setup with UW e-mail addresses can look at her profile and get access to its photographs.

No one knew quite how to say it, so I bluntly told her that to do so would be unethical. We trusted her with the information, because she was working with us, and now she was about to give it to the competition.

Jen Ludington, the editor, later echoed my disapproval.

I’ve always understood how it could be a problem to work at two news agencies at the same time, but this was a glaring example as to how such a situation can be difficult when you don’t expect it.

Another dilemma was that the news editor, Jeff Tripoli, was friends with Knox. I respected his quickness to remove himself from the story, and he didn’t touch anything that went to print.

(However, The Daily Telegraph interviewed him in The Daily newsroom regarding UW and Knox.)

The final dilemma that evening was of what to print. The stories coming from the London tabloids were disgustingly inaccurate and biased, and The London Times, something equivalent to The New York Times, was just as bad.

Yet, Italy was too far away to cover the story ourselves. The solution was to take the hard information from a few different news sources, including BBC, and then accurately quote her friends.

The London Times requested permission to print our story. I guess it pays to be credible.

The Daily: http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/11/8/uwStudentHeldInCustodyInItaly

London Times at UW:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2828190.ece

London Times on Knox story:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2827877.ece

 

Emmert says sex-offender kick out not a land-grab issue

Accusations that UW requested the relocation of sex offenders from North of 45^th Street for a “land grab” are false, said the university’s president, Mark Emmert in Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting.

(UW president Mark Emmert)

The university did offer to buy the five houses owned by Carol Clarke, who was boarding the offenders.

Emmert said this wasn’t because the Univesity has been vying for the land, but because the administration approved of the philanthropic work Clarke was doing with the offenders and wanted to give her the opportunity to do it elsewhere.

The controversy that led to the 13 offenders being kicked out of the area started 2 years ago, when the North of 45^th Street Committee realized how many were concentrated in the area, said Norm Arkans, the executive director of media relations and communications.

“We had great issue thinking through this,” Emmert said.

Emmert asked Gov. Christine Gregoire to have the Department of Corrections relocated the offenders. There were 25 offenders living in Clarke’s houses, and Gregoire is now in the process of getting the remaining 12 moved.

“There are no guarantees,” said UW Police Department’s public information officer, Ray Wittmier.

He said offenders aren’t restricted by where they live, and the move might not have done anything to improve student safety.

CHID professor partially blamed for “Jena Six” protest not meeting expectations

After the Jena Six protest failed to take off October 1, a comparative history of ideas student approached me in the newsroom to partly blame the failure on a professor from the CHID department.

Chaim Eliyah didn’t name the professor, but he said she told The Daily about the rally, but didn’t tell any clubs on campus. He said the small numbers weren’t from a lack of interest in the Jena Six incidents.

Members of organizations that would be interest, such as the Black Student Union, weren’t aware of the protest until they picked up a copy of The Daily Monday morning. If they had been told ahead of time, they might have made a stronger presence, he said.

After explaining the situation, we edited a response he posted online and it will be published in Friday’s “Freedom Speech Friday” section.

Jena Six refers to a civil rights incident where six black, Louisiana, high-school students were arrested and charged for attempted murder, after beating up a white student. Many claimed the charges unfair, and they were later dismissed, according to a New York Times article.

Civil rights issues were initially brought up at the school, when black students decide to break a tradition and sit under a tree that only white students typically sat under.

In response, three nooses were hung in the tree, and the symbol was reportedly repeated sporadically throughout the country.

See the New York Times full story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/us/19jena.html

The Daily Stories:

http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/10/1/jenaSixProtestTodayOnHubLawn

http://thedaily.washington.edu/article/2007/10/2/walkoutFailsToTakeOff