Keeping CanWest out of FIMS is pro-journalist
This letter was recently sent to Francisco and it makes some incredible points. Professor Burston has graciously given FreeMIT permission to publish this letter to the public.
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Dear Francisco,
Thanks for asking me to send along this email, which was recently posted to the FIMS faculty list as part of an ongoing debate we’re having there on the CanWest purchase. For the sake of clarity, we enter the email a little ways in, where I respond to a recent posting by my cherished colleague in Journalism, Mary Doyle. Mary favours a CanWest-FIMS affiliation, and had noted in support of her position the impressive number of National Newspaper Award nominations
recently garnered by journalists working for CanWest papers.
Cheers,
JB
***
…Which brings me to Mary's important email, and an absolutely vital point that somehow keeps getting buried. The various journalists, editors and others at CanWest-owned papers who have recently garnered National Newspaper Award nominations deserve our vigorous applause. The impressive number of said nominations is a testament to the high quality of journalistic endeavour boasted by CanWest employees across the country. It is a level of quality to which many of our own journalism students rightly aspire.
The point is, however, that these same individuals deserve our sustained applause precisely because they have been labouring under conditions so exceptionally threatening to their integrity for so long. Our quarrel is not with CanWest *journalists*, in other words. It is with the CanWest *owners* and the higher-ups in CanWest management who do not hesitate to do their egregious bidding. And if, as some suggest, CanWest is 'not as bad as it used to be' in this regard, it is certainly far, far too early to let CanWest owners off the hook for past abuses, given the still-very-recent status of some of them and the singularly lengthy and preposterous overall record boasted by this particular company.
Keeping CanWest from appropriating our institutional integrity by way of an extremely cynical symbolic purchase -- a purchase that CanWest owners would make, not CanWest employees -- in fact constitutes a heartfelt show of support for working journalists who continue to battle the forces of press degredation with such inspiring elan. It will say to them: We share your values, we fight your fight.
In solidarity,
Jonathan Burston
posted by Jeff at 7:03 p.m.
4 Comments:
Please note that the library student council has decided to prevent Mary Doyle, a journalism instructor, from speaking during Monday's open forum on the CanWest endowment.
Mary is the only faculty representative from the journalism program who would have been taking part in the forum.
It is my understanding that the library student council pulled Mary from tomorrow's forum because of a notion of "playing fair" to the original two speakers, speakers who were chosen without input from journalism students.
Mary was not included in the initial speaker's list since the library council, which started organizing this forum, overlooked having representation from the journalism faculty to inform students of the two faculty perspectives on the CanWest gift.
Mary was later added at the request of some journalism students.
Dean Ross speaks on behalf of administration for all of FIMS-the MIT, library and journalism programs.
Professor Dyer-Witheford represents MIT.
I would like to voice my opposition to the censoring of Mary Doyle and to the denial of representation from the journalism faculty in this dialogue.
8:00 p.m.
Hilda,
If you've failed to notice, SEVERAL MIT students, as well as professors, have articulated very clear arguments on this blog. Paige, Jeff, and Eano, just to name a few. Unlike you these people have relied on their own intelligent thought to articulate their ideas, and have refrained from using petty and immature insults. You of all people cannot criticize the ability of MIT students to think "clearly and independently" when all you seem to be able to do is spew insults at us. Your arguments have lost credibility as a result of your immaturity.
You seem to have a bit of a superiority complex; we are no less intelligent or worthy than you because we are undergrads. We are simply younger. If you spent an hour in a 3rd or 4th year class you would see the incredibly intelligent minds that this program is producing.
Furthermore, you have been incredibly quick to criticize everyone who has countered your arguments. I'm sorry, Keegstra? I don't see the parallel. First of all, for the most part, we are over 20 years of age. We are not impressionable junior high-schoolers, but thank you for the vote of confidence. Second of all, the amazing professors in the FIMS faculty did not get the positions they hold today by preaching revisionist and racist arguments as fact. Rather professors have told us their opinions and allowed us to form our own. Unlike you, our prof's give us more credit; they feel comfortable speaking to us about such issues because they realize that as adults, we are more than capable of forming our own opinions.
I realize this argument is dead in the water, but your posts have continuously infuriated me and I felt the need to respond.
12:14 a.m.
Just as a point of clarification, the title of this post is the subject line of the e-mail Professor Burston wrote. Furthermore, I agree with the statement because I believe keeping CanWest out is a sign of solidarity to journalists around the country.
and as a sidenote, I have had articles published in atleast 5 newspapers, have been interviewed extensively on radio and television on a wide variety of issues, and now run several blogs. Sure, I might not have an MA in Journalism, but, if you haven't finished the program than neither do you. How can you speak out about this if YOUR not a journalist? Define journalist.
Would you like me to bring some journalists in who don't think too highly of CanWest? Here is a journalist who in 2002 called for a boycott of CanWest: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/06/19/canwest020619
1:49 p.m.
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9:19 a.m.
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