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WICD-TV Slants Coverage of UIUC Student Referendum
This piece was originally written for the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center's newswire (permalink to the story here). Some background for those not local to Urbana-Champaign: the University of Illinois' sports mascot is a native american caricature named "Chief Illiniwek." A movement has been growing for years to oust the racist symbol, but the politically-appointed board of trustees has refused to vote on it since affirming the mascot in 1990. For more information on this issue, I suggest the following: In Whose Honor--an excellent documentary on the subject, the Progressive Resource Coalition's anti-chief page, and the Honor the Chief Society's website.
The symbol is so divisive that the University's chancellor, Nancy Cantor, finally took a job at Syracuse after enduring several rounds of billboards around town urging "Retire Cantor, Retain the Chief."
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Tonight on their 10pm local newscast, WICD, the local NBC television affiliate failed to report the basic facts of the recent student referendum vote on whether or not students wanted to retain the chief as the official symbol of the university. WICD reported that the students "overwhelmingly support" keeping the chief. They interviewed the winning student trustee who ran on his support of the racist symbol. Finally, they mentioned that anti-chief groups would not be deterred and interviewed someone who said they would continue to fight against the symbol.
What they failed to mention was the actual vote, which was 9161 in favor, 4027 against. In other words, over 30% of the students voted against keeping the racist symbol.
An objective observer might consider 4000 students voting to retire the "unifying symbol" of the university newsworthy. One might think the local television station might want to mention the actual vote. A listener to this broadcast wouldn't even have known if anyone had voted against the chief at all.
Perhaps they couldn't spare the extra 8 seconds it would take to accurately convey the whole story because then they wouldn't have been able to spend so much time on the other clips in the broadcast. These all important clips included the following: the weather, the Illini basketball team's progress in the NCAA tournament, a segment on migraine headches, some playful chatty banter about girl scout cookies, and a pre-packaged opinion piece critical of Moveon.org and ACT, two organizations that support a change in Washington this November.
This last segment, a commentary dressed up to look like it might have been produced locally, is actually the opinion of Mark Hyman, the "Vice President for Corporate Relations for Sinclair, the nation’s largest operator of television stations." Sinclair has been called the Clear Channel of television news because of its style of producing news content centrally, and then distributing it to "local" news organizations which pass it off as local news.
Of course, these "local" stations are no longer local--they are simply local fronts for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of WICD 15. According to their website, "Sinclair owns, operates, programs or provides sales and services to 62 television stations in 39 markets. Sinclair's television group reaches approximately 24% of US television households and includes ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB and UPN affiliates." According to Wes Vernon at Newsmax.com, Sinclair "says it's tired of left-leaning news reporting and wants to offer Americans a fair and balanced perspective, just as Fox News Channel does."
Perhaps Sinclair ought to reprimand WICD for its slanted reporting since they are so interested in a fair and balanced perspective.
If you are dismayed by this biased coverage, I encourage you to contact Ray Wilck, WICD's news director to complain at 217-351-8500, or news (at) wicd15.com. You might also drop a line to Mark Hyman telling him how much you like his commentary. You could also call Sinclair Broadcast Group at 410-568-1500 and encourage them to produce balanced stories.
For more info:
WICD
Chief Vote Results
Mark Hyman bio
Commentary on Sinclair from TV Barn
Sinclair's website
See also:
It's Official: The "Chief" No Longer Symbol of Unity
Posted on March 18, 2004 11:19 PM
Comments
Hey... thanks for posting this. I kept hearing about the vote but never got the goods on the story.
I wonderhow the vote broke down along race/class lines?
Posted by Lisa B-K on March 19, 2004 05:08 PM
In this darkened age of political cynicism, the role of collegians has become monumental. Despite their importance, the youth of America has apathetically abdicated themselves of their responsibility.
As an organization dedicated to the inclusion of eligible voters, the R.D.P.I.O.P. is profoundly distressed by this erosion. Simply stated, our nation must reinvest its resources and eradicate our youth’s excuses. We must return our greatest process to our best generation.
As both founder and president of the R.D.P.I.O.P., I welcome the opportunity to discuss the aforementioned with you. Please do not hesitate to contact me by either mail or at 1-740-269-2400. Thank you and I look forward to speaking with you.
Sincerely,
Raymond J. Smalley
President
R.D.P.I.O.P.
Posted by Raymond on March 20, 2004 01:36 AM
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