Get off my lawn

Brent Rose
Managing Editor
Greg Kay, this is for you.
You should in no way become a member of the board of directors of CHRY, York University’s student radio station.
Not because you’ve been raising concerns about student involvement in the radio station, but because you’re a politician. As the Schulich director of the York Federation of Students (YFS), you should have no direct involvement in the media.
If you came into Excalibur and said you wanted to become a member on our board of publishers, I would show you the door. Whether it was you, YFS president Krisna Saravanamuttu or President Barack Obama, politicians should never have control over the media.
Why?
Because politicians have an agenda – it’s part of your job. There is nothing wrong with that, but we all know what happens when a person with a political agenda controls the media.
Introducing Rupert Murdoch – a man who runs the News Corp empire, which owns Fox News, BSkyB and countless other media outlets. There have been a mountain of stories about Fox News’ political leanings, and even a documentary, Outfoxed, in which Walter Cronkite explains Fox News was established as a “conservative […] far right-wing organization” for the United States.
Former Fox employees complained about the heavy involvement of Murdoch and him pushing his political views to be published or aired, which didn’t let journalists cover what was really important: the news.
To be fair, Fox News has the best comedy writers on their network. Sitcoms like The O’Reilly Factor, Fox & Friends and Geraldo at Large (gotta love that zany moustache) make news funny and entertaining – that must be why they get twice the audience CNN gets and five times that of MSNBC.
When it comes to Fox News’ credibility, however, it feels less like a comedy act and more like a funeral.
Every news organization is biased (yes, even Excalibur). There is no such thing as a truly objective news source. However, what makes Excalibur and other media outlets like CHRY credible is not our objectivity but our independence.
Once you take away a media organization’s independence and politicians (even student ones) become involved in their operations, it destroys the credibility of that media institution.
If you have complaints to make about how CHRY runs their radio station then complain to other media outlets, ask York student services for an inquiry or work with their YFS board representative (whom I also think shouldn’t be a CHRY director) to facilitate change.
Personally, Excalibur’s editorial autonomy is very important to me, and luckily we have a board of directors that respects and maintains our autonomy from organizations like the York administration and YFS.
We don’t even allow students who are involved with political organizations to apply for editorial positions. I would recommend CHRY adopt the same policy and maybe take it a step further by becoming more autonomous and eliminating the YFS representative seat.
Make it another student-at-large position, and don’t allow any political figure staffing that seat.