Earlier this month, student media director Marti Harvey visited a UP editors' meeting and answered some tough questions from EIC Karla Bowsher and others. One exchange went like this...
Marti: I think you do go into stories with an agenda many times. I do believe you do that.
Karla: When do we have an agenda? Because the news is our agenda.
Marti: If you want, I can get some examples, but I don't have them with me right now. But I think I've even said that a couple of times in critiques.
Karla: You've never said we had an agenda.
Marti: Maybe I didn't say you had an agenda but –
Karla: I would appreciate those examples, because to me, that's a serious accusation.
The other editors nodded and murmured in agreement.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
Marti shut down the questioning soon after that. She said she'd talk further only if Karla set up an interview through FAU's Media Relations. When that finally happened last week, Karla followed up...
Karla: Do you have specific examples of that?
Marti: I really don’t with me.
Karla: Can you get those?
Marti: You know, Karla, I would really like to move on from this story and start looking to the future…I don’t want to beat a dead horse.
Karla: These are horrible allegations. I take it very seriously when someone says my newspaper has an agenda. That’s not the kind of allegation you hear and say, “OK, let’s move on.”
Marti: Well, I think you’re concentrating on the critical things that I say. But when I’m in those critiques, I say quite a few good things about what you do.
Karla: You said to my core staff, “If you want, I can get you some examples of when you had an agenda, but I don’t have them with me right now.” So you’re just going to move on?
Marti: I have pointed that out since I’ve been here. So I think I’ve given you ample examples.
Karla: No, never have you accused them having an agenda.
Marti: I have brought it up in critiques several times.
This is where Karla really lost her composure and called Marti a "liar." I cringed when I heard that on the audiotape, but I understand her emotion.
MARTI'S MEMORY
I've attended every one of Marti's critiques, and she's never before accused the UP of agenda journalism. In fact, the UP editors have taken to recording all their meetings with Marti because she often says things she later denies.
More common is what happened above: Marti makes a bold claim, insists she has examples to back it up, but never produces those examples. The only other instance caught on tape was during my final official staff meeting in May, when Marti insisted UP staffers had sought her out because I was an absentee adviser.
The staff challenged her for details, but Marti stuck to her guns without providing any bullets. A UP alum, New York Daily News reporter Lisa Lucas, pushed the point...
Lisa: You said that Koretzky was not here enough and that people had to come to you from the UP to ask you for help because he wasn't available –
Marti: I think we've beat that horse, and I'm ready to just move on from that question.
Lisa: I'd like to know specifically who came from the UP?
Marti: I don't, I can't sit here and name a list of names.
Lisa: Just one?
Marti: I have people coming wanting to come in. I have people wanting to use equipment. I have people saying, "Have you seen someone from the UP today?"
Lisa asked Karla if she knew any of her staff who ever did that. Karla said no. (Listen to the exchange here, scroll to the last 90 seconds.)
When Karla mentioned the above incident and some others, Marti simply declared, "Then maybe when you get the new assistant [student media] director in, you'll feel more comfortable dealing with that person."
I sure hope so. The three finalists for the position visit campus next week. And not a moment too soon.
TOMORROW: The history mystery solved. My fault, apparently.
