Friday, January 02, 2009

What Is This Protest About?

I read this New York Times story and asked, what are they protesting? It seems I'm not the only one asking.

I liked the closing 'graph of the second linked piece.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great, so it's not just me.

I read the article twice looking for some details about the causes of the protest and I'm happy to see I'm not the only one who noticed this slight oversight on the part of the reporter.

I attribute it to the decline of the editorial staff. It would seem to me that since advocacy journalism provides a rationale to dispense with journalistic integrity why shouldn't it dispense with the need for journalistic competence?

If you don't care about getting the facts right why should it be important to get them all?

One possible reason for the protest is embodied in the "no confidence" vote of the faculty. Mr. Kerrey, being the president of the university, may not have paid proper obeisance to the faculty and the faculty is using the student body to either teach President Kerry a lesson or be rid of him.

In any case, the cause of the disturbance wasn't important enough for the reporter to detail which may be the really important news item in the story.

Ellen K said...

It's just another wacky nostolgia for the warm memories of the 1960's. I am sure the Weather Underground is recruiting again. Where is Timothy Leary when you need him?

Anonymous said...

The students and faculty may be upset that Kerry supported the Iraq War... or maybe they just don't like Nebraskans. Who knows? It would have been nice if the reporter had bothered to find out what the protest was about and twll us in the article.