Students Confront Campus News Bias

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 27, 2001 | by Erik Baptist

Despite the general lack of support from the liberal university establishment, conservative college newspapers nationwide continue to spark intellectual debate and challenge the left.

For years conservative students have complained about left-wing student newspapers. Last year Chris Lilik, now a senior at Villanova University in Philadelphia, decided he'd had enough. "When I saw the hate and disgust directed at students who voiced conservative, libertarian or even pro-life opinions on a Catholic campus," Lilik tells Insight, "I was inspired to fight."

Along with fellow conservative students, Lilik started the Villanova Times, a 20-page biweekly newspaper that includes campus news, sports, entertainment, features, humor, and opinion. As a direct competitor of the Villanovan, the university's official student newspaper, the Villanova Times published 10 issues and played host to nationally known conservative speakers. A speech at Villanova by National Rife Association President Charlton Heston received national attention when the administration tried unsuccessfully to stop the gun advocate's appearance on the campus.

Times investigative reporting found that Villanova's bank, First Union, financially supports Planned Parenthood, a group that advocates and provides abortions. Villanova is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, which condemns abortion. But Lilik says Fr. John Stack, Villanova's vice president of student life, assured him that Planned Parenthood wasn't "that bad of an organization."

The first-year newspaper also confronted what it saw as the administration's left-wing agenda on other issues. It took professor June Lytel-Murphey to task for accusing campus conservatives of being "to the right of Hitler." When a local radio station distributed condoms on campus, the newspaper rang with indignation at what it regarded as an insult to faithful Catholics.

Like the Villanova Times, the Oregon Commentator provides students at the University of Oregon with news coverage, investigative reporting, commentary and comedy from a conservative perspective. According to editor Bill Beutler, "The Commentator was started as a newspaper in September 1983 by conservative students upset with the liberal bias of the campus daily, the Oregon Daily Emerald."

Publishing 15 issues a year, the 24-page biweekly has a press run of 2,500 copies per issue and an estimated readership of nearly one-half the campus. "We also are widely read by faculty and in the community -- not infrequently by those who disagree with us, if the content of our e-mall inbox has anything to say," Beutler reports.

Comparing the funding for the conservative Commentator to that of the liberal daily Emerald is instructive. The Emerald, in addition to substantial advertising revenues, receives a university subsidy of $100,000 per year. The Oregon Commentator does not carry advertising and receives only $14,000 from student funds. "Our funding is comparable to that provided the radical-leftist publication, the Insurgent, which has ties to the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and the Black Bloc [anarchist network], which was responsible for much of the property damage during the World Trade Organization riots in Seattle," Beutler says. "We are the only right-of-center student group to be given student fees."

The popularity and success of the Commentator, says its editor, largely is can be attributed to the quality of its staff writers. Not only has it frequently won journalism awards, but its alumni include a former press secretary for New York Republican Gov. George Pataki, a speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and a former writer for the American Spectator.

The University of Oregon has a reputation for left-wing activism: It forced the ROTC program off campus in the 1970s and protested Nike Inc. labor policies until a huge grant from Nike's founder was withdrawn. It embraces such left-wing speakers as Woody Harrelson, Gloria Steinem and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But young conservatives there say the liberal facade has started to crumble. According to Beutler, "The Commentator has a lot of support in the Greek system ... and from the average student who isn't convinced that he or she should hate capitalism and is sick of hearing otherwise." He says the radical left at the university has been reduced to a vocal minority.

Since many universities treat conservative publications as callously as the Villanova Times and the Oregon Commentator, college students sometimes turn to outside resources to support their newspapers. One of these is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which administers the Collegiate Network (CN), a program offering financial and technical assistance to conservative newspapers. From the Aggie Review to the Yale Free Press, it has helped more than 70 independent publications provide balance and foster intellectual debate on college campuses.

With the CN supporting independent newspapers, conservative college students now have an avenue to confront and combat the left-wing agenda of the university establishment.