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3 words dan..
Jayson Thomas Blair
Where will the 5 non-liberal arts majors still enrolled in that University get their news?
UIW library boss cancels the N.Y. Times in protest
Web Posted: 06/30/2006 12:00 AM CDT
Melissa Ludwig
Express-News Staff Writer
[email protected] MySA.comThe dean of library services at the University of the Incarnate Word has canceled the library's subscription to the New York Times to protest articles exposing a secret government program that monitors international financial transactions in the hunt for terrorists.
"Since no one elected the New York Times to determine national security policy, the only action I know to register protest for their irresponsible action (treason?) is to withdraw support of their operations by canceling our subscription as many others are doing," Mendell D. Morgan Jr. wrote Wednesday in an e-mail to library staffers. "If enough do, perhaps they will get the point."
The university released a statement Thursday saying Morgan had the authority to remove the newspaper.
"The University of the Incarnate Word does not take an official position on the recent decision to cancel the subscription of the New York Times at the university's library," the statement said. "This decision was made by the administrator in charge of the library whose authority extends to the contents of the library, and thus it was within his purview to make this decision. The university is supportive of the First Amendment, a free press and of the presentation of diverse points of view."
Morgan was on vacation and not available for comment. UIW President Lou Agnese and board Chairman Fully Clingman also were away and couldn't be reached for comment.
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* What do you think?
The move outraged library staffers, who complained the dean was censoring information based on personal beliefs.
Staff member Jennifer Romo said she and her co-workers were shocked when they received Morgan's e-mail.
"The censorship is just unspeakable," Romo said. "There is no reason, no matter what your beliefs, to deny a source of information to students."
The removal also runs counter to the American Library Association's Bill of Rights, which states: "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."
The New York Times, followed by other papers, published the articles. The Bush administration and conservative bloggers and commentators quickly attacked the reports, lashing out at media, especially the Times. Vice President Cheney singled out the newspaper during a speech in Nebraska. In a letter to the Times posted on the Treasury Department's Web site, outgoing Secretary John Snow said the paper "alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails."
U.S. Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter released Monday that the attorney general should investigate the Times for possible violation of the Espionage Act.
The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing the program, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger."
The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, didn't specifically name the Times or other news organizations that reported the story.
The Times reported Tuesday that its managing editor, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement that the decision to publish the story was "a hard call."
He noted the Bush administration has launched a number of "broad, secret programs" aimed at fighting terrorism since 9-11.
He went on to say: "I think it would be arrogant for us to pre-empt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."
In his e-mail to library staff, Dean Morgan wrote of a "change in quality and shift in coverage in what was once 'the national newspaper of record'" and said that neither average citizens nor enemy terrorists needed to know about the classified program in a time of war.
Romo, the UIW library staffer, said she respects Morgan's opinion about the newspaper's decision to publish the reports. She added, however, that using the university library is the wrong way to express his views.
"We understand that pornography and things not of an academic nature don't have a place in the library, but this is the New York Times," Romo said. "Whether it leans either way, it is still a staple and representation of views in our country."
Romo's colleague, Tom Rice, a recent graduate of the University of North Texas library sciences program, said that in pulling the Times, the library contradicted everything he learned in school.
"We felt like we were in an alternate reality when we read the e-mail," Rice said. "Then we realized how serious it was."
Andrew Herkovic, communications director for Stanford University's libraries in California, said staffers make decisions about what they collect for readers, but don't make those decisions on political grounds. Like UIW, Stanford is a private university.
"We would not withhold information from our readers as an expression of disapproval of an important news source," Herkovic said.
Two UIW students studying outside the library Thursday said they took issue with the Times reports, but did not think it was appropriate to remove the newspaper from the library because it's an academic source.
"I don't think they should have done it," said Richard Renteria, a 29-year-old senior.
This isn't the first time librarians have resisted pressure to limit patrons' freedom or access to information. This week, federal authorities dropped their demand under the U.S. Patriot Act for the iden ies of patrons who logged on to a Connecticut public library computer in February 2005. The decision came more than a year after local librarians resisted and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit.
At least one media-watcher said she doubts Morgan's move will have much impact.
"In the real world, it's an almost futile act on many levels," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Ins ute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla. "From what we know about the reading habits of college students, it will not make a difference because they read online."
Seriously though, OK, so the University isn't barring the NY Times from the University, but it does have a historical record, is among the leading Newspaper publications in the world, and 'the paper of record' according to it's own billing. Besides, as I've said countless numbers of times in seperate threads - the swift-boating of the NYTimes just won't stand up to close scrutiny by any standard, but then again what Rove attack does? It's always about what good it can do then, people have short attention spans and by the time they learn that there was nothing to expose after all, they will have long moved onto the next Rovian attack.
3 words dan..
Jayson Thomas Blair
^^and many other blunders since the boy has taken over for the old man.
It WAS the paper of record. Now it is just another liberal rag, preaching the
message of the regressives.
What so many libs seem to forget is that actions have consequences. Okay, so the NYT has the right to publish whatever they think is right, citing the 1st amendment. Well, citizens have a right to protest the NYT by cancelling their subscriptions or refusing to patronize advertisers.
Just ask the Dixie Chicks!
it's only a sanctioned boycott if approved by jesse jackson, al sharpton and cindy sheenan.....
Man, that one guy who still reads the Times in print instead of online is screwed.
Which is precisely why all the people calling for government to do something about the Times -- pulling the paper's credentials, pass a resolution condemning the paper -- are acting foolishly. The Framers of the Cons ution understood that it is best for society that government not interfere with a free press. They also understood that a free press in a free market is subject to the pressures that the market creates and that there shouldn't be any need for governmental action because the marketplace (the People) will eventually regulate the press.
So he cancelled the Wall Street Journal too, right?
Right?
Ha Ha Ha, Dixie Chicks, boy that says it all.
Has anyone ever even heard of this secular school?
Pleeeeease, how does this even get press? My dog farted because gas costs too much, should I call the news?
"actions have consequences"
why is it that red-staters conservative dubya suckers forget that voting for dubya/ head has was wasted the lives of 2500+ US military, has physically/mentally maimed 1000's of US military?
Within a couple months, dubya will have wasted more US military lives in Iraq than Osama murdered people at the WTC.
There is US miltary blood on your voting hand. Don't you forget that consequence next time you vote.
The Consitution is very clear that it prefers, in close decicions of govt vs press, to err on the side of a a free and unrestricted press.
Some right-winger prove that the NYT publishing the bank snooping has costs one life anywhere, please.
This guy didn't even take out the LA Times at the same time when he had the same chance, to say nothing of the WSJ.
He's not even smart enough to be a hypocite.
*ding* *ding* *ding*
I don't why he didn't cancel the LA Times but, as for the WSJ, I can.
I refer you to the WSJ Editorial which explains today how the two papers' actions differed:
It's a long editorial, and worth reading in full. I suspect the Times article went beyond the declassified talking points (as probably did the LA Times) -- whereas the WSJ stuck to declassified material as requested.
I am rather amused by one argument the Times and its defenders have deployed against the paper's critics. Here's executive editor Bill Keller in a letter "sent to readers who have written to him" about the story and published in the paper Sunday:
On the op-ed page today, Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey, erstwhile national security officials, echo the theme:
The obvious point here is that we don't remember anyone in the pages of the Times calling for the prosecution of Joe Wilson, David Corn, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman or any of the other Angry Left loudmouths who drew so much attention to Valerie Plame's CIA employment by yelling and fulminating about her "outing."
The less obvious point is even more amusing. Keller and the two RCs are suggesting that it's not the New York Times but TV pundits, bloggers and administration officials who are, in Keller's words, "drawing so much attention to the story." If this argument isn't totally disingenuous--granted, that's an "if" the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined--then the implication is that hardly anyone pays attention to the Times.
And, maybe that's so.
I'm still waiting on the treason indictments.
I guess they're right in the pipe behind Wilson's.
Actually he's a fairly smart guy and rather mild-mannered.
So he's a fairly smart hypocrite.
Aren't we all?
Touché.
Or a fairly smart (but relatively impotent) hypocrite:
IUW to Reinstate NYT Subscription
How patriotic.
Sounds like the dumb dean got hauled in on the carpet and his butt beat pretty good.
Now he's got to patch up his career.
He buckled to the power of librarians.Morgan emailed library staffers Wednesday announcing his decision to remove the newspaper and cancel the library’s subscription. Library staffers protested, calling the decision censorship, and the subsequent publicity garnered national attention.
Did he at least get to be on Hannity?
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