Wolfe’s Ban Curbs Open Learning Climate and Filters News Objectivity
Stephanie Wolfe probably forgot she was teaching university students when she wrote her syllabus. Appropriately revoked, Wolfe’s ban stifled students’ academic freedom to research and arrive at their own conclusions. Restricting resources is unnecessary and limits the quality of higher education.
Wolfe’s ban specifically discourages an open learning environment and ruins the classroom experience for students. A 2006 survey by the American Political Science Association found that political science professors who expressed partisanship in the classroom received lower performance evaluations by students. Performance evaluations were based on criteria such as the comfort of the learning environment, the material being presented objectively and the fairness of assignments and grading. Harsh expression of political affiliation makes students less likely to discuss their own views and less likely to actually learn material taught.
Despite popular claims of Fox News leaning toward the Republican Party, there is no hard evidence that the resource is completely biased. In fact, a 2012 study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Fox News’ main subscribers answered 48 percent of Obama-Romney related campaign questions correctly. Fox News viewers’ campaign knowledge was the second highest compared to the viewers of seven other popular stations like MSNBC, CNN and CBS.
Regardless of a source’s popular reputation, professors should be encouraging alternative perspectives and original opinions rather than restricting them. At the end of the day, it’s up to the student to determine what is biased.
— Lauren Koa
Staff Writer
Wolfe Justified in Attempting to Steer Students From Partisan Viewpoints
There are various sources which professors deem credible or not, but political science professor Stephanie Wolfe has students riled up from her ban on Fox News. While many believed her actions represent her political views, she was actually helping students seek unbiased news sources in researching for class assignments.
According to former news critic Seth Ackerman of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Fox News has been known for its conservative swing since its launch in 1996. It still maintains that bias; its panel on the Special Report with Bret Baier usually consists of two conservative panelists with a third who tends to be of a neutral party, as stated by Los Angeles Times journalist James Rainey. With dominantly right-winged personnel, it’d be naive to expect fair and impartial views on political issues, intentional or not.
Wolfe’s judgment on Fox is warranted because of her intent to encourage students to seek nonpartisan views; she wasn’t trying to instill her own political beliefs. Fox is distinctively more biased than other news outlets. As reported by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s 2011 PublicMind Poll, people who watched Fox were more deluded about major stories than viewers of other news stations or even viewers who didn’t have access to political media at all. This explains why Wolfe did not want her students to refer to Fox; they could easily be misguided by being exposed to a strongly conservative slant.
Fox News has surely hauled the reputation of carrying the “right-man’s burden,” and, as a professor, Wolfe simply did not want her students to undertake it as well.
— Shannon Kang
Contributing Writer
Unregulated Sources Can Be Banned, But Not Professional News Stations
Fox News is a professional and widely read organization that shares the same sources as many other leading news stations. By comparing it to The Onion, a fictitious parody of real-life news, Wolfe wrongly undermined its credibility.
Course restrictions should only censor information from sources that remain unchecked. On Wikipedia, anyone can post information, and the expertise of the posters is not taken into consideration. By comparison, Fox News’ material is consistently critically reviewed and delivered by a team of professionals. Wolfe’s syllabus was clearly written due to personal political bias rather than to ensure accuracy. MSNBC and CNN often share the same sources as Fox News, pulling the majority of their content from the AP wire. By only ruling out one news station on the charge of extreme bias, Wolfe wrongly implies that all other news sources are relatively unbiased by comparison.
The widely publicized indecencies of Fox News, while numerous, are no worse than the output of many high-profile and respected liberal news stations and blogs. Many rival sources have deliberately tried to undermine Fox’s credibility through false accusations. For example, in August 2012 the Huffington Post had to issue an official apology to Fox News for falsely accusing the network of doctoring footage of a Mitt Romney speech.
In a society this starved of reliable news coverage, students should be encouraged to critically examine the potential bias of all sources. However, only those news sources that are unregulated or fictitious, such as Wikipedia and The Onion, can be justifiably prohibited.
— Mia Florin-Sefton
Staff Writer
