By now it’s cliche to attack mainstream television news outlets for spreading sensationalism, manufactured controversy and downright misinformation. When an event like the airing of a homemade sex video on Student-Run Television is blown out of proportion, however, it tarnishes UCSD’s reputation and vastly misrepresents a more unexciting truth at the university’s expense.

Coverage of the event, even on local television stations, manufactured divisions between UCSD students, when very few students watched the broadcast and even fewer harbor strong opinions about it. Despite what the media outlets and filmmaker Steve York himself may have hoped for, the tape hasn’t galvanized students; rather, the conflict is something the university, Associated Students and SRTV will likely work out between themselves.

The butchering of the coverage stemmed in part from the university’s refusal to comment on the incident, leading media outlets to fill the resulting information void with token, uninformed spokespeople, including students mined from uninvolved groups like Campus Crusade for Christ.

In one sorry example, MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” — which had York and SRTV station manager Chelsea Welch appear on Feb. 21 — misidentified UCSD as “the University of San Diego” and framed the controversy as, “A porn movie at a public institution’s student-run TV station — should you as taxpayers be paying for it?” Host Joe Scarborough ignored Welch’s assertations that SRTV is funded solely by self-assessed student fees, failing to acknowledge the real, and very important, issue at hand: the ongoing dispute between student media and a university that claims to allow students to settle their own affairs, but establishes oversight committees and initiates investigations, at the same time.