Following the Emerald editorial board’s endorsement of Sara Hamilton and running mate Athan Papailiou for ASUO executive, people have drawn attention to the fact that Papailiou and Emerald Editor in chief Ryan Knutson are members of the same fraternity. These people have transposed this connection into allegations of an editorial bias in favor of the Campaign for Change, which is the slate Hamilton and Papailiou are running on.
Disagreement with our conclusions is healthy and welcomed; however, these are serious allegations that go beyond disagreement, and they deserve a serious response. Thus, it is for the sake of transparency that we explain the way the Oregon Daily Emerald’s editorial board operates.
It’s true that Knutson and Papailiou live in the same 40-member fraternity house. However, both individuals went to great lengths to avoid each other during the election season, based on the reality of the situation. The relationship between Papailiou and Knutson was not – in absolutely any way, shape or form – a factor in determining the endorsement. This sentiment extends to news coverage as well.
The board intentionally did not endorse candidates until after the primaries, at which point both sets of candidates were offered an opportunity to answer questions posed by the four board members. After much discussion the group made its endorsements based on the information available. In order to reach a valid conclusion – one worth writing about in the Opinion section – each member of the board must be in agreement, not simply the Editor in chief.
On the issue of supporting only the Campaign for Change slate, the editorial board made it clear when the senate seat endorsements were first made that it was not ideal to endorse candidates from only one slate; however, because independent candidates lost in the primaries, we were forced to make a choice between two groups. It was difficult to discern what each individual candidate wanted for the University because each person essentially recited the same campaign points. The logic behind one endorsement carried over to the rest, because in each competition the talking points were the same. We wanted to endorse students, not sheets of paper with ideas – and this became frustrating and nearly impossible because of the reality of slate politics.
Campaign for Change candidates recited slate talking points too, but what they said was more concrete and more verifiable than what their competitors said, which is what we were looking for. We made this idea clear on the day the endorsements ran.
Nevertheless, even if this editorial board had decided from the beginning that Campaign for Change was the slate we wanted to support – which was not the case – there would have been nothing wrong with that. Editorial boards have the right and the duty to weigh in on the democratic election process, and if we did not weigh in we would be abdicating a crucial function of editorial journalism.
Although the perception of having a conflict of interest can be nearly as bad as having a real conflict of interest, sometimes these perceptions are impossible to allay. One frustrating aspect of modern community reporting, for example, is that many editors prevent their reporters from being involved, on any level, with a variety of community activities, under the questionable assumption that these activities would undermine the sacrosanct concept of objectivity. At the University level – a microcosm of sorts of the real world – this level of all-encompassing “objectivity” is impossible. Campus leaders inevitably know each other, especially people in the Greek system, and it is assumed that in order to be a well-rounded leader at the University one should be active in a variety of community endeavors. Knutson could have recused himself from the editorial board, though the board determined that he had done nothing wrong, that he was not hiding anything and that any criticism resulting from the endorsement would come regardless and would be directed at the Emerald’s ASUO elections coverage in general – both news and opinion.
Moreover, allegations of bias on the editorial board are, in a way, paradoxical. Editorial boards are designed to draw conclusions and offer opinions about matters that are pertinent to readers.
We reiterate that the decision to endorse Hamilton and Papailiou was made by the board, not Knutson, and that the Emerald strives – perhaps to the point of over cautiousness – to maintain objectivity in all its endeavors.