Dear BG News,

I am writing to you to address the article written for Wednesday, April 30, discussing the USG resolution focusing on The BG News.

I have read your article and remained informed on the resolution. Nowhere in that resolution is USG wishing to censor The BG News. Nowhere is USG attempting to violate any of The BG News’ freedom of the press.

What USG is attempting to do is to simply ensure that the newspaper is reporting stories accurately and correctly so as to ensure that students do not have any unneeded repercussions based on falsities reported by The BG News.

The word “censorship” was never used by USG when discussing the resolution, and yes, I was there as a non-voting party for the entire discussion. What USG did discuss was the potential idea of a way for individuals to see articles before they go to print to aide in the editing process.

From what I see, this is where the censorship aspect may have been misconstrued. This process of allowing external parties to review articles would simply be to help make sure all facts and quotes are correct. It would not impact the overall purpose of the article, it would just help ensure the articles being reported have their facts straight. And, thus, it would not in any way censor The BG News or infringe upon The BG News’ freedom of the press.

Considering that The BG News is part of campus, whether independent or not, it seems to me a portion of the group’s goals should be to abide by the core values of the institution. These core values are respect for one another, collaboration, intellectual and personal growth, creativity and innovation and the pursuit of excellence. In these actions, The BG News has broken several of these core values, which harms us as a University community.

By misrepresenting or misquoting groups or people, The BG News is not respecting them. The BG News is essentially saying that what those students did wasn’t what mattered but what The BG News wanted to report was what mattered. By not being transparent with individuals and allowing some form of a review process to ensure correct articles are being presented, The BG News is not allowing collaboration to happen among different groups. By reporting wrong information with wrong headlines and grammar mistakes, the product is clearly not excellent.

So The BG News needs some reevaluation. It is something that can be a very great resource to campus and great way to recruit new students to help with enrollment. However, it will not do that in the shape it is in right now. There are many individuals within the student body who have lost faith in The BG News. Many of these students are the best recruiting tool this University has. If they aren’t happy with The BG News, new recruits will know it.

This issue is coming from a wide variety of students that represent a large percentage of the student population at the University who came to USG and asked it to do something to help with the situation. This level of transparency and act of taking action is exactly what The BG News has been calling for USG to do for the last two years. Now, USG finally does it and because it happens to be The BG News that is the issue, USG is attacked. That’s not fair.

I am calling for change within The BG News. Whatever that change may be is not my issue so long as positive change happens. Furthermore, I am calling for The BG News to begin reporting events correctly. Take whatever stance you want on issues; just please be sure the reporting and quoting is correct. In order to have an effective campus, students cannot be worried about whether or not they will be quoted or represented correctly on these issues. They should be able to know, when they give an interview to The BG News or have The BG News show up to their event, it will be reported correctly.

— Eric Juzkiw