By Josh Bennett

Editor-in-Chief

Over the past weekend, I received an email from the Editor-in-Chief from The Daily Titan at CSU Fullerton, Samuel Mountjoy, directing myself and other papers in the CSU system to read their editorial from the April 23 issue of The Daily Titan.

In their editorial they discuss the continuous struggles that they had with their University’s media relations department when trying to collect information for potential stories. The requests for information would usually be delayed or denied; making stories about the University that would be beneficial for CSUF students, faculty, and the surrounding community go untold. Information that they would receive, however, would be edited and watered down by another person that wasn’t the intended source. They also explained how they are combating this and challenged their school President to end the information roadblock set up by the CSUF media relations department.

In my nearly 2 years here at The Runner, there have been many cases where requests for information or for interviews have also been delayed, denied, edited, or just flat out ignored for whatever reason they give to us, no matter what the story was about.

It’s scenarios like this which makes me wonder if certain information is being hidden away or overprotected to make sure it never sees the light of day and so that the public can never see anything that happens behind the scenes, whether it be normal, everyday business or illegal and shady. Ignoring requests for public information and for other sources makes me think it’s the latter.

Luckily for The Runner, we don’t have as nearly a severe problem as The Daily Titan had, but it’s refreshing to know that our student First Amendment rights are being protected, thanks to the Student Press Law Center.

I also thank Mountjoy and his staff at The Daily Titan for making this public, not only so that they can stop being stonewalled, but that other CSU administration systems can’t follow suit of the CSUF method of media relations. Now that this is public news, other student newspapers, like this one, can prevent this from happening on their own campuses in the future.

So even though The Runner’s problems are usually far and few, which involves some gatekeepers of information and hesitance on any news that might draw the university in a negative light, I feel that this piece will hopefully open the eyes of members of the CSU administrations and media relations departments, so that they aren’t completely lambasted and exposed like CSUF was in this editorial. Hopefully they will be more willing to share information with their student media sources and won’t anger the voice of their school.

This is a fantastic step in the right direction for the future of the media. Hopefully there will be a time where this is no longer a major issue when it comes to reporting.

You can read the Daily Titan’s editorial here.