If I had a tail—I don’t, for the record—it would have been squarely tucked between my trembling knees on Tuesday, the second official day of my internship in the Senate press gallery. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, I was sent down by my boss to help man a press conference on the second floor of the Capitol. Dozens and dozens of reporters and photographers were “staked out” outside the two conference rooms. As each senator moved out of the room and into the hall, reporters would pounce for interviews.
And that’s when I started to quake. This is wrong, I thought—surely they don’t mean for me to be allowed around here. I’m two feet from Senators McCain and Kennedy—or, more impressive to a newspaper junkie like myself, I’m four steps away from Washington Post columnist David Broder. Any second now, I was sure, some beefy Capitol Police employee is going to snatch me up by the shoulders of my cheap black suit and deposit me bum-first on the wet marble sidewalks.
But I’m happy to say that my rear is bruise-free, and more importantly, that I was able to put aside my star-struck acolyte status in order to make an observation: That as tense as things ever are between government and press, there’s at least a let’s-try-to-help-each-other-out attitude that I feel is absent in campus politics.
Duke Student Government exerts authority as the sole student-elected group of self-touted “lobbyists” to the administration—the Duke definition of a student government. The rag you’re reading (to save you a flip backwards, that would be The Chronicle) is our local version of the government press corps. Being the only news daily that caters to the entire University, it has a monopoly on that title.
Anyone with C-SPAN can see the tense buffer between government officials and the gaggle of reporters constantly choked around them. It’s no surprise that the same tension mars DSG-Chronicle relations. But rather than being diffused among hundreds of representatives and thousands of reporters, the Duke version is institutional, us vs. them. Think sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated and more than slightly self-important tectonic plates.
The reasons for such general unease are plentiful. For one thing, DSG has a vast and complicated set of by-laws that, for reporters and senators alike, have proven more difficult to understand than Chinese algebra. When a reporter misinterprets floor proceedings—guilty as charged—or when the press picks up on the body’s violation of its own laws (Duke for Kerry rally, anyone?), things implode. The next thing you know, DSG leaders are citing their “reticence to speak,” the exact opposite reaction than should be effected. Speak, for Christ’s sake—speak up and clear your name or correct our mistake.
It is simply within the stated functions of the press to remain in watch-dog, watch-your-mouth mode. There’s a limit to all of that, of course. Hypercriticism outside the confines of the back edit pages exceeds that limit, but a hard-nosed newspaper benefits everyone (except law-breakers) in the long-run. Tension between the two groups is fine, and stimulates sharp reporting; suppressed ire, as seems to be the status quo, is not.
Sometime during finals period last semester, I attended a dinner where I received a gag gift that is now hanging in my room: a camisole and A-line skirt constructed entirely out of Chronicle pages, made more durable (and conveniently waterproof) with clear packing tape.
Gee, thanks—I always needed one of those. As I was admiring the filled-out crossword on the skirt's hem, someone explained the gift to me. “We always give you a hard time about being a Chronicle writer,” said a friend, a former (and formerly maligned) DSG affiliate and graduating senior. “Now you can wear your title with pride. Do your best to improve the publication.”
I think I smiled, although The Chronicle hardly rests under my auspices. I’d add to his request and turn it around to DSG’s distinguished future leaders: Consider the value in talking frequently to the press, in maintaining civil relations and in being clear and persistent with both procedure and interesting events (like Chris Chin was with DevilDVD). If I’d received a quarter every time I heard DSG reps say, “The Chronicle never covers the important stuff we do,” well, I’d probably have done my laundry more than four times last semester. Ix-nay the reticence to speak, the press’ll get the rules down—6,000 undergrads-turned-voters will be better off.
Sarah Ball is a Trinity sophomore and Editorial Page Managing Editor of The Chronicle.
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