Determination
93
Minnesota
News Council
In The Matter of the Complaint of
William Lass against the Star Tribune
A Mankato State University professor complains that the
Star Tribune failed to contact him for a story on problems in the Indian
Studies program that quoted a student accusing him of arbitrarily changing
her grade.
Background: In May 1991, the Star Tribune
published a story about troubles in the Indian Studies program at
Mankato State University. A primary source for the story, an American
Indian woman student, charged that her history professor, William
Lass, had arbitrarily reduced her grade from an "A" to an "F" because
she had publicly protested against what she considered his bias against
Indians. She objected to remarks he made in a lecture and to a section
of a text he wrote that described violence by Indians against a white
child in the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Professor Lass complained that
the newspaper published the article without representing his side
of the story; in fact, he said, the reporter had never even talked
with him. This dispute centers on two questions: How hard did the
reporter try to find Professor Lass to interview him? And why did
the paper publish the story before it had his answers?
Response of the News Organization: Ordinarily
the News Council's procedures calls for a complainant to state his
or her case and to answer questions from members, then for the news
organization to state its side and answer questions from members before
the council deliberates upon the issues and votes to uphold or deny
the complaint.
In this case, the news organization asked the Chair's
permission to speak first. Executive Editor Tim McGuire began by apologizing
to Professor Lass, saying that while the paper stood by the main thrust
of its story on the Indian Studies program, it wished it had "exhausted
all efforts" to find Lass and interview him. McGuire said that the
reporter had tried to find Lass but failed. Told by an employee of
the History Department that Lass "won't be back," the reporter took
that to mean that he was gone for the summer. Lass explained to the
Council that the school term had three weeks to run and that he could
easily have been reached.
Lass accepted the apology but said he wished that
it had been offered six months earlier, when he first complained directly
to the paper. He asked McGuire to send it in writing to him, with
copies to his academic supervisors. He said the story had damaged
his reputation for integrity and that, had the reporter interviewed
him, he would have been able to document the fact that the student's
grades had not been changed arbitrarily but were based purely upon
objective tests.
McGuire pointed out that the newspaper had, in the
absence of comment from Lass, included in the article the contextual
information that Lass's account of the Sioux Uprising had blamed the
war on whites. On the second question, McGuire said that, if a reporter
cannot reach an important source, the newspaper must "balance its
desire to go with a story against the need to corroborate the facts"
it has gathered.
Decision of the News Council: Since the newspaper
made a pre-emptive apology, the discussion turned on whether the News
Council should formally consider the complaint. McGuire said he expected
that, given the apology, Lass and the Council would drop the complaint.
Lass left it to the Council.
Public member Ron Graham moved that the Council uphold
the complaint, saying that it was the business of the Council to hear
it and to issue a determination. The newspaper based its apology upon
an admission that it had fallen short of its own standard, he said,
and upholding the complaint clearly acknowledges that admission for
the record. The motion carried. The Council majority also commended
the Star Tribune for its forthright apology.
When McGuire said that he had hoped the apology would
erase the complaint, media member Ron Handberg said that it was the
News Council's very process that produced the apology, which could
have been issued at any time before the hearing but was not. The minority
in the 5-3 vote (two members abstained) did not endorse the newspaper's
conduct in the reporting and publication of the story; rather, they
felt that the apology should have earned the paper relief from the
formal complaint.
Concurring: Graham, Handberg, Orwoll, Peterson,
Smith
Dissenting: Dornfeld, Parker, Swain
Abstaining: Florence, Simonett
April 14, 1992
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