Meghan Sali is a second-year journalism student. She thinks The Leveller should avoid calling itself a newspaper due to its overly editorialized content.
The wealth of knowledge that is Dictionary.com defines a newspaper as “a publication issued at regular and usually close intervals . . . commonly containing news, comment, features and advertising.”
The spewing fountain of opinionated foolishness that is The Leveller describes itself as “your irregularly scheduled feisty newspaper.”
Riding right past the part where sensibly-placed commas and regular distribution generally contribute positively to the success of any newspaper, there is an argument to be made for this particular publication barely having the requirements to line the bottom of a birdcage. However, there are certain prerequisites that this “paper” does in fact meet; the presence of comment and advertising is indisputable.
But it’s a challenge to find anything that even slightly resembles news in this glorified tabloid.
“News” in itself connotes the idea of information, the relaying of fact in a way that is meant to better inform the general readership. Or at least that is what any decent set of journalistic ethics would state.
In comparison, The Leveller, feisty though it may be, seems to have none of these objectives in mind. It seems that, in fact, the only possible purpose of the periodical is to serve as a partisan soapbox for individuals to stand upon and rave about their particular opinions.
Take for instance the March 2 issue in which the front-page story begins by stating a group of Carleton students, along with Ottawa residents, have “brought an early end to an idiotic and sexist advertising campaign for Virgin Radio.” Or how about the feature in which the author thunders on for two entire pages about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan with nary a fact or statistic in sight, using merely the sheer force of his own hypotheses to continue pumping out paragraphs.
Call me crazy, but isn’t this something that rightly belongs in an opinion section?
But let’s pretend for a moment that it’s appropriate for journalists to make clearly loaded claims like these and call them news.Wouldn’t it be prudent to at least find a source who confirms your beliefs? Maybe cite them, rather than constantly self-inserting the author as the supreme authority on all things news?
To make matters worse, the sourceless wonder actually has the audacity to claim one whole page for “editorials.”
The hardest thing to grasp here is what differentiates this section from the rest of the paper. If not for the capitalized heading marked “editorial,” it would be near impossible to distinguish.
In addition, the self-proclaimed “campus and community newspaper” does surprisingly little to reach out to people it claims to represent and get their take on the issues most important to them.
On the rare occasion that the public is consulted, it is clear that only those who express a similar opinion to the pre-determined course of the article are welcomed, avoiding the concept of fair and balanced reporting entirely.
The point here is not to argue over one’s right to express their self. The point is not to silence those who feel like they have something to say. The point is most certainly not to impede free speech (although this is something The Leveller accuses the Carleton administration of doing, and on the front page, too).
The point, quite clearly, is to simply suggest that if the editors of The Leveller find it imperative to continue burdening us with their over-analyzed, over-sensationalized and over-opinionated rhetoric, that they leave off calling themselves a newspaper.