A political science professor at West Liberty University in West Virginia is facing criticism for banning her students from using Fox News as a credible source for an assignment, saying Fox News is too biased.
Professor Stephanie Wolfe gave students a “politics journal” assignment in which they had to record their reactions to several news articles. She gave specific instructions not to use the Onion or Fox News as academic research sources.
According to the handout, the Onion “is literally a parody.” As for Fox News, Wolfe wrote how “The tagline ‘Fox News’ makes me cringe. Please do not subject me to this biased news station. I would almost rather you print off an article from the Onion.”
After several parents called the university complaining about the restriction on using Fox News for the assignment, Wolfe lifted the ban on the news source, a decision supported by university president Robin Capehart.
“One of our values at West Liberty is to encourage students to go out and inquire and gather information and look at as many different sources as possible on any side, before you reach your opinion,” Capehart explained to a WTOV Radio in West Virginia.
“Any attempt to limit the breadth of a student’s ability to investigate is obviously something [for] which we have a concern.”
LeeAnne Yeater, the president of the student government at West Liberty and a student in Wolfe’s political science class said it wasn’t “as much of an ordeal” as people made it out to be.
“It wasn’t a syllabus reference but actually just a handout,” she said. “It was a paper she handed out, based on the class that week, her lecture on biases. And that happened to be one of her biases so it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek comment.”
Yeater said she “strongly believes in objective news” and supported her professor’s decision to ban the use of Fox News as a credible news source.
“I read Fox News but I am a political science major and I don’t believe using any kind of Fox News is acceptable just because it is a lot of infotainment and not so much pure, raw information,” Yeater said.
Allan Thompson, an assistant journalism professor at Carleton University said banning a news source is different from banning sources such as Wikipedia.
“I don’t think that any news source should be banned,” Thompson said. “I think it’s important to talk about different media sources, bias in journalism, objectivity. You might see in more academic work people saying ‘I don’t want to see references from Wikipedia,’ but that’s a bit different from telling someone you cannot refer to this news outlet.”
Thompson emphasized how Fox News is one of the most-watched television news sources in the U.S.
“How can you ignore what they have to say? Whether you like it or not how could you advocate just ignoring it?” he said.
Brian Fencl, the chair of the journalism and communications department at West Liberty, agreed that Wolfe made a mistake in her decision to ban Fox News as a source but resolved the issue in her classroom.
“In a perfect world, she would have thought it through a little bit better and not made that mistake,” Fencl said. “She reversed her own decision so it all worked out fine.”
However, Fox News didn’t seem satisfied with the university’s reaction.
In a Fox News interview with the president of the university, the interviewer asked Capehart if the university would be firing the professor.
Capehart emphasized that Wolfe reversed the restrictions on the assignment and is a temporary professor hired for this year.
Wolfe could not be reached for comment.
