Although there were protestors at Ward Churchills speech last night at the EMU Ballroom, and the Commentator was on hand to record and report on the speech, despite what the Ol’ Dirty Emerald seems to believe, they were not one and the same. In an instance of journalistic laziness (or sleep-deprivation), a photo in which Ward Churchill is being interviewed by The Commentator is captioned as “Students Claire Herbert, left and Michael Brown argue with protestors outside the EMU Thursday. Members of College Republicans held a protest before and during Ward Churchill’s speech.” In fact, I was in the middle of interviewing Dr Churchill when the picture was taken, and was sitting directly in front of him with a voice recorder, just to the left of the photo frame.

I am willing to give the Emerald the benefit of the doubt, and assume the caption was the result of a simple oversight. Having been present for the entire time that Dr Churchill was sitting on the bench where he is depicted, I can concretely say that there were no “protestors” as such for that 40-some minute time period. I understand that any publication is uninterested in mentioning another publication, but the caption is at best patently false, and at worst implies that The Commentator was somehow affiliated with the protestors, and not participating in an amicable interview.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 14:02 by Niedermeyer and is filed under Ol' Dirty Emerald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.