As a newspaper, there are few things we support as strongly as free speech. The ability of students to deliver news and opinions to the University community is especially important, and we hate to think of any attempt to block that from happening.
Understandably, we were surprised when we heard about the theft of 10,000 copies of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper at UA, on Oct. 8. Like many people, we wanted to know more about what happened, and a barrage of reports from the Wildcat didn’t disappoint — at least initially.
But now, more than a month later, we’re waiting for the time we don’t see article after article, editorial after editorial, implicating students and one particular fraternity in a case the UA Police department has already closed.
The Wildcat has been unable to cover the incident fairly, and the number of people who care about the story is falling fast. The paper’s own so-called investigation is hard to differentiate from an attack on Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity that the Wildcat is accusing of stealing the 10,000 copies.
Too many articles have implied frat members wanted to keep students from reading an item in the paper’s police beat in which a student reported she may have been drugged at one of the fraternity’s parties. Our favorite article was one that came with a poll asking readers: “Do you think stealing 10,000 papers is crime?” (Still, nearly 25 percent said no.)
Wildcat editorials have repeatedly said the incident was the fraternity’s effort to silence the paper and violate First Amendment rights, but police weren’t convinced and closed the case, without finding enough proof to make arrests.
We’re not saying fraternity members didn’t steal the papers, but unlike the Wildcat staff, we’re not saying they did. The “evidence” put out by the paper — a piece of fraternity members’ homework in a pile of stolen papers and some e-mails from nonmembers saying frat members were responsible — doesn’t go nearly as far as the Wildcat wishes it did to implicate the students it believes committed the crime.
We’ve kept quiet about the case for more than a month, expecting it to die down and become something the paper handles on its own. But every time we want to check up on our friends to the south, we find another story with questionable, accusatory reporting that we already know about.
Comments on the Wildcat’s Web site show we’re not alone on this one.
Friday’s 3,100-word article, “Greek Board finds Phi Psi not responsible for paper theft (w/ hearing transcripts),” had comments from readers saying how ready they were for the paper to move on.
“Awesome, let’s have more cover stories about the same thing,” one reader wrote sarcastically. “The Daily Wildcat is still not going to let this go are they,” wrote another.
Please, don’t think we’re saying the theft is unimportant. Even more, please don’t think we wouldn’t care if our papers were stolen. But when the paper is so involved in its own case, it’s not doing any service to its readers, who — like us — are ready to move on.
