Muzzled at Montclair

Last week, a squabble between the student government and newspaper at Montclair State University forced editors to halt publication as legislators revoked their funding. Though the Student Government Association (SGA) has recently agreed to temporarily resume funding, the fiasco marks a disturbing and troublesome trend in collegiate journalism—namely, that criticism of authority is met with censorship.

The debacle began when the newspaper critiqued the student government for holding meetings that were closed to the press—a violation of a state open meetings law, according to a lawyer that that paper retained. Though the editors’ charge that the funding revocation was a response to their critical coverage, the student government president, Ron Chicken, claimed that the paper had violated SGA by-laws by hiring an attorney.

There should be no question that freezing funds is tantamount to censorship in this case. Each year the Montclarion receives $33,000 in student financing and the loss of that money has meant a cancellation of last week’s issue and the loss of thousands of dollars in advertising—not to mention the loss of news to the student body. Regardless of the infighting between the press and the government, disagreements should be restricted to the editorial page and meetings between parties; it should never threaten the ability of the paper to continue its work.

A free and uninhibited press is needed to check elected student officials and administrations on campus. But lately, the notion that a student newspaper should be allowed to act as functionally independent organ of the student body has been assaulted. The withholding of funds for The Montclarion is chillingly reminiscent of attempts by the University of Southern California administration to regulate the Daily Trojan through personnel changes in Dec. 2006.

Both college administrations and student governments should work to ensure that there is a steady stream of funding for their student newspapers. The Montclarion receives roughly one-third of its funding from the student government, but like most collegiate papers it has historically been allowed to challenge the misuse of that government’s authority. A meddling student government undermines the fundamental role of the newspaper to operate as a watchdog. Here, the SGA’s funding freeze was a blatant attempt to stifle the paper’s criticism, and thus threatened the integrity of both institutions.

The affair at Montclair State is indicative of a much larger problem—that media outlets are too often funded by those whom they critique. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit private corporation that provides some funding for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio, is subject to both funding cuts and personnel changes proposed by the White House and ratified by the Senate. Over the last few years, allegations have arisen that PBS is being forced to toe a more conservative line by a Republican-dominated board that provides about $30 million in funding each year. But such pulling of purse strings to slant coverage undermines the ability of news outlets to function as an independent watchdog of those in power.