On Monday afternoon we received an email from the Vote No/Fight4Katie campaign. It was from Katie Ascough and in the email she detailed why she felt The College Tribune had been biased in their coverage of the impeachment campaign so far. She accused us of using the story about the dispute with Boojum “for the purpose of scoring cheap points for the impeachment campaign”.
Ms Ascough stated that she felt we weren’t reporting fairly on the Boojum statement. She pointed out that burritos were a part of her campaign and nobody is disputing that. She also told us she had permission from UCD’s Hospitality Services Manager to post about Boojum’s Burrito Truck on her campaign page which nobody is disputing either. Ms Ascough can’t say The College Tribune is biased when we’re reporting on what is present on her campaign page in the full view of the public. If the post relating to the Boojum truck coming to UCD had been put up on the SU’s Facebook page, then it would not have been relevant to the impeachment referendum. The fact that the No campaign shared it on their campaign page makes both the post and notable responses to it a valid topic for coverage.
We have already sent a reply to Ms Ascough’s email and so what is written here is nothing new to her or her campaign. We have covered both sides of this referendum. We covered the first petition, the rejection of that petition and the subsequent second petition. We covered Ms Ascough’s open letter as well as carrying out a fact check on aspects of that open letter involving Niteline. Both of those articles were shared by the Fight4Katie campaign page in favour of the campaign. It is our duty to report on each campaign and anything of note that comes from the social media of that campaign page. For that we felt that the Boojum statement was worth reporting on.
We at the College Tribune have always strived to be fair and balanced and because that’s our job which we take seriously. We’ll be continuing to report on this impeachment referendum but we will not be told how we should go about doing our job when we’re giving a fair hearing to both sides.
Issue 3 of the College Tribune will be out tomorrow with 4 full pages of impeachment coverage. We believe that that is fair and balanced.
Rachel O’Neill – Editor
