A Fine Mess

It is all a perfect tangle of motive and circumstance. Two University of Texas students try to interest reporters at the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, in a story on the somewhat checkered history of a legendary football coach who is about to be honored in a permanent way, his name slated for placement over the stadium. For whatever reasons, the reporters do not take the bait.

The two students then submit their own piece -- an account of how the coach dragged his feet for years after being given the power to integrate the football team in the early Sixties -- as a guest editorial. It is strident, harsh, and marred in a few places by name-calling and recklessness, but it has a core of historical validity. The editor of the Texan rejects not only the guest editorial idea for what she says is a lack of space in the paper, but tells the writers that she will kill their attempts to place an opinion ad as well, calling it a "personal attack." The general firestorm that could result from offending the school's powerful football establishment, which includes extremely wealthy alumni, cannot be far from her mind as well.

Yet there is no question that some of the best editors in the Texan's recent past would have jumped at the chance to challenge the orthodoxy. They would have assigned one of their best people to the task of checking and editing the essay, or even rewritten it themselves as an independent story. Midnight oil would have been burned to get it done with dispatch. Yes, the football establishment would have gone nuts, but the Texan has weathered worse crises, and if done correctly, there would have been no possibility of a valid libel suit. (All Texan copy is read for libel violations anyway by a qualified non-student.)

Although the authors and the Texan miss their chance to weigh in on the issue in time for the big Notre Dame game in the newly christened stadium, the affair drags on anyway. When the student publications board's review committee, comprising one faculty member, one professional journalist, and one student, votes to run the opinion ad, the editor appeals the decision. The day after the city's weekly newspaper runs an expanded version of the essay that softens its tone while reinforcing its basic point, the university president signs a measure giving a student review committee -- the paper's editor, managing editor, and student advertising manager -- sole authority to accept or reject advertising in the Texan on final appeal. The measure, it turns out, has been gathering dust in the Tower for three years. It was drafted in 1993 after an opinion ad questioning the existence of the Holocaust caused wrenching controversy and shredded the nerves of everyone involved. Hewing close to the latest legal decisions granting student control over college newspapers, it was supposed to settle the matter once and for all. Along with other rules governing student media, it had been under review by a commission appointed by the administration, albeit under review for a ridiculous amount of time.

A week later, the Texas Student Publications Board of Operating Trustees votes to uphold the decision to run the ad. The editor says she will sue to stop it. The general manager of the student publications apparatus advances the idea of mediation. The tangle mutates into a muddle.

* * *

That is where the Affair of the Darrell Royal Heresy stands at this writing. What started as a question of whether a beloved sports hero should be shielded from historical scrutiny has turned into one more chorus of a Daily Texan chestnut, a dispute over the extent to which students control student media. By sticking to her guns, the editor, Tara Copp, is now doing exactly what editors are supposed to do, and the mediation idea being pushed by student publications general manager Kathy Lawrence has the ring of common sense. The affair now seems to turn on the issue of whether UT president Robert Berdahl's decision vis-a-vis student control over opinion advertising can be applied retroactively, a hugely uninteresting debate outside the confines of Texas Student Publications.

Justice delayed is often justice denied, and the upshot of the affair is that one of the university's sacred cows was protected. This is not the kind of fierce independence people expect from student journalists, nor does it do much honor to the battles Texan editors waged for control of their pages. But the freedom to make mistakes is part and parcel of student newspapering, and Tara Copp probably did future Texan editors a service by forcing Berdahl's hand. If the situation somehow replicates itself tomorrow or next year or whenever, there is now no question that the final decision rests exactly where it belongs, in student hands. That means that the attempts on the part of the university's own Il Duce, "superregent" Frank C. Erwin, to muzzle the Texan in the early Seventies have been finally turned back (at least as far as the newspaper is concerned; rules are still being written for the student television station, two years into its history). This is a hopeful development. While an argument could be made that paid opinion ads should have no constraints once cleared for libel, editors should always have the authority to decide what runs and what does not.

Still and all, the incident is not a harbinger of happy times for student journalism or newspapering as whole. The Texan's failure to take the initiative, make the article their own and run with it mirrors the appalling tendency of American print (and electronic) media to huddle inside their comfortable frame outlooks while acting the part of aggressive watchdogs. The difference is one of scale. A national media outlet wouldn't hesitate to take down a local cult figure like Darrell Royal, but horrible developments like the rise of underpaid temporary labor are treated with a sort of "What can you do? That's the free market!" equanimity. The shibboleths at the heart of our current predicament, such as the notion that conspicuous consumption is somehow a necessary part of life, are left wholly untouched.

Fear apparently played an important part in the Texan's reluctance to question Darrell Royal's reputation, and fear dogs journalism as a whole these days. Nuisance lawsuits are exhaustive and expensive ordeals even if they are certain losers in court, and plenty of media organs -- ABC News, to name only the most famous -- have made humiliating and ludicrous retractions of valid stories rather than endure protracted legal wrangling. As a result of bad legal decisions that have reinforced the rights of corporations, entities that enjoy the advantage of pockets a mile deep can now threaten reporters whose incomes are in the low five figures with legal actions targeted at them, not merely the newspaper for which they toil. Robert Bryce, a reporter for this newspaper, was recently threatened with such action by Jim Bob Moffett and company, who fortunately backed down when their bluff was called.

A fact emerged in the course of talking about the Texan dispute with a person who was present during the bitter controversy over the revisionist Holocaust ad in 1993. At one critical juncture, the Texas Student Publications Board, which had a student majority, was on the verge of taking a vote on the issue. The university sent down some suits from the Tower who did their best to frighten the students out of their wits, telling them they and their parents could be sued personally and the university would not be able to defend them. It probably wasn't true, but it worked, and they voted against running the ad (which eventually did run, by the way, after further wrestling). A legal opinion generated by the university on the Royal essay appears equally nonsensical, referring to "racist allegations" that did not exist and citing a permission-for-use-of-name rule that was no longer operative. No matter, it had an effect.

Sane fear is a man's or a woman's best friend; the kind I am describing is more insidious, and it is one of the crucial elements in the shift from journalism to consensual-reality management. n