Newsmagazines shift position on Comm Board composition

Thursday, April 4, 1996

Proposal protects editorial content from interferenceBy Jason
Packman

Daily Bruin Contributor

With little debate, the Communications Board Operations
Committee sent to the full Communications Board a recommendation to
approve two proposed additions to the Communications Board
Constitution.

The proposed changes, submtted by Bruin Life Editor Quan Doan
and Ha’Am Editor in Chief Gary Bernato, included barring
professional members from becoming chair or vice-chair of the
Communications Board and adding further clarification to Student
Media’s Nondiscrimination Editorial Policy.

These modifications come as the Communications Board prepares to
vote on a major structural reform, the cornerstone of which would
be to increase the number of professional representatives on the
board from one to four. The professional representatives would have
full voting rights, a proposal that has met with concern from Daily
Bruin Editor in Chief Roxane Márquez and former Communications
Board member Adam Symson.

The proposal submitted by Doan and Bernato was created with the
purpose of further protecting the editorial content of Student
Media from Communications Board interference. The proposed addition
of professional members caused some members of Student Media to
worry about the Communications Board’s potential to meddle with
editorial content.

"We are looking for safeguards," said Bernato of the proposed
constitutional changes. "The newsmagazine and Bruin Life editors
support the addition of the professional members with these
additions (to the constitution)."

This represents a major shift in opinion among the newsmagazine
editors. At the Communications Board meeting in March, Student
Media editors submitted a letter to the board expressing their
opposition to the addition of three more professional members. The
letter was signed by all editors except Gülgün Ugur,
editor in chief of together, UCLA’s feminist newsmagazine.

After the March meeting, however, the newsmagazine editors
decided that they had not looked at the larger issues.

"We wised up to the way the board worked," said Tram Nguyen,
editor in chief of Pacific Ties. "Student members aren’t
automatically going to protect autonomy, nor are professionals
automatically a threat to autonomy."

Student editors had not looked at the issue from all sides,
Bernato said.

"The main concern is editorial autonomy," he added. "After
taking a closer look at the constitution, we realized that we
hadn’t looked at it properly."

Student Media Director Arvli Ward said that many misleading
statements were made at the March meeting. He added that
disagreements led to an open dialogue following the meeting, which
caused the newsmagazine editors to rethink their position.

The only opposition to the latest proposed constitutional
changes came from Márquez, who continues to adamantly oppose
the addition of more professional members to the Communications
Board.

"The Communications Board has the power to structure policy, to
hire and fire editors, to change the direction and vision of
student media," she said. "I have problems with how the current
board is structured."

Márquez added that there is currently too much nonstudent
representation on the board.

The newsmagazines’ earlier letter declaring their opposition to
the restructuring was drafted with the help of Márquez.
However, the newsmagazine editors’ sudden change of opinions was
marked by the fact that they pointedly left Márquez out of
their discussion.

"It makes me question (the newsmagazine editors’) integrity, and
question their commitment to anything," Márquez said.

These proposed changes, in addition to the final vote on the
restructuring of the Communications Board, will go before the full
board at its next meeting on April 10.