Kentucky college creates board to oversee TV station content
By The Associated Press
10.28.02
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MURRAY, Ky. — Administrators at Murray State University have set new guidelines for the campus cable television station after the broadcast of programming that a school official claimed was racist.
New written guidelines require that entertainment, editorial or opinion-based programming be reviewed by an editorial board at least 48 hours before broadcast.
"The board will review an outline, script or storyboard before the program airs," Jeanne Scafella, chairwoman of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, said on Oct. 25. "But this does not include news programs."
The editorial board will consist of 10 students in paid positions for the 2-week-old station, TV-11, Scafella said. A professor in the department is to act as an adviser. Scafella said details of the board were still being worked out.
"The station hasn't aired in nearly five years because lack of equipment and space," Scafella said. "We're just up and running."
Several offensive programs have been aired — including rebroadcasts of football games containing profanity and an eight-minute animated version of the Professor Hobo comic strip that appears in the Murray State News, Provost Gary Brockway said.
The administration was particularly distressed by the cartoon's fictional Black College, a dorm specifically for black students, Brockway said.
Paducah graduate student Justin Young, who produces the cartoon and comic strip with senior graphic design major David Rothwell, said it was a pun on White Residential College.
Young said he resented Brockway's calling the material racist.
The cartoon portrayed segregation, Brockway said, which is a racist idea.
Young, who was asked to be on the board but declined because of his involvement with most of the station's programming, said the administration was sending the wrong message to its journalism students.
"On one hand, classes are teaching that the government cannot control what is said by the media, and on the other hand, the administration is trying to control the media on campus," Young said in a statement. "I see a journalism department that is only allowed to produce public relations messages for the university as a scary and disturbing thought."
Brockway said the process was modeled after the Murray State News' editorial board and said that all editorial decisions would be handled by the students. He said he did not see the guidelines as a violation of the students' free-speech rights.
"We may have controversial programming. But if we have responsible students in charge as an editorial board, they will make responsible choices," Brockway said.
Murray State administrators will soon hear from the state's Society of Professional Journalists.
Jim Highland, vice president of campus chapter affairs for the organization, says the school's reaction may constitute a violation of the First Amendment.
"They may have gone a wee bit too far," said Highland, a journalism professor at Western Kentucky University. "The First Amendment doesn't say anything about 'great' journalism. It just says 'free.' These things happen far too often."
Highland said the organization would try to contact Murray State administrators.
Murray State is a state-supported school with an enrollment of about 10,000 in western Kentucky, about 15 miles from the Tennessee line.
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