The Bigsibling Blog

Everyone by now should know about David McSwane. He is the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at Colorado State University up in Ft. Collins, CO. For those that don’t know, he is also the one who published an editorial in the newspaper which was four simple words “Tazer this, [unmentionable] Bush”.

This was, of course, in response to the tazering of a student in Florida who tried to ask Senator John Kerry un-agreeable questions in a question and answer forum. Forget for the moment that somehow President Bush is responsible for what happened to the Florida student who was asking questions of Sen. Kerry (I have been trying to figure that out, but somehow I just can’t connect the dots), and just focus on the editorial.

The CSU Board of Student Communications which oversees the newspaper is calling McSwane to the carpet. They feel he has violated the paper’s code of ethics, and are looking into firing him. McSwane, of course, is crying they are violating his First Amendment rights. Kids these days, they just don’t understand the term ‘ethics’, or ‘appropriateness’.

If McSwane were working for a real newspaper, in the real world, reporting real news, he would have been fired long before now. The editorial appears on 21 September, and here it is 30 September, a full nine days have passed and McSwane still has his job. In the real world, the Board of Directors or the owner of whatever paper he was working for would have sacked him the day it appeared.

This is just another in what is becoming a fairly long line of cases where students display poor judgment, then scream First Amendment when they are called on it. McSwane has to learn at some point in his life that decisions have consequences, and while he has a First Amendment right to say what he pleases, his employers have every right to can people who make the company look bad.

His unethical, immature use of foul language in a newspaper should not be tolerated if the newspaper wants to retain any credibility as a reporter of real news. That might be okay in a tabloid type paper, or something akin the Lampoon of Harvard, but not an official school newspaper.

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Technorati Tags: David McSwane, Colorado State University, Tazer This, Free Speech, First Amendment

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