The Crisis of Going on Record at the Prince

by Devon Williams

 

President Donald Trump announced on September 18 that he would bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from reporting within the White House, accusing them of reporting “fiction and lies,” according to Reuters. The outlets sued three days later, and their credentials were temporarily restored by court order on September 24 while the case continues.

The White House is not the only American entity rejecting the media as biased and villainous coverage. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 28% of Americans had a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media. At Princeton, the Daily Princetonian says this hesitation forms less along partisan lines and more around fear of national visibility, accuracy, and source treatment. 

“A lot of people were trepidatious about talking to the Prince because historically, The Daily Princetonian has had issues with naming sources and … not properly attributing quotes,” said Luke Grippo, head News editor of the Daily Princetonian. 

In the past two years, Grippo remembers sources requesting anonymity or refusing interviews because of previous negative experiences with the quality of the Prince reporting under different leadership.

The Municipality of Princeton’s government shared these same concerns two years ago with misattributions, and the Princeton University Administration was similarly tentative with communication on hot-button issues.

“One of [former editor-in-chief Miriam Waldvogel]’s priorities was working to change that stigma around The Daily Princetonian … bringing a more rigorous editing process, making sure that we were accurate and checking everything,” he continued. He states that this helped increase trust in the paper for all members of the Princeton community.

International students are uniquely tentative to have contact with the Prince. The sense of national visibility and public identification could put their safety and stability at risk.

“International students were worried about visa concerns if they were named in an article,” said Grippo.

Grippo says the current board has become more willing to grant anonymity as identification increasingly puts students at risk.

Yet Oliver Wu, assistant News editor, doesn’t “believe that it’s actually created a substantive change, at least from what I can tell.” 

Wu has struggled to find students willing to comment on the country’s new restrictions on student and work visas, shortening the time students have to find a job post-grad to stay in the country or even complete degrees longer than four years.

Nationally, this distrust in media is divided by partisan bias. At Princeton, this is not as simply the case. 

Opposing voices, specifically those that are right-wing, may not be in conflict with the paper because they are not speaking at all.

Wu explained that while polling and getting comments from students on the University’s DEI policies last year, multiple conservative students “just declined to comment” because they believed their views would not be “welcome,” while all interviews he successfully conducted were from students in support of DEI policies.

“It may just be the case that … they feel their opinion is not socially accepted overall on campus,” Wu said.

Grippo noted that the Opinion section has received repeated critiques of perceived liberal bias rather than the news section itself. He says they are actively working to combat this bias.

Social media has also been a spark of partisan polarization in the media. Headlines spin truth to attract the attention of one political party or another, framing everything through the lens of key partisan issues to intentionally gain clicks from an audience they know will respond to such keywords.

“That headline might be pasted onto an Instagram post, and … maybe that’s all people will see,” said Wu. 

Wu says this atmosphere has made him more “cautious” about headlines that fairly represent all viewpoints, and Grippo says the paper now has to scrutinize if a headline is “clickbaity.” 

In a modern world primed for polarization and distrust, the Prince is working to edit more strictly, protect anonymity, and remain objective to ensure the paper is reliable for all students on campus.

For Wu, these changes will take time to solidify the community’s trust. 

“That must be done over multiple years of consistent quality coverage or fair coverage.”