Friday, December 19, 2008

Blaming the Media - Again

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to hear M. William Howard Jr. speak at a luncheon. His talk was compelling and captured the attention of a group of people who had busy agendas and heavy schedules.

Because of this experience, I found it especially disturbing for Howard to take pot shots at the media in – of all things – a holiday email sent to the Rutgers University community in his role as Chair of the Rutgers Board of Governors.

In the email, Howard writes:

Rutgers has been much in the news and sadly too prominently about things that cast our great university in a negative light. Of course, we know that this is only a small part of our story. While there is much to do to continue improving how we do our work, excellence abounds here at Rutgers and only skewed coverage in the media would tell us otherwise.
It wasn’t the media that gave Rutgers football coach Greg Schiano an additional $250,000 a year in compensation, unlimited use of jet and helicopter services for university business, and an escape clause from his contract without publicly disclosing these actions.

Howard is correct that there are many good things happening at Rutgers. But instead of blaming the media, the school should be taking responsibility for its mistakes and missteps.

Read an old, but related post

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