Opinion Writer Says the Cornell Daily Sun Has an Ideological Diversity Problem

Opinion Writer Says the Cornell Daily Sun Has an Ideological Diversity Problem

You could say this about school newspapers and professional newspapers across the country.

Noah Farb writes:

The Cornell Daily Sun Has an Ideological Diversity Issue

Since starting to write in this paper, readers have described me as a conservative. In a national context, I find this to be a mischaracterization, but within the ranks of The Cornell Daily Sun columnists I am glad to support more right-leaning views in the often-liberal opinion section of the paper. The Cornell Daily Sun drives conversation at Cornell and even though the print version of The Sun is only published once a week, the website gets ten of thousands of views a day and the social media account has over 18,000 followers. The Sun is a prime place to sway change in our community.

And yet — even as The Sun remains an influential source of news and information on all things Cornell — many students, faculty and alums are fed up with the political and cultural content biases that dominate the staff columns; guest columns from both students and professors; and the letters to and from the editor of this storied paper.

If you disagree, scroll down the opinion tab of the website. I guarantee there are far more articles that could be classified as “progressive” or “left-leaning” than not. The paper would greatly benefit from a shift towards the center to represent the comprehensive views of the community, not just those who lean left.

In the month of October alone, six opinion section pieces written by professors have been published that are clearly aligned with the anti-Israel and anti-Cornell administration coalition that has been quite vocal over the past year. Zero articles from professors on the other side of this divisive issue have been published since early May.

This content skew of The Sun gives many non-progressives in the Cornell community a strong negative view of the paper and causes them to assume they will dislike or even distrust much or all of the content published, weakening the ability of the newspaper to effectively cover the Cornell community as a whole. I do not believe this ideological sway is a conscious decision among those who run a paper, rather it is a self-selection bias on the part of the applicants due to internal views Cornellians hold about the paper caused by the blatant progressive ideological capture of The Sun’s columns. It’s a self-perpetuating problem.

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