Confusion, anger mars return of DIT's union newspaper

The question of who actually has the last word in control of DIT's student-union newspaper is causing strife at the college yet again.

Things seemed to be going well for the DIT Examiner last week. All was set for an up-beat relaunch, with talk of taking on college papers like Trinity News and the UCD Observer. There was even talk of sponsorship from Independent Group.

It seemed last year's furore, when students' union president Ross O'Daly withdrew thousands of copies of an edition, had been forgotten. The issue had contained an article which was critical of the IT's chances of attaining university status.

After the National Union of Journalists was involved, the students' union council, its highest governing body, passed a motion about the Examiner. This included the provision that "that editorial independence in respect of editorial decisions rests exclusively with the editor". As a result of this, journalism student Thomas Felle started last week describing himself as the paper's editor and said editorial control would rest solely with him. However, by Thursday he was describing the situation differently: "My title as editor is not in question so long as (DIT students' union overall president) Sarah McGovern would have the final say." The union executive, he said, "would have to see the paper before it goes to print and say yes or no" to particular articles. This was a position he found "absolutely ridiculous".

For her part, McGovern was not even as definite about the position of Felle and Elaine Larkin, who had expected to be deputy editor.

"Myself and the union executive are acting as editor," McGovern said, describing Felle and Larkin merely as "working at the head" of a team of journalists.

During a stormy Wednesday meeting of the editorial board - on which they sit, despite being termed "senior reporters" by McGovern - Larkin and Felle were told that the issue of editorial control was not settled.

The position of the union members of the board was that the constitution provided that the overall editorship of the paper should be in the hands of the executive - presided over by the union president. Felle claimed to E&L that when he asked the union side to show him this clause in the constitution, they were unable to do so. McGovern refused to discuss the meeting, but the constitution does say that individual site presidents (e.g. of the Kevin Street or Aungier Street campuses) have editorial control over publications for their sites.

When McGovern was asked to relate last year's council motion on editorial independence to her current stance, she said she was unaware of the motion and would have to refer back to the minutes. She added, however, that she was happy with Felle and Larkin and that the paper was not "going to be a propaganda sheet. If we've done something wrong we will write about it".

The issue remains undecided, but Felle compared his position with that of journalist Ed Moloney in Northern Ireland. "For me to accept control from anybody like that would be a betrayal of everyone and everything I believe in," he said.