Response to ‘Letter to the Editor’ from Issue 18
It is a common practice to interview sources for their opinions on a topic in the news. This is what we call a “man on the street” style story, in which reporters interview random people for their opinions. In the article “Students share thoughts about recent political rallies,” the writer did just that. In her interviews, people expressed their honest opinions. As we do not censor people’s thoughts, they may have come across as very harsh to some readers.
As the students interviewed did attend the rallies, they are considered first hand, valid sources. None of our staff writers were able to attend the rallies, so we relied on other students for information as we very often do. With our small, unpaid staff, it is not possible to travel to all events for coverage. As for our relying on another news site for information, since we were unable to attend the event, we relied on them for some factual information—the number of people at the rally. Quoting facts does not equate to plagiarism, especially when we include where we found the information.
The article does seem to highlight only one perspective of Mr. Trump. However, efforts were made to contact known supporters, but they did not respond before the Advocate went to print. Perhaps we should have been transparent about our attempts in the article. In order to correct this mistake we have followed up our first article with one in this issue featuring interviews with some of Mr. Trump’s supporters. Despite overwhelming negative thoughts concerning Trump appearing in the Threefold recently, all have been in the form of students’ and others’ opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Threefold staff.
Kacie Galloway
Editor
gallowayks@jbu.edu