The Peak

Is The Peak right wing?

By Graham Templeton

It’s come up recently, and it’s in my nature to address these sorts of issues head-on. A few (admittedly, a very few) outspoken individuals have made it known that they, and some unspecified number of “people they know” have come to view The Peak as some sort of right-wing rag, a major institution in the fight against social justice, inclusive policy, and general moral behaviour.

My immediate reaction to this is the dismissive anger I always feel towards people too closed-minded to handle the mere existence of opinions different from their own. But that’s not fair. Yes, there are a few legitimately silly people leading this charge, people calling The Peak “racist,” “homophobic,” and “ableist”; people who got angry about our “Survivor SFU” feature because such a thing is apparently disrespectful when there are homeless people dying on the streets of Vancouver. But I can’t deny that I have heard discontent from people whose opinions I truly respect. So, let’s examine this claim.

So far this semester, The Peak’s opinions and features sections have been host to 77 articles, in total. Of these, only a few were definitively political, and I’ve gone back and made a tally of any of these that were definitively left or right wing. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but we’re trying to keep things simple, here. The results were: 14 left wing articles to eight right wing articles. These are subjective classifications, of course, but I tried to use the most widely accepted ideas of what constitutes “conservative” and “liberal” modes of thought. You can go back and check my numbers, if you like.

It’s important to note that it was not always this way. In the past, The Peak has seen itself as a tool for extreme social change, a group with the explicit goal of furthering one particular definition of “social justice.” Over time, however, it slowly shifted towards the idea that it had some level of obligation to uphold basic standards of journalistic integrity, and to be open to representing all students whose tuition we garner.

I see this as a definitively positive change. It’s the reason that conservative students can have a voice here, despite the fact that essentially none of the current editorial staff agree with their overall rhetoric. In the past, The Peak has been accused of being a left wing rag; the irony of our current situation might be funny, if it weren’t so offensive.

It’s offensive because of the expectation underlying the complaints — that The Peak has a responsibility to provide a voice to only one political subset of students, and to engage in nothing less than overt censorship. These people don’t seem to be able to make up their mind on the issue of minority opinion; if it’s something they agree with, it’s very important to help the little guy, but if it’s something they don’t, suddenly it’s our responsibility to represent the majority of students. It’s hypocritical in the extreme, and it shows how little integrity you can really expect out of political extremists of all stripes.

In general, the response to my editorial philosophy on this has been quite positive; most people have the fortitude to view a discussion of race without diving behind the cover of the word “racist,” and most people have the minimum prerequisite number of vertebrae to talk about feminism without resorting to the word “misogynist.” Most people are reasonable, and have an interest in real discussion of real issues. Most people came to university to engage with ideas.

But some did not. Some think that any publication that does not favour their worldview to the exclusion of all others is definitively evil. They will declare that they can’t “be a part of” an organization that sees value in debate, especially in uncomfortable debate. These people are a large part of the reason for a perception of right wing bias; the more of them refuse to participate, the more the dialogue becomes one-sided. It still is not particularly one-sided, as evidenced by the numbers quoted previously, but perhaps conservative sentiment is slightly over-represented, relative to its prevalence at SFU. For this, only the left’s lower rate of participation can be blamed.

In other settings, the roles are often reversed — the right can certainly be whiney little bitches, when the mood strikes them. But here, our conservative contributors seem happy just to have a university media outlet that does not unfairly exclude them, as do so many campus institutions.

Not everything can be published, of course, and I have certainly received well-written articles that I’ve refused to publish due to the utter inanity of their thesis. This is called editorial discretion, and its inherently arbitrary nature is what leads to these sorts of controversies. I have turned away some creationist articles which are simply full of falsehoods, while I have published others (see: this week’s opinions section,) with which I simply disagree strongly, but which do not contain outright lies.

Different people would draw the line in different places. I have chosen where to draw mine, and am open to discussion about this. I am not, however, open to the idea that by drawing this line so as to allow conservative opinions about immigration, that the paper becomes racist. That is the conclusion of intellectually (and, frankly, morally), shallow people.

Let me lay it out as plainly as possible: so long as I am an editor here, this section will continue to be a place where all students have an equal opportunity to be heard. The English language lacks a distinction between the singular and plural versions of the word “your,” so let me be clear: This is your student newspaper. And when I say that, I’m talking about all of you.