As Student Media, we strive to amplify the voices of the Washburn community, but this becomes difficult when voices unnecessarily hide behind the curtain of anonymity.
When we write articles with anonymous sources, it lowers the credibility of both the source and us as a news organization. If a name isn’t attached, then who’s to say we didn’t just make it up? While we know that a credible source said the quote, our audience members don’t.
We understand that some topics are sensitive and we respect that. Everyone has a right not to speak with us.
But we are only trying to amplify your voice. We aren’t looking to change your words or twist them to fit our needs. We do our best to put out accurate information representing our community members.
If there’s a problem within Washburn or policies we have, people often don’t want to talk on the record, but then how do our students even know there is a problem? Transparency is key, and people deserve to know what’s going on.
We serve Washburn by getting information out to the public. We can’t do this if people want to hide behind anonymity.
If issues are present, and people are upset about it, then we want to capture that emotion. Recently in the last few weeks there have been multiple stories happening on our campus and people have only wanted to talk to us if they could be anonymous. For the incident regarding the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority in the beginning of March, there were conflicting stories Student Media was being told. Off the record, there was a lot more said. However, without someone going on record about it, we cannot publish information when we don’t have someone to officially back up the statements.
But then we come into a lose-lose situation.
If we publish the story with an anonymous source, then it won’t be as strong as a student’s voice. But if we don’t have that source at all, we still don’t have a strong voice for the article. Either way, the information in it becomes weak even if it’s 100% accurate.
Ask yourself as a reader who you would trust more. Would you trust an article that has information from a credible person with clear relevance to the topic, or would you trust an article that had information but only from an anonymous source?
Anonymous voices are quiet voices that can be easily ignored. That is the opposite of what we want to do.
Acting as media, we are here to serve you. We help share the voices of people who are struggling to speak out but don’t have the resources necessary such as the platform, time or courage to say what’s on their mind.
Help us get your voice across campus. Make yourself known. Be bold. Stand your ground.
We need to be heard but to do that, we need to be loud.
Edited by Jeremy Ford and Morgan Albrecht
