Jillian Bandes, a columnist at the Daily Tar Heel, independent student newspaper of the University of North Carolina, was fired this week.
Her Tuesday “Licensed to Jill” column addressed racial profiling, and contained such money quotes as “I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.”
That’s her lead, folks.
But the touchy content wassn’t what got her fired. According to Opinion Editor Chris Coletta, she misled her sources and took their quotes out of context.
This should serve as a warning to student journalists writing on the Opinion page: you can be controversial, you can voice your own opinion, and you can stir people up, but what you can’t do is compromise journalistic integrity in order to do so.
via Romenesko
[tags]j-school[/tags]