Front Page or Op-Ed?

In late September, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University, sparking a heated debate between pundits on the benefit (if any) of providing Ahmadinejad a platform from which to speak. The President of Columbia University, Lee C. Bollinger, opened with a speech laced with scathing commentary on Ahmadinejad, even stating that the Iranian President "exhibit[s] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." The overall content of the Iranian President's speech ranged from his controversial stance on the Holocaust, to his refusal to rein in Iran's nuclear power programs. The President also made comments about Iran, at one point stating that there were no homosexuals in the country, and that women in Iran enjoy many freedoms and are treated equally.

On September 25th, the Sacramento Bee* ran a front page story on the speech, which extended to the back page. While the article itself was fair in presenting both sides of the speech as best as it could, what was included alongside the continuation of the article on the back page was a point of contention for this writer. In a separate column was a piece that examined the major comments or claims that Ahmadinejad made during the Columbia speech, and provided facts and data to either refute those claims or to show that Ahmadinejad wasn't being as upfront as he was portraying himself to be. While the article itself was accurate in providing evidence to the contrary of the President's claims, it seemed like it belonged in the Op-Ed section of the Bee, and not right next to a major story.

The fact that the Bee ran such a column providing a point and counter-point look at the speech is great. Would that they would use the same sort of scrutiny for our own leaders and politicians. However, the main article off of which this article was based did a well enough job in the first place to show that the Iranian President wasn't as forthcoming as he appeared to be and that he subscribed to views that just seemed nonsensical and rather ignorant of world history. Does running an additional piece like the one in the Bee serve in informing the reader in any way that the main article could not? Is doing so remaining objective? When one covers the speech of a leader from a country whose relationship with our own is best described as adversarial, it is this writers opinion that maintaining objectivity and neutrality is of the utmost importance. Just report on the event and leave the point and counter-point style pieces for the Op-Ed, not the front page news.

*Note

The original article in the Bee could not be found online, nor could the accompanying article that provided a "fact check" on Ahmadinejad's claims and commentary. The link to the New York Times article contains roughly the same content as was found in the Bee article on the 25th of September.