By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
Women’s rights groups on campus will hold a rally Friday
against an ad placed in the April 18 issue of the Daily Bruin by
the Independent Women’s Forum.
The ad listed the “Ten Most Common Feminist Myths,”
including arguments that rape statistics, salary disparities
between men and women and empowerment through women’s studies
departments have been inaccurately depicted.
Members of the UCLA Clothesline Project plan to converge with
the Coalition for the Fair Representation of Women in Meyerhoff
Park at noon Friday to demand The Bruin apologize for and retract
the ad.
“We want them to retract the publishing of this ad,”
said Christie Scott, executive co-chair of the Clothesline Project.
“We do want an apology, but most of all we want this not to
happen again.”
Daily Bruin Editor in Chief Christine Byrd said The Bruin is not
in the habit of shutting unpopular opinions out of the paper.
She said the paper is not responsible for checking the veracity
of ads.
“We run ads for weight-loss products, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean that we endorse them,” she
said. “I really expect intelligent people across campus to
see the ad for what it is.”
Scott said after Clothesline leaders met with representatives
from The Bruin and voiced concerns about the ad two weeks after it
ran, no action was taken by the paper.
“(The ad) was basically justified through a free-speech
argument,” Scott said. “I feel that’s somewhat
cowardly.”
According to Guy Levy, assistant director of business for The
Bruin, the paper’s policy is to keep a “wide-open
gate” in running advertisements.
“We do a disservice to our community by narrowing that
gate,” he said. “The positive side of this is that
there is healthy, open debate of free expression and the meeting of
minds.”
But Scott said the ad’s language was hateful and damaging
to the UCLA community.
“This isn’t going to lead to open discussion,”
she said. “It’s so violent in nature and is presented
in such a hostile way.”
Kate Kennedy, IWF campus projects manager, said IWF is the
“counter-organization” to the National Organization for
Women.
“What we see time and again is the lack of truth on
college campuses and faulty statistics that we feel creates a
certain form of national hysteria on campuses,” she said.
According to the ad, one “common feminist myth” is
that “one in four women has been the victim of rape or
attempted rape.”
Tina Oakland, director of the UCLA Center for Women and Men,
said both the American Medical Association and the FBI have quoted
the one-in-four rape statistic on their Web sites.
“These are not known, radical, feminist organizations, but
are mainstream government agencies,” Oakland said.
“There is no slicker way to run a campaign of misinformation
than to attack well-documented facts by casting them as biased
opinions.”
Byrd said it’s been painful to know that women’s
groups are upset with the paper.
“We pay attention in everything from Sports to Viewpoint
in covering women’s issues,” she said. “I get
more letters from people who think the Daily Bruin is biased
against men.”
Byrd said The Bruin received only two Viewpoint submissions
criticizing the ad and the paper’s decision to publish
it.
“If they had written more into Viewpoint, they could have
made a really strong message,” she said. “Viewpoint is
better read than the ads.”
Levy said the IWF paid $1,116 for the full-page ad, titled
“Take Back the Campus! Combat the Radical Feminist Assault on
the Truth” ““ the regular price for a full-page ad by
advertisers outside the university.
Clothesline members requested The Bruin offer them a free
full-page ad to respond to IWF’s. Levy said the UCLA
Clothesline Project is entitled to equal space if it wants to
purchase an ad. A full-page ad at the university rate would cost
$776.
“We offered that they buy space or write a Viewpoint
submission,” he said.
On March 1, UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian issued an
apology and retraction for an advertisement placed in the previous
day’s edition by David Horowitz called “Ten Reasons Why
Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea ““ and Racist
Too.”
“The full-page ad … was not condoned by the Senior
Editorial Board, but we realize that the ad allowed the Daily Cal
to become an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry,” states the
apology.
Members of the Clothesline Project are demanding Byrd follow in
Cal’s footsteps.
“They want to take back the campus to what?” Scott
said. “The 1800s? To when there weren’t any women
faculty?”
But Byrd has repeatedly said she believes the ad was published
within the scope of the paper’s policies and would not
retract the IWF ad.
At the time Horowitz’s ad reached the Daily
Bruin ““ the 47th college newspaper to which it had been
offered ““ Byrd made the decision in consultation with Student
Media Director Arvli Ward to reject it.
Ward could not be reached for comment.
Scott said she believes the IWF ad was just as detrimental as
the Horowitz ad.
“(The Bruin) made a choice not to print the Horowitz ad
because they were accountable to student concern,” Scott
said.
But in a letter to Horowitz, Byrd stated that the ad did not run
because it was already controversial and “quite
storied.”
“It was bigger than just the ad by the time it reached
us,” Byrd said. “It was a national issue.”
Had The Bruin been the first newspaper offered the Horowitz ad,
Byrd said, it probably would have run.
According to Byrd, at the time of publication, the IWF ad did
not have a history and was not inciting as much controversy as was
the Horowitz ad.
Oakland, who has sat on the Associated Students of UCLA
Communications Board, which publishes The Bruin, said the paper can
choose what it wishes to run.
“The Daily Bruin is an award-winning paper with a proud
tradition of journalistic integrity and can afford to be selective
about the information ““ and in this case misinformation
““ contained in its ads,” she said.