Beat The Press will be a continuing series that takes a critical look at media coverage on Penn's campus
The Daily Pennsylvanian published an article on Tuesday January 22nd about the recent student-run Wharton Private Equity Conference. It mentioned how the topic of private equity is quite exciting for Wharton students and how great the attendance was. It even mentioned that David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, was the keynote speaker.
What the article failed to mentioned was the 50+ demonstrators who showed up at the conference to protest David Rubenstein and Carlyle's recent acquisition of ManorCare, the largest chain of nursing homes in the United States. From the New York Times, which included this important tidbit of information in their reporting of the conference,
David Rubenstein was supposed to deliver the keynote speech Friday morning at the Wharton Private Equity Conference, an annual event that draws buyout professionals and academics to discuss the state of the industry. Instead, Mr. Rubenstein, managing director of the Carlyle Group, was “hooted off the stage,” as The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joseph N. DiStefano described it, by protesters from the Service Employees International Union.From Dealbreaker, self-described as a "Wall Street Tabloid" has these tidbits including photos,
The event has been taken over by protesters. For real. The police are coming. They are protesting the speaker from Carlyle Group - Its amazing really - The room is out of control...becoming violent. Wharton staff not prepared for the demonstration. Literally just watching them take over the room .... Rubinstein is speechless and standing there alone on the stage facing it ..... Carlyle bought manor care a few weeks ago and layoffs are coming. Its like - France. Pushing, shoving, punching - everywhere. No sign of Bowie still. Rubenstein just told a protester on a bullhorn to "take a remedial course in English before you go any further."
~BT
3 comments:
After reading an article that you passed along to me, I was equally disappointed to see no coverage of the protest in the DP
BT,
If you were going to be fair in your criticism, then you would acknowledge this article that was published a couple of days later: http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2008/01/24/News/News-Brief.Protesters.Disrupt.Wharton.Conference-3165826.shtml.
Is this perfect coverage? No. Does the DP deserve to be held to the same standards as the NY Times? No.
Further, if you really wanted to do the world a favor by playing a decent media watchdog, you would note that Dealbreaker, as a tabloid, has no allegiance to the facts. Neither reality nor any other report included any pushing, shoving, punching, or any other sort of violence. Nor was Mr. Rubenstein forced off the stage (later reports by the Philly Inquirer corrected this error). However I'm sure that in the conflict between "Propping up Penn's left-wing" and your attempt to provide "a critical look at media coverage on Penn's campus" intellectual laziness ensures that ideology takes precendence over research.
I subsequently wrote about the brief that was published a few days later. I guess you missed that. I have added a link to this post to make that clear.
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