SU ban Daily Mail from campus shops

blubloblu wrote: »

So, an apology was printed on the day the SU banned it. Too bad our representatives don't check these things out.

It is too bad that that happened. I saw it a couple days afterwards and was unhappy that it wasn't brought up at the last coucil when the motion was being voted on. Although, as was said earlier, it's one of the problems with these emergency motions being brought up at the last minute in council

Now, they've voted to keep the ban in place. What justification was given for the continuation?

Technically, they aren't going against anything. The motion voted on previously was 'to immediately susped the sales of the Irish Daily Mail in SU outlets pending receipt of an apology and pending review of any apology at a future council'.

Honestly, I thought that it would be repealed too and am disappointed that it wasn't. But, as Larianne said, the arguments against seemed to win people over in the end. Only by a couple of votes by the looks of things, but it was still a majority. Guess we shouldn't make such assumptions in the future. You can always still bring it up for discussion in future though if you feel so strongly about it.

I think my opinion on this has already been pretty well addressed by other people with more enthusiasm for it than me, so I'll keep it brief. Students in Trinity are autonomous beings with the ability to make their own choices. If the SU feels so strongly about the lies that were printed in any of the major newspapers - and I can think of examples of lies and misinformation appearing in most of them - they can discourage students from buying them. Imposing a formal ban on their sale is a political act that goes beyond just choosing not to stock them. I have mixed feelings about the SU, but this move is a particularly stupid one.

Late to the debate, but I was at both councils so here's how I saw it.

First the emergency motion was put forward to stop selling the paper until an apology was issued as everyone in the room agreed it was an insensitive oversight on the behave of journalists and editors alike to print information from what was evidently a confirmed but un-reliable external source. 99% of the people in the room were completely unaware of the whole story before the motion came up and it seemed like a reasonable response considering no-one knew that an apology had already been issued. The motion also stated that suspension of sales of the Daily Mail (the word ban was never used) would remain in place pending a review of the apology at the next council

Then at the next council it was brought forward that the SU should re-instate the Daily Mail in the shops. It had been demonstrated that the DM had gone out of their way to apologise to anyone affected by the mistake, and it was said that people would possibly lose their jobs over the whole thing. Costello put forward some completely reasonable arguments about what had happened, how we had reacted, what place had the SU to decide what paper people read. Other people, both for and against the motion, got caught up in emotionally charged statements that had little to do with the reality of the SU deciding what papers should and shouldn't be sold in the shops. In the end the motion was summed up in such an emotional fashion, with little regard for the facts.

The vote was pretty close, but in the end the majority was swayed by sensationalist trollop (how ironic considering that's what they supposedly despise about the DM). Afterwards there were a number of voices regretting not getting up and saying something on the motion because they assumed that everyone would realise that banning the sale of newspapers is obviously not something the SU should be at.

Moral of the story, never assume the masses will not be swayed by emotion, sometimes you really have to spell it out to them. Twice.