Disclaimer: Mercury policy prohibits censorship as a requirement for publication. Editors provide suggestions on opinion editorials and letters to the editor, which the author can choose to implement. The onus falls upon the author to provide evidence and sourcing for all claims made within an opinion. Opinions with insufficient facts or sourcing can implicate The Mercury for defamation and libel, and thus may run with disclaimers per Mercury policy. Helen Roth has consented to the complete email chain between her and The Mercury being published, which can be found at the bottom of this page. The Mercury has never referred to Israel as “Zionist entity.”
Letter to the Editor,
As a longtime member of the UTD community with experience as a professional news reporter, I was perplexed by the disclaimer on the August 19 Letter to the Editor: Campus Antisemitism. I found Mr. Steinberg’s opinion piece regarding the October 7th vile massacre committed by Hamas terrorists, the aftermath, and its influence on campus life to be newsworthy and accurate. Could you please identify exactly what the editorial staff considers factual errors in his opinion piece? Also, in the spirit of full transparency, could you please publish The Mercury’s journalistic standards?
The Student Media department has recently added professional staff. Perhaps we can look forward to enhanced journalistic standards, including prohibiting the editorial staff from censoring opinion pieces as a condition of publication, as happened before the acceptance of Mr. Steinberg’s letter.
The UTD student body is not monolithic, and as student fees pay for The Mercury, our students deserve unbiased news and full transparency.
Sincerely,
Helen K. Roth
The University of Texas at Dallas
800 W. Campbell Road
Richardson, Texas 75080
“The Mercury often quotes the UN as a source; however, the paper uses “Zionist Entity” and “Occupied Palestine” in place of the proper name, Israel” is an odd complaint given that the original disclaimer on Mr. Steinberg’s Letter to the Editor does in fact use Israel as the name.
In the article that Jade cites as “referring to Israel as ‘occupied Palestine,'” the full phrasing that the opinion editorial piece uses is “Israel’s actions in the occupied territory of Palestine,” and the article refers to the country of Israel by name 6 other times.
I get that this isn’t your overarching point, and is a complaint brought up in the email exchange rather than the letter. But you requested that the letter be published, and if you disparage the Mercury for “ignoring [sources] when [they don’t] fit a preferred narrative,” to not take into account all of the times that the Mercury has used the name, Israel, that you prefer is to commit the same sort of bias that you accuse.
(that the EMAILS be published. typo)