For most Jumbos returning to the Hill today, memories of the Dec. 10, 2007 Naked Quad Run have already mercifully faded into the obscurity of the recent past - that is, of course, unless you happen to be a big YouTube.com fan.
In what the Daily can only interpret as a blatant publicity stunt and an egregious transgression of journalistic ethics, the Somerville Journal's Dec. 11 online coverage of NQR included a link to a YouTube video shot and posted by Journal reporter Auditi Guha, author of the accompanying article.
The video depicted NQR participants from the rear as they jogged outside West Hall. At press time, the Journal's video was the number one result of a search for the phrase "naked quad run" on YouTube.com, and it was the only result for a search of "tufts naked quad run." At last count, the video had approximately 53,000 views.
Backlash to the video has been considerable, as students, local residents and others have voiced their disapproval on the Journal's Web site and op-ed pages.
For the record, the Daily does not sympathize with those outraged NQR joggers who simply whine that what they put on display for all the world to see is actually being seen around the world. After all, a Dec. 10 e-mail from the TCU Senate and Programming Board warned all prospective NQR participants to "... not forget that [NQR] attracts many onlookers and that pictures and videos can be easily distributed throughout Internet sites such as Facebook or YouTube." In other words, if you embarrass yourself in public, you have no right to complain that some peeping tom with a camera immortalizes your foolishness in cyberspace.
But you shouldn't have to worry about it becoming headline news.
On the grounds of responsible reporting, the Daily must object to the Journal attempting to pass the video off as an item that legitimately enhanced or enriched their coverage of the Naked Quad Run. The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics mandates that reporters "show good taste [and] avoid pandering to lurid curiosity," but the Journal clearly capitalized on exactly that curiosity to gain exposure for its publication that was not merited by the Journal's reporting alone.
We agree with Journal Senior Editor Kathleen Powers that the Naked Quad Run is a newsworthy event and one that is particularly salient to the local community members whose tax dollars fund police management of and response to incidents arising from NQR. However, there is absolutely no reason to include video coverage of the event. Powers claimed that readers of the Journal's NQR coverage in previous years were not able to comprehend the massive scale of the event.
The Daily suggests that if the Journal wishes to convey the concept of size to their readers in the future, they should use a revered old journalistic technique: numbers. If the Journal cannot convey the prevalence of NQR participation amongst the Tufts student body by reporting statistics and facts like other respectable publications, they should re-train their writers, not resort to peddling flesh to make up for their journalistic shortcomings.
That might be how magazines sell copies, and that might be how Hollywood promotes its blockbusters. But that is not how a news media outlet should convey information to the public.
The Daily urges the Journal to save its reputation and that of the larger news community it represents and remove the NQR video from both YouTube and the Journal's own Web site. Between Facebook, MySpace.com and personal blogs, the drunk undergrads who ran that night will see their youthful gaffes perpetuated for years to come, but the Journal's ethical impropriety need not enjoy such longevity.
