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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 26, 1978)
m anded lerson Conti- Hous- nsaid rs was II ob- ‘r as- isent •ong, i and nted 1967 noon Tin 'd in I the irth, m was the was ) 14 AirM budget issue in resignation THE BATTALION TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1978 Page 3 Local journalists decry secrecy Ptooeey! There’s talent and THEN there’s talent. Scott spitting contest Saturday at the Corps Bash. jPatton sends a stream of saliva flying in his Patton is Corps deputy commander. Effort to top the best spitters in the tobacco- Battalion photo by Paige Beasley By SCOTT PENDLETON Battalion Staff Public officials should not “govern in secrecy,” former Eagle editor Paul LaRoeque said in an interview Monday. LaRoeque and Martin Sebastian, former anchorman of KBTX-TV (Channel 3), had criticized secrecy in public affairs when they appeared last week on KAMU-TV’s Focus program. LaRoeque said during the prog ram that an incident arising from an attempt to obtain information led to his resignation in late May as the Eagle’s editor. He is now the edito rial page editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He would not comment earlier in the summer on his resignation ex cept to say it was “a disagreement over policy.” LaRoeque said that administra tive officials of Texas A&M Univer sity had refused to show an Eagle reporter the 1978-79 University budget proposal before the Board of Regents had acted on it. Administrative assistant Steve Pringle said Monday that President Miller considered the proposal to be merely a recommendation for the Board of Regents. Miller did not think the proposal was public infor mation until the regents had acted on it, Pringle said. LaRoeque disagreed. “In this case, the University budget is a public expenditure and the public has a right to know what’s in it before it is given final approval by the Board of Regents,” LaRoe que said Monday. “The public should have informa tion that is public. Public officials are just that. "They should serve the public whether they are university officials or community officials. They should remember this and not try to govern in secrecy,” LaRoeque said. He said he wanted to attempt to obtain the information under the Texas Open Records Act by getting an attorney general’s opinion. But LaRoeque said that Texas A&M President Jarvis Miller talked with W.S. Pearson, the Eagle’s pub lisher, about the University’s reasons for withholding the prop osal. Pearson then told LaRoeque to drop the matter, LaRoeque said. LaRoeque then resigned, he said, because he felt he could not con tinue to work for The Eagle if it would mean making exceptions to his news policy. In other cases, LaRoeque said, The Eagle had followed the course that seemed right under the law. LaRoeque did not believe that The Eagle should have backed off in this case either, he said. LaRoeque said that the case was the culmination of a series of disag reements between him and Pearson about policy matters dealing with decisions like special sections and news coverage. Pearson said Monday he couldn’t remember his exact conversation with Miller and would not comment on LaRocque’s statements, except to say that the matter was “in-house business.” During the KAMU interview, Martin Sebastian supported LaRoc que’s contention that public officials should make public business availa ble to the media. “They’re carrying on as a public- entity and they should provide us with all the information we desire,” he said. Sebastian, who will be working for a television station in Des Moines, said that some public offi cials exclude the press from what should be public meetings and don’t release documents that are public- record. Referring to the press as “the public’s watchdog,” Sebastian said that “if we are excluded, then they (the public) are excluded.” During the KAMU interview, Sebastian also commented on the media’s responsiblity to report all the news. For instance, TV 7 stations hate to use stories with no visual impact, he said. Yet they must do so since some people rely entirely on TV for news. The station must even carry stories it missed the day be fore, Sebastian said. He and LaRoeque agreed that competition among the media to get a story first improves the quality of news gathering and reporting. Both men identified areas where the local news media could do bet ter work. LaRoeque mentioned the need for more explanation of the news. He recommended more arti cles in a series and more investiga tions. Sebastian said that media audi ences like “self-help” news that in forms them on topics of personal in terest. 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