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December 1, 2006 > Opinion > KPRC distorts truth

KPRC distorts truth

By The Rice Thresher Editorial Staff | Thresher Editorial Staff

KPRC Local 2 News ran a story Sunday that claimed Rice students receive preferential treatment over the general public when caught driving after drinking (“Investigation: Rice students get pass for drinking, driving?” Nov. 26, 10 p.m. http://www.click2houston.com/video/10403017/index.html). KPRC Investigative Reporter Amy Davis narrated a television segment full of misleading and narrowly researched “evidence” that accuses campus police of excessive leniency when stopping students for drunk driving. Davis presented a reprehensibly biased view in the guise of balanced investigative reporting.

Davis did not, for example, distinguish between Public Intoxication violations and Driving While Intoxicated/Driving Under the Influence violations when assembling her statistics. The majority of records in the RUPD blotter from January to October — the timeframe Davis used — that involve students and alcohol do not involve driving, but this fact is suppressed by the report’s lack of specificity. For a report on drinking and driving, noting whether or not a violation involves both drinking and driving is pretty crucial.

Davis also highlighted the fact that student offenses are often referred to U. Court, whereas non-student offenders are often sent to Harris County Jail for Public Intoxication, DWI or DUI. Davis did not mention that U. Court cannot adjudicate non-student offenses or that all citations referred to “U. Court” in the RUPD blotter are processed through Student Judicial Programs.

Davis may have simply been inattentive in her research. But KPRC’s request to the Thresher for a copy of our feature on the student judicial system (“Student justice: How conduction violations are adjudicated,” Oct. 28, 2005) suggests Davis had a thoroughly developed picture of Rice’s alcohol-related conduct infraction procedures — she just chose not to present it.

The segment opens with video clips Davis and her crew filmed of a private gathering at Wiess College during Night of Decadence Oct. 28. In an e-mail exchange with Hanszen College freshman Catherine Bratic, Davis said she attended NOD. It is unclear — and suspicious — how Davis let herself into the party without being stopped by NOD security officials. Wiess Social Michelle Kerner said KPRC Local 2 News did not contact any NOD officials about obtaining permission to enter NOD, a private party for which non-Rice guests must be pre-registered. In the e-mail Davis also said that the camera taking broadcast footage was “in full view at all times.” Lovett College senior Jacki Craig said she identified herself in the KPRC video but was completely unaware of being filmed at NOD.

The lies broadcast on KPRC are insulting, and the reporting was unethically done. Facts that are spliced with opinions intended to persuade an audience how to view an issue have a place in journalism — it is in the opinion section, not in the guise of balanced and disinterested investigation. But the skewed research results presented in Davis’ story should not appear anywhere in a respectable press institution. And none of the evidence presented in that segment convinced us that our procedures for handling alcohol infractions are insufficient.

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