As a newspaper, it is our job to report as factually as possible and to get both sides of an issue. Last week, we were alerted to news that adjuncts at Union County College, the bulk of teaching positions at the two-year institution, were likely to have the number of courses they teach cut due to provisions of the new national healthcare law better known as ObamaCare.
We assigned a reporter and he contacted both the union representative for the adjuncts as well as the administration to gather background on the issue as well as for comments. Then we had our reporter go to the meeting to hear the discussion firsthand. As we reported, the issue is that under ObamaCare, the college would have to offer healthcare coverage to all employees who work 30 hours or more. The college is concerned that when outside preparation time is added to classroom hours, an adjunct’s work hours will exceed 30 hours. The Internal Revenue Service has yet to announce the final rules on how much preparation time will be calculated to an adjunct’s total work hours.
Our reporter started taking notes and interviewed a few adjuncts as well as a vice-president with the college. When the school’s public relations representative, who was sitting next to our reporter for most of the meeting, decided he did not like how the discussion was going, he decided we, the press, should not be there and kicked our reporter out. Remember, UCC is a public facility, not a private institution.
The PR representative called the newspaper telling us that sending a reporter to the meeting without first calling him or the college was a “slap in the face” to the college, as he was concerned the story would not be balanced. When told we were asked to cover the meeting, he said only the college (the administration) could invite us. As a newspaper, we do not wait for public relations representatives to invite us, as they tend to only want “good press.” This was not advertised to us as a controlled press conference, but as a forum between the adjuncts and the administration. Our job is to be as objective as possible, which is what we believe we accomplished in our report.
This discussion, in our opinion, is important be- cause someone – students through tuition hikes or taxpayers through even higher county taxes – are going to have to pay for this added benefit.
From Westfield Leader, page 4.
