4 Wednesday, June 22,1994 OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN VIEWPOINT Intrigue-hungry press puts squeeze on 'Juice' As O.J. Simpson prepares to go before a court of law, it is the news media that should really be put on trial. The media have turned the Simpson case into a shameless circus of sensationalism. Journalists walk a tightrope when reporting a story. That rope blows in the winds of public expectations The people expect to be informed.The journalist needs to inform without falling to the level of mere intrigue for entertainment value. Too often in the Simpson case, the news media and its reporters fell off the news tightrope on the side of sensationalism. Too often a need to know was confused with a ratings-craving need to show. Evidence could be seen in the television's eye as it panned across an entire neighborhood under siege by television trucks. The media swooped down on Simpson's estate hunting sound bites, not factual stories. Television personalities and their camera appendages sat idly outside the mansion feeding mostly on gossip and innuendo. Many times,reporters stooped to mere speculation Unconfirmed facts inundated news updates. Reporters conveyed facts from numerous unnamed sources. Such accreditation has its place, but when reporters rely on unnamed sources to present pivotal evidence, they hurt the credibility of the news profession and sway the scales of justice. Through their speculation and sensational tactics, the media essentially tried Simpson on television, making a fair trial difficult now. When it comes to sensationalism and sadistic ratings games, the verdict is clear: The media is guilty! MATT HOOD FOR EDITORIAL BOARD Banning of alcohol ads infringes on free speech In a recently released report, a national commission on college drinking has suggested banning alcohol advertisements in college newspapers. Whatever the good intentions, such a move would be tantamount to censorship. The report, produced by the Commission of Substance Abuse at Colleges and Universities, has gone too far by asking college papers to stop running ads for legal products. The disturbing trend toward binge drinking on the nation's college campuses needs to be addressed, but banning ads is not the answer. Newspapers, including The University Daily Kansan, have a responsibility to serve their readers. Any restrictions on what a paper can print limits the ability of the paper to inform its readers. Arguments about advertisements do not address the problem of binge drinking. The answer comes in informing the public not excluding information from the paper. The right knowledge may help students see the long-term effects of the weekend blowout and binge boozing. It is dangerous to suggest that the First Amendment rights of college newspapers be suspended without clearly establishing that these ads are the cause of underage or binge drinking. Banning drinking ads from the Kansan or any other newspaper would not lead to preventing alcohol abuse. Instead, it would sacrifice free speech for the sake of dubious results. DAVID STEWART FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD WELFARE Clinton's reform is a positive step When Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty" in 1964, he erected the modern American welfare state. Johnson built upon a foundation laid by Franklin Roosevelt, added a few new twists of his own and declared that government power and money would make everything better. No one, no matter how destitute, dissolute or irresolute, need ever lose in the game of life again. Thirty years later, Americans know better. Poverty hasn't disappeared, and government aid to the poor has only reinforced the creation of a nearly permanent, degraded underclass. The welfare state is an unredeemed disaster; no one believes in Johnson's war anymore. Polls show that a majority of Americans think that drastic welfare reform is a national priority. And the irony is that the first baby boomer president, a man seemingly haunted by the legacy of the 1960s, is also the first president to take a significant step towards dismantling what President Johnson hath wrought. Bill Clinton's welfare proposal would cut off cash payments to any welfare recipient who has not found a job within two years. The government would provide job training to these individuals and would require them to participate in a public work program. If they refused, they could be excluded from welfare assistance altogether. Clinton's plan is a welcome departure from the moral relativism of the government programs created in the 1960s when anyone with a pulse was presumed to have a right to partake of the taxpayers' largess. It requires welfare recipients to reaffirm values of hard work, thrift and industry. It ends benefits for repeat substance abusers so that the government will no longer be in the embarrassing position of subsidizing alcoholism and drug addiction. Clinton also ends assistance to persons who have not yet attained U.S. citizenship; the wonder is that government benefits were ever extended to noncitizens in the first place. Many conservatives are naturally pooh-pooing the Clinton plan as a tepid and thinly disguised example of "tax-and-spend liberalism." Newt Gingrich called it only a "tiny step in the right direction," and Phil Gramm COLUMNIST blasted the president as a bureaucrat-minded liberal bent on increasing government power and abuse. Some liberals, on the other hand, are agast at the idea of reducing benefits to anyone on welfare. No one should ever actually lose at the great American game, after all. Many whine about the possibility that some Americans might fall through the "safety net" which the government must supposedly erect beneath each and every person, especially the children of welfare recipients who may suffer if their parents are removed from the welfare rolls. But conservatives never were able to attempt such an ambitious reform program even in the Reagan administration's heyday. They complained a lot but accomplished little. I suspect that many are now angry that Clinton is stealing one of their pet issues. And liberals are painfully slow to realize that their point of view is no longer credible. Their dedication to a seamless, government-sponsored safety net, while well-intentioned, is impractical and utopian. Where welfare children are concerned, liberals would in effect allow irresponsible parents to blackmail the government with their own children. Clinton's plan is not perfect, of course. But he articulated values of self-respect, dignity and excellence which are inherent in any welfare reform proposal. Above all, he expressed his desire to "repair the broken bond" between government and the American people, a bond broken by the false hopes of his own generation and a misguided predecessor who made an unfortunate habit of declaring wars which could not be won. Brian Dirk is a Conway, Ark., graduate student in history. Welfare reform wrong diagnosis The president's welfare reform proposal is misguided. I believe that the plan is an earnest attempt to help people on welfare. For example, the provisions for day care, however meager, and for child support collection are sorely needed. In fact, I would probably vote for it having seen the cruel republican alternatives. However, the Clinton proposal is fundamentally flawed because it focuses on the welfare recipients instead of the economic realities which put them there. The plan is based on the "cycle of dependency" or "culture of poverty" theory which mirrors the widely held belief that women stay on welfare because they don't want to work or cannot work. That's simply wrong. President Clinton claims that jobtraining programs will help people get off welfare. Training will help them to make themselves more of an asset, but it will not solve the problem because it focuses on the individuals while ignoring the greater reality: jobs are scarce, and jobs with a future are especially hard to find. The shift from goods production to services in our national economy and the movement of industry to cheap-labor countries will continue to leave poor Americans in the cold. It will render job-training efforts useless. The president's plan will require welfare recipients to work after two years. The jobs provided will be minimum wage in the vast majority of cases. But how can we expect people to work at minimum wage ($8,840 per year) when their income would be a full $4,500 below the poverty line (around $14,000 for a family of four) and often less money than welfare? Right now, there is no universal health care, so obtaining such employment means forfeiting Medicaid, a part of welfare (only 15 percent of new jobs provide health care). Without addressing problems like health care and the inadequacy of minimum wage, the plan will never work. When Clinton says "two years and out," he targets long-term recipients who are examples of the "cycle of dependency" theory. But this group COLUMNIST is only a minority of people on welfare. Clinton's plan overlooks the fact that 75 percent of welfare recipients are off the rolls within 11 months. Another misconception of Clinton's plan involves unwed mothers. The belief that welfare mothers have additional children so that they can get more money is part of this misconception. A newborn's care costs far more than additional funds allotted. A plan which focuses on small group is only a Band-Aid on the gaping wound of welfare. It does not "end welfare as we know it." It misses the true problem. There are other problems with the proposal. Plans similar to Clinton's have shown not to work and punish children for their mother's mistakes. Its funding comes from programs for addicts and immigrants which is asinine because those groups are just as needy. The plan also ignores red tape like restrictive day care guidelines. None of these matter, however, when the very roots of the problem are left untouched. Several times during last week's speech in Kansas City, President Clinton decried the single-parent family, but he practically ignored economic realities like deindustrialization and the cost of living which are the root causes of the situation. A plan to "get them a job, any job" is no solution because minimum wage does not alleviate the hardship, and it does not address the fundamental causes of the dilemma. The "welfare problem" has far more to do with today's job market than it does with poor women's capacity to work. Jack Lerner is a Lawrence senior in English. KANSAN STAFF DAVID STEWART Editor KATIE GREENWALD Managingeditor CATHERINE ELLSWORTH Systems coordinator TOM EBLEN TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser Copy Editors Managing editor Campus ... Roberta Johnson Susan White Editorial ... Matt Hood Photography ... Martin Nielsen Graphics ... Dave Campbell Editors Reporters Photographers Angle Dasbach...Alicia Heir Matt Hydeman... Dale Beaulieu ... Lydia Diebott Jamie Munn ... Yumi Chikamoto ... Valerie Crow Lisa Perry ... Jay Thomson Jamael Whelton Copy Chief Kathy Paton... Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 290 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. 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