Utah--everything that USU puts out on those two topics now has got to 

 go through the administration. It has got to be cleared by someone in 

 the administration, in the president's office. Now that's perfectly 

 legal. It's perfectly ethical and it's in order as far as it goes. I have 

 some problems with it and they are basic problems I guess that most 

 journalists would have. I guess in the worst, or possibly the best of 

 all situations here, if we indeed, as journalists, are going to get 

 anything out of anybody at USU on the Sagebrush Rebellion or the MX 

 missile, we are, in a sense, going to have to end-run the 

 administration. We're going to have to go around this agency within 

 the university structure to get the news that we want to get, to get 

 the points of view of people on that faculty who are experts in these 

 fields. Now I'll be 100 percent frank with you, I'd just as soon depend 

 on information services. They've been dependable in the past. 

 They've done an excellent job for us. We have had no reason or cause 

 whatsoever--or very little--to worry about the kinds of things that 

 they're putting out. It just makes our job a little easier. But that's 

 apparently not the way it's going to be in the future. We're going to 

 have to deal with the situation. I wanted to bring this up because I 

 knew that most of you in the room had heard Dr. Shanks yesterday and 

 had participated in various ways in the Sagebrush Rebellion discussion, 

 but it's a beautiful example of what can happen when the news 

 media--journalists in general--take a topic and really run with it. Now 

 this is a really well written news release. Dr. Shanks is quoted 

 properly. He has some very strong opinions about the Sagebrush 

 Rebellion as you know, and they just happened to get into print. It 

 has thrown the USU administration into a bit of a tailspin and by this 

 happening it's causing everybody some problems, not the least of 

 which is going to be the College of Natural Resources at USU and their 

 future dealing with Utah State Legislators, who are now toying with 

 some funding for an addition to the building that they need to conduct 

 their research and their classes. 



I personnally don't have any problem with that news release. It's 

 a legitimate news release, it's a sensational news release. When you 

 liken something to McCarthyism, which Dr. Shanks has done in the case 

 of the Sagebrush Rebellion, you're going to get attention. And I'm 

 perfectly willing to admit to you that if I were interviewing someone and 

 he or she likened the Sagebrush Rebellion to McCarthyism, I'd probably 

 put it down to my notebook. I might be a little bit careful about how I 

 wrote the story and I think that John was fairly careful in this 

 situation. There's no conceivable way that we can wipe out the 

 problems that this kind of thing has created for USU and I really 

 wondei — and this is a philosophical situation--l really wonder if that is 

 the news media's job. I personally don't think it is. I don't think it's 

 our job to be public relations people for anybody, whether it's a 

 university, whether it's a state agency, whether it's a federal agency, 

 whatever it is. Our job actually is to responsibly and accurately, and 

 interpretively, our job in newspapers and my comments, you have to 

 understan, are going to be directed strictly to newspapers. .. is to not 

 only give the public the news, we also have to interpret the news as 

 well. We get criticized for running on page one in the Herald Journal 

 analyses and in-depth features or commentaries, even though we stick a 



