An editorial statute is the foundation on which a medium is built. For a journalistic, independent medium at a university, which is in the difficult position of being funded by those it writes critically about, it is, besides that foundation, also a lifeline – a lifebuoy. Something you hope you never need, but must be present, and something you should periodically check for buoyancy. Ideally, you do this before the drowning person is already in the water.
The previous editorial statute was fine. It mentioned the independent position of EM, for whom we create EM, and what the organisation roughly looks like. However, many of the procedures regarding the appointment of editorial members and the appointment and responsibilities of the editorial board were based on mutual trust and ‘this is how we have done it for years’. Fine when it never storms, or you don’t walk too close to the water’s edge, but it does not provide reliable support in times of perfect storms.
This became particularly clear when there were issues with colleagues, among others in Delft and Eindhoven. In Delft the board threatened to hold the editor-in-chief personally liable for the consequences of an unwelcome article, while in Eindhoven the editor-in-chief was dismissed and a journalist found it necessary to initiate a whistleblowing procedure due to the curtailment of journalistic freedom.
Both media have or will soon have a new editorial statute to better withstand future storms. EM did not want to wait for bad weather, and after a year and a half of work, the new editorial statute is finally complete.
Oddly enough, I have become attached to the text. My favourite part is article 4, section c. It protects our position as employees within the university. In this article – which is based on the position of in-house lawyers in a company – it states that the university ‘will respect the free and independent professional practice of the editorial team – editor-in-chief, editors and freelance staff – as journalists’. So also, and I say this in my own words, if EM writes an unflattering piece that is, of course, journalistic appropriate, we do not have to fear losing our jobs.
Just as a lawyer has the law as the most important ‘principal’, for a journalist, it is ‘the pursuit of truth’. And that this is now documented in the new statute, that we can also pursue this fearlessly, I find to be a wonderful tribute to our profession.
