Response to Rudi Keller’s Columbia Tribune story regarding a KBIA reporter

I became aware of UM System President and Interim MU Chancellor Mun Choi’s concerns with our reporter’s twitter activity when he contacted the reporter directly via email on Thursday morning. Because those emails were sent on official university accounts they are public record, and will inevitably become public through Sunshine requests in the future now that this has become a public issue. The information in this exchange was not included in the Columbia Tribune story published today. As such, in the spirit of transparency, I include the three-email exchange with Sebastian Martinez Valdivia here, as well as a screenshot of the recipients Choi copied on the initial email:

KBIA’s license is owned by the University of Missouri System, and about two-thirds of public radio stations in the U.S. are also college or university licensees. It is standard practice that the newsrooms at these stations remain editorially independent from influence from the institution that holds their license. In my 9 years at KBIA that has been the practice here as well, and I feel it necessary to assert the continuance of that practice of editorial independence. I believe, as do many other public radio stations and the universities that hold their licenses, that this separation serves the interests of both the newsroom and the University, and ultimately our community.

Finally, I believe the Columbia Tribune’s report mischaracterized the content of our reporter’s tweets on June 12, summarizing them as opinions, and only including the content of one of the tweets (in which the Jefferson statue was not mentioned). I have included screenshots of the tweets that did refer to Jefferson or monuments on campus at the bottom of this post. While there was perspective and opinion in some of the tweets, many of them were simply offering reporting, analysis or context.

Sebastian has told me he wished he had worded this tweet differently (the only one included in the Tribune story):

However, the core message of the tweet is true for any journalist: part of our job is to hold the institutions that we live near (or inside) to account. Those that follow Sebastian’s reporting, particularly his daily and in-depth coverage of the ongoing pandemic, know that this is true for all of the stories that he covers.

Ryan Famuliner

News Director, KBIA-FM

Tweets referencing the Jefferson statue or monuments from 6/12/2020: