(Read the letter LSU officials sent to CBS here regarding what they feel was an unbalanced news story.)
University representatives are pushing back against a CBS Evening News story they feel suggested the University has a low graduation rate and a lack of resources available to students.
Ernie Ballard, director of University Media Relations, said producers from CBS filmed the story in October, and the air date was pushed back a few times.
University officials were told the story would probably air sometime this month, and it ran March 22 on the CBS Evening News.
Ballard said producers told him they were looking to put together a story about national retention rates and would be showcasing several schools in their video.
He said producers told him they were interested in filming at a number of different locations throughout the country, but University representatives were disappointed to see LSU and the University of Maryland were the only schools featured in the story.
Ballard said he sent a letter to the producer who oversaw the story to make it clear the University was not happy with the story.
The story focused on the University of Maryland and programs it has implemented to boost the school’s graduation rate to 81.8 percent.
LSU’s current graduation rate is 60.5 percent, and in his letter, Ballard states the University is “tied with Maryland as the two universities in the country that have shown the most improved graduation rates over the past 20 years.”
He said CBS briefly responded to the letter in an e-mail March 24.
“They basically said they’re sorry LSU feels that way, but they feel they were fair,” he said.
Ballard said the e-mail also stated a more detailed response would be sent out shortly.
Ballard said he and other representatives gave producers information on all of the University’s programs intended to boost the retention rate, like the Center for Academic Success and Freshman Year Experience.
Saundra McGuire, assistant vice chancellor for learning, teaching and retention at the Center for Academic Success and chemistry professor, sat down with CBS reporter Michelle Miller in October to discuss what the University has done to boost its graduation rate.
McGuire was quoted in the story as saying, “They don’t have study skills, learning strategies typically, and unfortunately, many of them give up when they encounter difficulty.”
But McGuire said the video cut off her sentence.
“What I said was, ‘They give up, but they don’t have to,'” she told The Daily Reveille. “We can help.”
Ballard said this negative experience will make University representatives more cautious in the future.
“We’ll just have to watch out for feature stories and find out the angle ahead of time,” he said. “I just feel like they had an idea of what they wanted before they came to us.”
 
 
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Contact Rachel Warren at http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150439056460276&id=46201353493[email protected]