DTH Not Meant to Serve as Tar Heel Propaganda

The Daily Tar Heel sports staff included.

I'm not here to apologize for that fact. I'm here to set the record straight on our role as reporters at this newspaper.

A colleague of mine, T. Nolan Hayes, predicted in Tuesday's paper that 19th-ranked Wake Forest would defeat No. 1 North Carolina 74-71.

The Demon Deacons were favored by 1.5 points over the Tar Heels, and Wake went into the game with a 12-0 record at home. UNC was playing its third ACC game in six days.

Tar Heel fans don't always deal well with rational thinking. Students all over campus on Tuesday expressed disbelief over the fact that someone at this paper would pick against UNC.

At 11:39 a.m., someone posted this fact to a message board at UNCbasketball.com, and 39 people responded within the next six hours. Some of the most interesting comments included:

n Maybe the DTH is using reverse psychology?

n Why in the hell does the University paper consistently pick the Heels to lose??????

n Screw the DTH. They do whatever is most controversial so people will read the paper.

n I think Matt (Doherty) should invite the DTH staff to talk with him and the team in the UNC locker room. When they get there, he should lock the door and curse at them for 45 minutes for being critical of his team.

First of all, Doherty has more to worry about than what someone at this paper writes about his team. But most importantly, these comments show that most of you guys just don't get it. So I'll make my point as clear as possible.

The DTH is an independent student newspaper. It receives none of your student fees. The reporters covering men's basketball at this paper, myself included, are aspiring journalists. Our job is to remain objective in our coverage.

Quite simply, pulling for UNC is neither required nor desired in our job description. That's not our purpose.

This won't sit well with most of the 39,000 of you that read the DTH each day. Or at least attempt to complete the crossword and accidentally peruse through a story every now and then.

Readers of the DTH are Tar Heel fans. We understand that. But that doesn't mean the paper has to be pro-UNC.

That's the job of Goheels.com.

The DTH is a training ground for many writers. With this in mind, the goal is as follows: Do your job the same way a reporter at The News & Observer, The Herald-Sun or The News & Record does his or hers.

There's no real reason for the DTH to predict the final score of North Carolina games. One wasn't made before the Duke/UNC contest last Thursday, and no one seemed to mind too much.

If we would have made a prediction, most of you would have, though.

That's understandable. Just know that the writers predicting these scores aren't trying to make readers happy. We also aren't out to make readers mad.

We are simply taking a stab at what we think will transpire. We enjoy doing it, and readers at least seem interested in what we have to say.

The Tar Heels take the court next at home against Maryland on Saturday. There's a good chance I will be in charge of predicting a final score for that game. The Tar Heels haven't lost since Dec. 2, and the Terrapins have dropped three of their last four games.

I must also point out that the last time UNC had a 17-game winning streak, which was in the 1997-98 season, Maryland was the school that ended it.

Bret Strelow can be reached at strelow@email.unc.edu.