# Executive summary

**Study window:** 2023-10-01 through the 2026-08-10 collection cutoff  
**Latest article in the archive at cutoff:** 2026-08-05  
**Scope:** every article in Spectator's official Administration, Academics, and Student Life archives

## Bottom line

This audit **did not establish** that Columbia Daily Spectator's University News coverage systematically treated administrators more deferentially than students, protesters, workers/unions, or faculty critics. It also **did not support** the added claim that coverage was best during the April–May 2024 encampment period and then became progressively more pro-administration under the current leadership of editor in chief Tsehai Alfred and University News co-editor Spencer Davis.

The authorized crawl reconciled all 1,527 archive articles: 671 Administration, 266 Academics, and 590 Student Life. Every page yielded nonempty text. A 230-article, diversity-oriented manual audit—15.1% of the census—was coded by two independent reviewers with 50 overlaps and third-person adjudication. In paired articles, its most reliable treatment measures ran **contrary** to the campaign hypothesis: administrators received more scrutiny, more unfavorable reporter tone, and more adverse headline/lede framing than challengers. Because the audit deliberately overrepresented rare screen patterns, those estimates describe the audit set and are not population rates.

The complete-census automated screen produced mixed directions. Strict rules showed slightly less scrutiny and less marked framing of administrators, plus more administrative first-quote priority; challengers nevertheless received more quotation words. The framing result reversed under the broad actor dictionary. More decisively, none of 19 automated semantic measures reached the preregistered κ=.60 agreement threshold against adjudicated manual coding. All automated semantic population estimates are therefore **suppressed**, not promoted as findings.

## Manual audit results

Within the nonrepresentative 230-article audit set, 118 articles contained both an administration actor and a challenger actor. Positive scrutiny/adverse-frame gaps mean administrators received more scrutiny or adverse framing; negative tone means more unfavorable treatment of administrators.

| Paired manual measure | Audit-set gap | 95% resampling interval | N | Direction |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---|
| Administration minus challenger skepticism (0–3) | +0.373 | +0.200 to +0.536 | 110 | Contrary to deference hypothesis |
| Administration minus challenger tone (-2 to +2) | -0.415 | -0.559 to -0.271 | 118 | Administrators more unfavorable; contrary |
| Administration minus challenger adverse headline | +31.4 points | +18.6 to +44.3 | 70 | Administrators more adverse; contrary |
| Administration minus challenger adverse lede | +33.3 points | +21.8 to +44.9 | 78 | Administrators more adverse; contrary |
| Administration minus challenger first-quote probability | -7.6 points | -24.6 to +9.3 | 118 | Null/mixed |

These are not all-archive confidence intervals; they show resampling stability inside a purposively diverse audit. Manual assertion-testing gaps also ran contrary to the hypothesis, but both assertion-testing fields had sub-threshold intercoder reliability and should not carry much weight.

## Validation and reliability

On 50 double-coded articles, intercoder reliability met or exceeded κ=.60 for article type, headline and lede frames, tone, skepticism scores, release reliance, documents, affected sourcing, context, follow-up, first actor/quote, and identification risk. Administrative actor presence had 92% raw agreement but κ=.47 because positive/negative prevalence was highly uneven. Official- and challenger-assertion testing were also below κ=.60.

Automated-versus-manual validity was much poorer: zero of 19 semantic comparisons reached κ=.60. The algorithm routinely confused mention with actor role, reporter voice with attributed criticism, any challenger quotation with affected-person sourcing, and article-wide document terms with actor-specific verification. It also missed marked phrasing outside its lexicon. This is why the full-census semantic numbers remain screening results.

## Added leadership-period claim

The post-request exploratory sequence was: encampment/NYPD peak (2024-04-17–2024-05-31); later 148th board; 149th board; and the right-censored 150th board through 2026-08-10.

No manual measure moved monotonically toward more pro-administration treatment. Only one of four suppressed automated screens did: administration's share of attributed quotation words rose relative to challengers. That measure lacks manual quote-count validation and has low rule-based attribution confidence. The other three automated screens moved primarily in the opposite direction: the current period showed more automated scrutiny of administrators than the encampment peak, less administrative first-quote priority, and no reliable worsening in marked framing.

Current-period manual cells were small and nonrepresentative, and every current-minus-encampment interval crossed zero. Several 150th-board articles were strong counterexamples, including document-driven reporting on the University Senate review, the Epstein records, the federal civil-rights listening session, and the “largely opaque” shared-governance review. Periods organize time; the evidence does not show that Alfred, Davis, or any named editor caused an article-level decision.

## Strong Spectator journalism

The audit deliberately retains evidence that weakens the campaign's claim. Examples include:

- a dated-version and policy investigation after Barnard removed a “Solidarity with Palestine” statement;
- “Inside Columbia's surveillance and disciplinary operation for student protesters,” based on internal records, policy, experts, and affected sources;
- an accessibility investigation using observation, maps, history, and four wheelchair users;
- detailed use of court records showing ICE lacked an arrest warrant for Mahmoud Khalil;
- a corrected, document-heavy report on the University Senate review; and
- current-period analysis of the governance task force and senators' criticism of an opaque review.

Strong work does not rule out individual weak or announcement-driven stories. It does rule out an absolute thesis that University News uniformly relays administrative power without scrutiny.

## What remains supportable

The campaign has a legitimate question about structural source dependence, vulnerable-source identification, and unequal framing. The audit found individual announcement-driven briefs and a narrow union-versus-administration wording contrast worth editorial discussion. It did **not** turn those examples into a reliable corpus-wide or leadership-specific pattern.

## Evidence that would strengthen the claims

- A new representative probability sample, with actor-category and quotation/source fields added before coding, that reproduces an administration-favorable gap.
- A reliable manual count of every direct quotation, quote words, attribution verb, source person/type, and actor-specific assertion test.
- A time model showing worsening across comparable topics and events, with adequate current-period cells and a completed 150th term.
- Assignment records, messages, interviews, or correction decisions directly connecting named leaders to the alleged editorial pattern.
- Exact, corroborated photograph/discipline, anonymity, and source-harm records from the proposal.

## Evidence that would further weaken the claims

- A representative manual sample retaining the current contrary tone, framing, and scrutiny directions.
- Additional current-period investigations that test administrative claims with records and affected sources.
- Topic-matched comparisons showing that apparent period changes follow event mix rather than leadership.
- Failure to corroborate the proposal's photograph, “doxxing,” boycott, and Public Affairs allegations after fair verification and right of reply.
