Since this is a legacy plugin you might want to enable the short_open_tag setting in your php.ini. Although for Newscoop 4.3 we don't recommend this anymore. Therefor I've created a pr here for the official legacy plugin repository.
Follow the path: /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini, I make change:<br> short_open_tag<br> Default Value:On<br>; Developemnt Value: On<br>; Production Value: On<br><br>Am I wrong some where? The problem still exits. Thanks<br>