BY JOHN K. WILSON

Mary Chappell, editor-in-chief of the Loyola Phoenix (Loyola University of Chicago) has a great editorial this week rejecting attacks from student protesters who objected to being reported on.

The student protesters at Loyola argued:

As we all know by now, 7 of our friends were arrested while protesting. Some of the organizers explicitly asked Loyola Phoenix reporters to withhold from posting videos and information about the arrests. Circulating traumatic videos without permission is incredibly damaging and puts protestors at risk. The Loyola Phoenix reporters continued to follow some of the organizers to the precinct where our friends were held. They then gave permission to major media outlets to repost the videos and information. We called and messaged the Loyola Phoenix about taking the posts down and we were ignored. The Loyola Phoenix has been continuously harassing the 7 people who were arrested after explicitly stating that we will not be conducting interviews. Being arrested is traumatic and the Phoenix is searching to exploit their trauma for the benefit of their newspaper. As a result we will no longer be conducting interviews with the Loyola Phoenix.

As Chappell notes, “We don’t need consent for videos or photos taken of people in public. We didn’t take them down because that’s not what media outlets typically do. If something is blatantly wrong or inaccurate, we publish a correction. But nothing was inaccurate here.”

Being arrested can indeed be traumatic. But protesters should want to bring attention to the cause they’re devoted to. Do you think John Lewis was traumatized by the video of his abuse by police during the Civil Rights Movement? No, he was traumatized by the police, and he was grateful to have the media publicize it and bring attention to his cause. 

The response of the Loyola Phoenix is an interesting contrast with the Daily Northwestern apology to activists last year that attracted massive media attention and attacks from professional journalists. I hope the student journalists who take the right stand get at least a small amount of the media coverage that student journalists get when they make a mistake in responding to critics.

This isn’t the first noteworthy stance by the Loyola Phoenix. As I noted in my report last month on freedom of the press on campus, in 2019 the Loyola Phoenix publicly fought against the administration’s demands that reporters always contact the PR department rather than directly interviewing faculty and staff. A few days later, Loyola was pressured to change its restrictive media policy.

It’s heartening to see student journalists standing up to the administration and to the activists when they’re wrong, and speaking out for journalistic values. 

At a time when the Trump Administration is seeking to silence freedom of the press (most recently by shutting down the Stars & Stripes newspaper and by censoring Voice of America), and police seem to be targeting the media, protesters need to be defending a free press. The right to report on protests is also under serious threat on college campuses. Ironically, one threat to the press comes from protesters themselves, who distrust the media and seek to control reporting about them. A Knight Foundation survey of college students in 2019 found that 48% think it is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable for students to deny the news media access to cover campus protests or rallies, up dramatically from 39% in 2017.

One example of the conflict between protesters and the press came in 2015 at the University of Missouri. In response to racist incidents on campus, a student group called Concerned Student 1950 organized a protest encampment on the quad. Protesters chanted “Hey hey, ho ho. Reporters have got to go,” and some supporters tried to block student journalists from the area, including a professor, Melissa Click, who jostled a student’s camera while keeping him out.

The next day, protesters reconsidered their position and put out a new flyer: “The media is important to tell our story and experiences at Mizzou to the world. Let’s welcome and thank them.” The protesters at Mizzou deserve a lot of credit for immediately recognizing this fact, reversing their policy, and welcoming the media in. And Click herself has acknowledged she was wrong, publicly apologizing for her actions. That was not enough to save Click’s job, and under political pressure she was quickly suspended and fired in a violation of due process that was censured by the AAUP. 

The University of Missouri case provides an effective lesson to protesters for why they should defend freedom of the press rather than seeking to silence the media. The press may not always depict protesters in a sympathetic manner. But communicating with the media is the best way for protesters to get their voices and their priorities heard.