Students Turn Against Free Press

I have been smirking all day at the silly story coming out of Northwestern University. Jeff Sessions was speaking on campus and the student daily covered the protests. They texted individuals involved in the protest and asked for interviews. They took photographs of the protests and included them in their tweets about the event.

And then the excrement hit the fan. Apparently, the students involved did not like their photos being posted, and disapproved of being contacted. And instead of standing up for the freedom of the press, the newspaper groveled instead:

Quote:

On Nov. 5, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke on campus at a Northwestern University College Republicans event. The Daily sent a reporter to cover that talk and another to cover the students protesting his invitation to campus, along with a photographer. We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night — along with how we plan to move forward. One area of our reporting that harmed many students was our photo coverage of the event. Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Those photos have since been taken down. On one hand, as the paper of record for Northwestern, we want to ensure students, administrators and alumni understand the gravity of the events that took place Tuesday night. However, we decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students who were photographed. We feel that covering traumatic events requires a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe — and in situations like this, that they are benefitting from our coverage rather than being actively harmed by it. We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry. Some students also voiced concern about the methods that Daily staffers used to reach out to them. Some of our staff members who were covering the event used Northwestern’s directory to obtain phone numbers for students beforehand and texted them to ask if they’d be willing to be interviewed. We recognize being contacted like this is an invasion of privacy, and we’ve spoken with those reporters — along with our entire staff — about the correct way to reach out to students for stories.

It almost reads like something from the Onion, or the Babylon Bee, doesn't it? The response from the mainstream media has been pretty scathing. The school daily was simply reporting an event of some significance that happened on campus, as was their supposed function. There was nothing to apologize for and it is somewhat shocking that students at a highly rated journalism school would not understand this.

Keep in mind that the "harm" and "trauma" that the students experienced appears to be that Sessions was allowed to speak on campus.

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