When protesting students at the University of Missouri handed out fliers to the news media this week welcoming their coverage, it was an abrupt about-face for a group that had been roundly criticized for ordering reporters and photographers away the day before.
For the students, who were flush with victory after the forced resignations of the university’s top two administrators, the First Amendment backlash that threatened to overshadow their accomplishment was a “teachable moment,” they wrote.
This week faculty members across the university, but particularly in the School of Journalism, were taking that idea to heart, incorporating discussions about free speech and the rights of protesters into classroom discussions.
On Friday the university will ask some of those faculty members to share their lessons in a panel discussion with their colleagues.
One topic that students have been eager to talk about is the tension that erupted between the protesters and the national media, whose members descended on this campus after a graduate student’s hunger strike and a threatened boycott by football players intensified pressure on the administration to yield to the students’ demands.
A Viral Video, a Swift Backlash
Like many activists who communicate on social media, they initially treated the journalists as a threat and an unnecessary intrusion into their protest.
Student journalists, classmates of the activists at the university, were among those who were repeatedly warned to stay out of the protesters’ encampment. At one point, the activists formed a protective circle around the tent city, holding hands to keep outsiders away.
Organized under the name Concerned Student 1950, for the year the university admitted its first black student, the group tweeted to the news media: “We truly appreciate having our story told, but this movement isn’t for you.”
‘We truly appreciate having our story told, but this movement isn’t for you.’
In a video that went viral, an assistant professor of mass media, Melissa Click, ordered Mark Schierbecker, a student journalist who was filming a confrontation between the protesters and another student journalist, Tim Tai, to leave, at one point asking for “muscle” to get him to back off.
The backlash was swift and severe, coming from faculty members at the university’s renowned journalism school and beyond.
On Tuesday, Ms. Click resigned from what the university described as a “courtesy” appointment at the journalism school, according to a written statement by the journalism dean, David Kurpius. That position had allowed her to serve on dissertation committees.
Ms. Click, who issued a formal apology this week, remains an assistant professor in the department of communication, which is separate from the journalism school.
Then on Wednesday, the university announced that Janna Basler, its director of Greek life, had been placed on leave pending an investigation of her conduct. She had been seen on the video angrily confronting Mr. Tai.
Teaching the Unrest
Following is a sampling, in their own words, of how a few professors at Missouri examined in their classes this week the issues raised by the dramatic events of recent days.
Brett G. Johnson, an assistant professor of journalism studies:
We brought it up yesterday in my “Principles of American Journalism” class to highlight the competing interests involved and to consider whether the human wall the protesters formed was protected speech or unprotected conduct. The protesters’ message was that they wanted to protect the sanctity of their tent city. But if creating a wall denies the press their First Amendment rights to cover the rally, that could cross over the line into unprotected conduct.
When you form a human wall to keep the press out, you’re preventing them from doing their job.
We compared it to the debate over burning the American flag or yelling “Death to America.” The Supreme Court, in a divided decision, said both are equally protected because the message is closely tied to the means of expression. But when you burn the flag, you aren’t infringing on anyone’s right to revere the flag. When you form a human wall to keep the press out, you’re preventing them from doing their job.
These are sensitive and confusing enough issues for first-year constitutional-law students, but I thought our first-year college students handled it well. They said they really appreciated my not indoctrinating them but letting them debate the issues.
Sandra Davidson, a teaching professor in the School of Journalism and adjunct professor of law:
I teach about the First Amendment, and protesting is an important part of that. This was not the first time that the University of Missouri has seen students protesting racial inequities. In 1987 shantytown protesters built ramshackle little shanties on Francis Quadrangle to symbolize the poverty and oppression in South Africa.
Although 41 protesters were arrested for trespassing, only one stood trial — a journalism student. The defendant won. The defense against trespassing in this case was that the quadrangle is a public forum, open to the public 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The judge agreed.
When someone is in a public forum in public view, he or she doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
We talked in class this week about how the students won in the shantytown case, and it’s fair to say our students scored another win this week. We talked about the doctrine of standing in: When someone is in a public forum in public view, he or she doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. This doctrine gives journalists or anyone else the right to photograph someone.
But we also talked about ethical restraint, particularly in times of tragedy or disasters. Just because you have the legal right to take pictures, should you? In the video that’s gone viral, you see a photographer, and the student says something to the effect of “You have no right to take pictures here.” Yes, he did have a right. I always begin and end the class by saying “knowledge is power.” When someone says you can’t do that, I want the journalist to know, Oh yes you can, so the journalist won’t back down.
Cristina Mislán, an assistant professor of journalism studies:
In my class in cultural journalism studies, I talked about the importance of understanding that students of color were concerned about their safety because they don’t have safe places on campuses. This was a way for them to have privacy in what was also their living space.
People of color make their own media because they don’t trust mainstream media to do anything other than treat them as stereotypes. When you look at the way the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore were described, we often see portrayals of ourselves that reinforce the idea that black people are violent and they just want to riot.
People of color ... don’t trust mainstream media to do anything other than treat them as stereotypes.
I think there was a concern that the media doesn’t know us and they think of us as angry black people and wonder why we’re protesting. What’s their big issue?
When the president’s resignation was announced, it was a really emotional moment, and then everyone descended on that space and it was a bit of mayhem. The journalists had a right to be in that space, but the activists did too.
The conversation is much more complicated than what you see in the video. The national conversation with journalists up in arms became kind of a distraction. We’ve gotten away from the real issue. We need to move forward to change the system and now we’ve gotten caught up in another conversation.
John Fennell, associate professor of journalism
One of the students in my intermediate writing class who had covered the events at Ferguson and had been at the rally emailed me and asked if we could use class time to discuss what had happened. So much of the debate was over what was right and what was not.
All of the students understood their role, and almost all were horrified by the videos of people not being able to cover the news. I expected more outrage. But generally they felt that, as reporters, they needed to be more sensitive to what was happening to this group.
Sometimes you have to be aggressive to get the news, but you can still be empathetic to the group you’re covering.
They said that so many journalists had descended on the campus that these young kids were feeling a little threatened. When people are putting cameras in your face or recording your conversations with a television camera, it can be intimidating.
When I asked them what the most important takeaway for them was, it was that sometimes you have to be aggressive to get the news, but you can still be empathetic to the group you’re covering.
We also talked about the things that went wrong. There was nobody advising them. It was so spontaneous that there was no one with a megaphone to say, “Wait a minute guys — this is a public space.” Like any kind of mob action, emotion takes over, and emotion combined with inexperience can lead to scenes like this.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
Correction (11/12/2015, 7 p.m.): This article initially misidentified a student journalist who was the subject of a professor’s request for “muscle” in a confrontation with the news media. The student journalist was Mark Schierbecker, not Tim Tai, another student journalist who was present during the confrontation. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
