Student media and university officials tend to have relationships that range from somewhat cordial to downright vitriolic. This makes sense in a relatively adversarial system, in which the goal of the university is to present itself in the most positive light possible, while the goal of the student journalists is to present reality, regardless of how it makes the university look.

In the case of The Alestle at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, the relationship has devolved to the point in which a member of the school’s PR team filed a police report against the paper’s editor, claiming harassment via one line in an email. This is on top of a PR official saying her unfettered ability to sit in on interviews between student reporters and university personnel is “non-negotiable.” And those are just the most recent clashes over what is and isn’t acceptable under the First Amendment.

If you are behind on the story, there has been a TON of good reporting that can catch you up here:

• A local media outlet, The Riverbender, provides some of the basics information as well as some key background.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education covered the story, which includes links to letters administrators sent to staff, complaining about The Alestle.
• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a deep dive on the years-long battle between the paper and the administration. Columnist Tony Messenger also took a look at the situation (I think you need to be a subscriber to read this, unless all of his columns are literally one line long…)
• The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has been involved in this for a while as well, and some key information, including a letter sent to the administration, can be found here.
• The Student Press Law Center co-wrote the letter noted above, and has also been covering this issue.
• llinois State Representative Katie Stuart also entered the fray, issuing a statement of support and clarity about the situation.
• The Alestle staff, which I’m sure would rather be COVERING the news than BEING the news, is also keeping readers in the loop on campus about the fight going on here, as well as doing some other amazing coverage at the same time.

The headlines of the story capture both the oddity and impact of this story: A clash over the First Amendment rights of student journalists ends up with an administrator essentially calling the cops on the editor, claiming harassment. What is getting overlooked however, reveals a bigger set of problems for the students, the university and even press freedom in general.

I exchanged a series of emails with The Aleste’s editor-in-chief, Dylan Hembrough and also conducted a phone interview with him, exchanged a series of emails with SIUE Director of Communications Nicole Franklin and did some deep dives into the background of this beef.

Rather than rehash what a lot of superior journalists have already reported, here are a few important things that are getting lost in the coverage of this story:

THIS ISN’T A ONE-TIME PROBLEM: A number of articles look at this moment as a singular incident, but it’s not. Although neither party could put a specific date on the start of the conflict, Hembrough, pointed to a story he wrote, regarding the university’s policy that resident assistants (RAs) were not allowed to talk to student media.

As the story made the rounds, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) caught wind of it and eventually wrote a letter to SIUE, explaining how the university couldn’t clamp down on students’ free speech rights if they were to speak as individuals, not university representatives. In response, the university noted The Aleste’s story was inaccurate, but did not elaborate on why it was wrong or what clarifications they had provided to student workers about media interactions.

According to the FIRE website, the case remains active in the organization’s files.

Hembrough has been EIC for the past three years and said that he’s outlasted three head spokespeople, each of whom has been less than thrilled/cooperative when it comes to The Alestle, so clearly this isn’t a one-time problem.

 

THIS ISN’T AN ALESTLE-ONLY PROBLEM: FIRE keeps track of everything related to free-speech/expression and hasn’t found a lot great to say about SIUE. FIRE has labeled the institution as “red,” which means it has at least one policy that is exceptionally problematic in relation to free speech on campus. Here’s the general report card that outlines its ranking in free speech:

(To be fair to SIUE, UW-Madison is ranked 61 and still has a grade of D, even though it’s a bastion of liberalism that has the reputation of “Two’s company, three’s a protest.” Probably the more telling thing is SIUE’s ranking of 243 out of 261 colleges and universities. Private institutions like Notre Dame and Marquette University rank better and they’re technically ALLOWED to do more suppression than SIUE if they felt like it.)

In addition, the school settled a free-speech lawsuit in 2023 with former student Maggie DeJong, who argued the university violated her First Amendment rights. According to the suit, DeJong wore a “Back the Blue” hat to class as a way to show her support of police and counter speech related to “defunding the police.”

After several discussions with professors and administrators, a university official issued a no-contact order between DeJong and several classmates, an action the suit called viewpoint discrimination. In the settlement, the school paid DeJong $80,000 and agreed to revise policies related to issues like this in the future.

In 2018, College Republicans sued the school over a free-speech policy that literally restricted free speech to 0.0013% of the total campus footprint. Even worse, the policy regarding that tiny “Speech Zone” required that the university approve the “free speech” offered in that space at least two days in advance if the planned speech was expected to be fluffy and happy speech. If the speech could be more “controversial,” students needed to get the permission 90 days in advance.

What makes something “controversial” under that policy? That was at the sole discretion of the school. The school settled for $10K in legal fees and a promise to redo the policy.

Long story short, it’s not just a liberal thing or a student media thing. SIUE just seems like a place that treats free speech like it’s a cockroach problem that won’t go away.

 

WHO GETS TO CALL THEMSELVES JOURNALISTS?: The two key media reps for SIUE during this situation, Franklin and Executive Director Paula Bridges, have leaned heavily on their status as former journalists with decades of journalism experience while condemning The Alestle.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Bridges has left her position at SIUE as of Sept. 16, according to an article on The Alestle website. Links to her staff pages at SIUE are now dead and she has not updated her LinkedIn profile with new career information as of this writing.)

Franklin made her bona fides known during an interview with the Edwardsville Intelligencer:

So as I navigated a career that straddled 30 years in television news and more than 25 as an indie filmmaker some would agree my work exemplifies a Black woman’s joy. I’ll take it. My desire to pursue communications in college in reference to broadcast media was what I saw as the only degree that made sense at the time.”

<SNIP>

“That’s an interesting question because I came to this role after working 30 years in news television as a video editor/engineer and more than 25 years as an independent filmmaker.

Bridges also calls herself a journalist on her LinkedIn page, noting experience in both print and broadcast. In the letter she wrote slamming The Alestle, she doubled down on that statement:

As a journalist with more than 30 years of experience with newspapers, news radio, magazines, and broadcast television, I will always defend First Amendment rights and freedom of the press. I also recognize the important obligation that accompanies the power to publish: verify facts before publication and correct errors when they occur.

I concluded my reporting career as an Emmy Award-winning news anchor, and served across various sectors including municipal government, public safety, the judiciary, and education. I am writing an open letter to our university community because I am deeply troubled by the direction and disposition of The Alestle as an exercise of journalism.

In digging into both of their backgrounds, it’s unclear to me how the math works and also how those experiences directly relate to any First Amendment support.

For Franklin, she lists the following items:

The big one, where she spent 17 years was a bit confusing, but in digging into her resume, it was a little clearer:

This was mostly production work, as opposed to news gathering or journalistic content creation. In addition the other two places where she worked that are categorized as “news” are basically morning programs where little in the way of hard-hitting news occurs. And again, I’d imagine she wasn’t responsible for the news reporting as a video editor.

In terms of Bridges, the experience brag is nowhere nearly commensurate with the resume she publicly shares. That “30 years” she opens her letter with really comes down to about eight or nine years of broadcast journalism at the anchor desk:

That’s actual experience in journalism, no doubt, even if it ended before a lot of The Alestle staffers were in grade school. Outside of that, however, her professional life has been on the PR side of the fence for numerous public institutions:

Add all that up and you more than double her time in journalism, not to mention it’s the most recent 17 years of her career, give or take. That’s not to criticize those jobs, as I teach students every day who want to take gigs like that, but I’d argue that those careers are more about reputation management and positive front-facing work as opposed to what news reporters do.

Also, given those positions, I’d wager a dollar to a doughnut that Hembrough and his crew have done more investigative, deep-dive, digging-around, according-to-Hoyle journalism stuff in the past three years than these two folks have done at any of their stops.

 

BELIEVE WHOMEVER YOU WANT, BUT CHECK THE RECEIPTS FIRST:  In most cases like this, one side puts out a list of issues it has about free speech or conflict and the other side goes silent. If you look back at the multi-part series we did here in Indiana University’s fight with the Indiana Daily Student, I tried to get comments from at least five people in administration and the only response I got was a set of links to previous statements that didn’t answer my questions.

In this situation, both Hembrough and Franklin have been active in presenting their cases to the media. As is the case with most mainstream media stories, space is limited and reporters want to play fair, so they grab a quote from each and move on.

In the case of Hembrough, the quotes mostly discuss the way in which the admin has been dumping all over the paper in public without having the facts right. In the case of Franklin, the quotes mostly present a case of the students making mistakes and not correcting them, all while arguing she’s totally in favor of free speech.

For example, Franklin made what appears to be a completely reasonable statement in an email to me:

That comment sounds fair, in that being accurate and following journalistic principles should be at the core of what student media does. When I asked Hembrough about those allegations, he did more than comment.

He brought the receipts to prove stuff. 

In this timeline of links, rebuttals and clarifications, he names names, documents dates and shows his work. In picking through this over the last week, I could easily see how some of the comments Franklin had made in various comments were either inaccurate or in service of the university’s narrative.

He also had emails to support his statements that Franklin had been presented with information about her presence at interviews being a First Amendment violation, as well as her reactions, such as her statement that her presence was “non-negotiable.”

And as Hembrough said, “There are only so many ways you can slice the word non-negotiable.”

When it comes down to it, journalists are supposed to be objective, but we’re also supposed to be fans of reality. In other words, if one person says it’s raining and one person says it’s sunny, we aren’t supposed to just report both equally.

We’re supposed to look out the window and figure out who’s right, which is why checking those receipts is really important.

 

IT’S HARD TO SQUARE THE CIRCLE ON SIUE’S FIRST AMENDMENT TALK: What keeps coming up most in these discussions is the First Amendment and how it either is or isn’t being violated in this situation. In an email Franklin sent me, she noted:

Our position is straightforward: the University has a legitimate interest in ensuring that information it provides to the public is objective, truthful, accurate, and that factual errors concerning the University are identified and, where appropriate, corrected. That interest does not conflict with our commitment to free speech and free press.

Based on what I’ve seen of the coverage on this, the timeline Hembrough provided and my digging into the background on SIUE, the reporting is meeting those goals, with errors generally being corrected in what is a reasonable time period.

I’m uncertain as to how the university is parsing “truthful” versus “accurate” and it’s also interesting that the lack of objectivity seems to be focused on stories that don’t paint the university in the best light.

Setting those issues aside, experts in media law at multiple organizations have stated their concerns regarding the way in which the actions of SIUE’s PR folks are problematic in relation to the First Amendment rights of The Alestle staff. The response from the system’s lawyer doesn’t directly address the concerns.

If you’re really committed to the First Amendment, it means you have to support press freedom that is unfettered by governmental overreach, both direct and indirect. When experts in that field are telling you, point blank, you are in violation of the letter and spirit of that law, it might be time to reconsider your actions.

If sources are really concerned about accuracy, have them record the interview instead of having Franklin sit in. It’s a fair trade, in that both sides have a complete record of what happened and no governmental agent is there to potentially chill the exchange of information.

(SIDE NOTE: I emailed a couple people who have covered this story and a couple journalists who cover SIUE on the regular to ask one basic question: Does Franklin make a point of sitting in on your interviews as well? I’m trying to figure out if this is an Alestle-only thing or not. If anyone responds, I’ll add it here.)

Speaking of chilling, filing a police report against a student journalist feels an awful lot like a brush-back pitch. In our interview, Hembrough told me he got the email during class and his anxiety immediately kicked into overdrive:

I was pretty jarred. I’ll tell you that. So I got the email on Wednesday morning. I was in the middle of class, and I had to step out for about half an hour because I started to panic.

<SNIP>

I had been managing mentally pretty well up until that morning. I had to take some of my emergency medicine to avert the panic attack, which thankfully it kicked in just in time. But I still missed a decent chunk of class.

Actions like these don’t tend to send a message that someone is totally in favor of free speech. If you’re really and fully committed to the freedom of the press, you need to let it ride at all times, not just when you’re happy with what the press is doing.

 

SIUE IS BULLYING ITS OWN STUDENTS: In my interview with Hembrough, he was talking about the juxtaposition of the allegations that he harassed Franklin and the way in which the school has been treating The Alestle:

If that’s harassment, then what are they doing to us by sending a letter to every student and faculty and staff member on this campus, calling us liars and bad mouthing us to these national organizations?

Bullying their own students really is what it comes down to.

When we read stories about university administrators attacking student media, it’s often hard to remember that the student journalists actually CHOSE to be at the institutions that are attacking them. In many legal ways, they are like any other journalists who are gathering information and telling stories. However, they are also tuition-paying members of the larger university community.

Every university marketing campaign I’ve ever seen is filled with platitudes about how the school will be this fantastic place for its students, complete with career prep, academic inquiry and personal growth.

I’ve yet to see an asterisk on any of that marketing material that says, “Unless you are a student journalist who ticks us off, at which point, buckle your chinstrap.”