The White House on Monday blocked POLITICO from boarding Air Force One and carrying out its print pool duties, marking the latest escalation in an ongoing battle over media outlets’ access to President Donald Trump.
“The White House has blocked today’s print pooler, Politico, from traveling on Air Force One,” Washington Post reporter Katherine Doyle wrote in a White House pool report Monday afternoon.
Doyle added that “since [the White House] was unable to find a replacement, there is no primary print pooler on this trip,” and noted that she would be making reports as “the secondary pooler” as Trump travels to Nebraska for a campaign rally ahead of the midterms.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused the three outlets of repeatedly publishing “FAKE NEWS” and warned that other news organizations could face similar restrictions.
“Effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW… and Politico… from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: First and foremost, the First Amendment issues here are obvious and staggering, so let’s skip past those and look at other things that might be somewhat oblique but just as important:
Your administrators are watching: Any media scholars worth their salt have seen the Albert Bandura studies with the kids and the Bobo dolls. If you haven’t, the gist of this is that Bandura had kids watch a TV program of a kid their age using a bat or stick to smack around a Bobo doll. Then, he put them in a room with a stick and a Bobo doll to see what they’d do. They grabbed the stick and started whacking the heck out of this thing. (There were a lot more studies and there is a lot more nuance to this, but you get the idea.)
When Trump pulls out his stick and starts whacking the Bobo doll that is the media, other people tend to think it’s a good idea as well. I can’t make a causal connection, but I can say I never saw this T-shirt before Trump started declaring journalists the enemy of the people:
Also, when the courts are the only recourse to reverse such things, only people who have the resources to access the courts can do so.
Administrators at high schools and colleges who aren’t all that keen on the work of their student journalists aren’t ignorant of the current climate regarding the media, so it’s not a stretch to think that the more the media can take a beating, the more willing people will be to give media folks one.
We’ve already covered a lot of those kinds of situations here on the blog, so the vibe is already out there in terms of administrators taking a stick to the student media. People tend to do as much as they can get away with, so knowing that one branch of government is trying to get away with this should be a concerning precedent.
When media become the story, the media become distracted:I’m never going to say that the First Amendment isn’t a core value of our society and our right to free expression. I will say, however, that the media folks who avail themselves of this amendment tend to become exceptionally myopic when their rights (or those of fellow media people) are violated.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, in that when I see a student media outlet getting its rights trampled, I basically hit the Bat Signal on the blog and write about nothing but that for at least a few days. I’d argue that my focus is really student media and student-media related items, so at least I’m still in ballpark on this. However, I could be doing posts on how to make better leads, do better interviews or get a job instead of railing against the stupidity of some pea-brained administrator who thinks they are above the law.
When CNN or MSNow or whatever else gets drilled like this, it’s a lot bigger Bat Signal and so everyone is paying attention to that. Even more, the folks who are paying attention have a much wider range of things they SHOULD be paying attention to. Trump could be in the process of nuking Rhode Island because someone forgot to tell him there was a silent “h” in there, and we’d all be doing think pieces about the founders’ intentions regarding free expression.
In short, none of us wants to be the story, but when we are, it’s better to keep our eye on the ball than on our own egos.
The top of the editorial The Cornell Daily Sun ran about the allegations of rape and the school’s unwillingness to release certain information or pursue certain courses of action.
THE LEAD: The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper at Cornell University, has put on a master class on how to cover an amazingly difficulty and incredibly important story on its campus.
The paper broke the news of a former student’s lawsuit against the university, several parts of the school’s greek system, a local bar and seven men she says gang raped her at the Chi Phi fraternity:
“What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing,” the plaintiff told The Sun. “Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night.”
The plaintiff, identifying as Jane Doe, filed this lawsuit after an initial report was made to the Cornell community on Nov. 8, 2024.
The paper then followed up with a scathing editorial that named the seven individuals and took on a school that seemed willing to let this go until The Sun started making noise:
We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us.
(SIDE NOTE: I checked with a legal eagle friend of mine on this approach to see what kinds of danger the paper might be in taking this approach:
The main legal risk is if they turn out to be wrong and name someone who wasn’t involved or if they incorrectly describe their involvement. Then they’re deep into an expensive defamation lawsuit.
If it’s accurate, this is truthful and newsworthy – that would defeat any privacy tort claims the named students might consider.
In other words, if it’s accurate, the paper is safe and all it would take to run the names is the guts to do so. Obviously, the staff had them.)
THE FLOODGATES OPEN: In short order, every group, department and organization that had either ignored this situation or shrugged it off started circling the wagons.
The staffers have spoken to multiple media outlets about their efforts, but the best look at this is probably the Q and A on The Cut, where they outlined how and why this story mattered to them.
This group of journalists inspired today’s Throwback Thursday post, where we looked at the issue of HOW to go about digging into stories related to sexual assault. The level of care and compassion are crucial, but so are the reporting standards and fact-checking necessary to remain accurate above all else.
This ran in 2019, but it remains relevant as ever today, unfortunately.
As student journalists, how do you report on rape allegations? Pretty much the same way you report on anything else.
A friend of mine sent me a link to an article posted on a writing website that had her seriously concerned and had me grateful that I wasn’t in her shoes.
The college-aged woman who wrote the article stated that the head of a university’s student government had raped her. She outlined the history of their relationship, including previous consensual sexual interactions, discussed her own history of sexual encounters and detailed the incident in which she states the man had sex with her without using a condom and without her consent to do so.
In addition, she outlined specific allegations including:
She was not the only person with whom this man had non-consensual sex: “It appears that there are many more young women than just myself who have been assaulted or harassed by him,” she wrote.
She heard from another woman that this man had infected multiple partners with chlamydia. (She wrote that she underwent testing and her test came back negative.)
She heard from that same woman that this man had cheated on her with multiple partners.
My friend advises the student publication at the university where this woman attends (or attended) school and where this man serves as the head of the student government. In other words, this has massive ramifications for the audience her paper serves.
The question then becomes, “How does a student media outlet go about reporting on a rape allegation, made in this fashion, in a decent, fair and ethical way while also keeping a watchful eye on any legal ramifications?” The answer in the headline is a bit glib, but it is more true than not: Basically the same way you report on anything else.
Consider these basic building blocks:
Background research must come first: Nobody wants to look like an idiot when they get into a story where they have no prior knowledge of the topic. While really bad reporters kind of fake their way through a topic, good reporters dig deep to fully understand it well enough to speak intelligently on it. Consider this the first thing you must do for ALL stories, whether you’re trying to explain how the sport of curling works (my first “what the hell do I know about this?” story that required ridiculous amounts of research) or trying to figure out how to ask questions in an interview with a rape survivor.
The best way to not feel like you’re going to do something stupid in your reporting and writing is to make yourself as smart as possible on the topic.
If your mother says she loves you, go check it out: This is the first rule of all good journalism. In other words, go do some digging for yourself before you rely on anything you hear second hand. Ask for an interview with the woman who wrote the story so you can hear her story first hand. Ask for an interview with other people directly attached to the story, such as the man accused in this story. Look for things elements of the story that can be verified without traumatizing anyone or making it look like you have already decided who is right and who is wrong.
Cases involving false rape allegations are quite rare, but the premier example of a story like this that went off the rails in a horrifying way was the Rolling Stone story, “A Rape on Campus.” The piece told the story of “Jackie,” a University of Virginia student who told the writer she had been gang raped at a fraternity party. “Jackie” also stated that the administration wouldn’t do anything to help her and that it was more concerned in protecting the image of the school than investigating her situation.
A post-mortem analysis of the story by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone found that the magazine had failed to do basic reporting to verify the claims asserted in the story and that the piece had basic facts wrong. The report stated the reporter never interviewed the friends “Jackie” had mentioned, instead relying on her recollections of what they told her. It also noted that specific parties and dates of events didn’t fit with actual events or parties, something that would have been easy enough to verify. The report also outline other similar things like this that could have been done to help put the magazine on a stronger footing or better decide how to proceed with the piece.
Simply put, you are a reporter, so report. That doesn’t mean you don’t believe someone, but you have to make sure you can support the content you publish to the best of your ability.
Check your legal liabilities:The Student Press Law Center provides student journalists with free legal advice on a wide array of topics. If you have concerns that a story might libel someone, a call or email to SPLC is worth your time. The “Dynamics” textbooks list off the key elements of libel as:
Publication: Did you disseminate the content to someone other than the person claiming to be libeled?
Identification: Is the person claiming to be libeled named or otherwise easily known based on how he or she is described in the story?
Harm: Can the person claiming to be libeled demonstrate serious damage to his or her reputation? This usually involves being accused of a crime or associated with “unsavory” illnesses.
Fault: Can the person claiming to be libeled show that the person publishing the content either did something wrong or failed to do something that should have been done to prevent the libelous content from being published?
In case you’re wondering, a story like this would go four-for-four in terms of these items. That means you’re into the defenses against libel, including truth, privilege and so forth. What also makes this interesting is the issue of what level of fault the man in this story would have to prove. Ordinary citizens only have to prove negligence, which is easier to show, while public figures have to demonstrate actual malice. In that instance, the public figure has to show the material was false and that the publisher had a reckless disregard for the truth. The SPLC is your friend, so give the folks there a call with questions before you publish.
The duty to report is not the same as the duty to publish: If you do your reporting and you aren’t certain you have enough of the story to tell the story, wait until you can gather enough content to feel more secure. If you find that your reporting hasn’t revealed enough to support or refute conclusions crucial to the story itself, don’t feel pressured to publish something because you are worried about “how it would look.” You are responsible for what you publish, so you need to feel confident you can stand behind what you put out there.
It’s always better to be late than wrong.
Once you get deeper into the writing, you should pay additional attention to style, word choice and clarity to avoid creating problems for your sources and your readers. In addition, having a legal eagle and an expert in the field give you a quick review for some thoughts and polish points to consider won’t hurt either.
This is obviously a serious and delicate topic, which means tact matters as does basic human decency. That said you can do all of this and adhere to quality reporting standards to make sure you put your best possible story forward.
(A brief-and-yet-way-too-accurate explanation of how IU got into this mess in the first place.)
THE LEAD: Indiana University released its “IU Media School Task Force Report” late last week after a five-month process of determining how best to preserve student journalists’ rights while providing the various media outlets with governance and financial support.
CATCHING UP WITH THIS DISASTERBACLE: After Rodenbush was fired, he filed a wrongful termination suit against the university. As that was unfolding, the students at the IDS were prohibited from printing a paper for homecoming, as the university didn’t want any news in it because, God forbid, the alumni returning for homecoming might think something unpleasant might actually occur in Bloomington.
More recently, things have turned around for Rodenbush, as he got a professorial gig at Western Kentucky University:
I have no idea what this is in the photo, but I pray its a mascot of some kind for WKU or a melting wax statue of IU Dean David Tolchinsky performing his “Stayin’ Alive” dance.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: I was recently told I’d been getting overly long in my posts, so let’s keep this one short:
The report talks a good game, but let’s see what the media school does in its “refine and implement” stage. We’ve got a long, documentedhistory of the administration here being somewhere between “completely inept” and “ignorantly nefarious” when it comes to student media. I tend to believe that the proof in the pudding is in the eating and IU’s media school brain trust has been serving up a lot of syrup of ipecac pudding lately.
Even if this whole thing comes out as fine as wine going forward, it doesn’t undo the damage done to the people involved here. Jim Rodenbush lost a job, an income and probably a lot of sleep as a result of this. His life was upended because of this, and just because we media folks know he’s a hero, it doesn’t mean this is OK. The staff at the IDS had to fight a fight they weren’t supposed to be in, all while doing the paper and school, which is more than plenty to cause burnout. Advertisers got shook, distribution people had to consider the impact of this and more. Fixing the future doesn’t un-mess the past.
The administration of the IU Media School needs to be held to account for every ham-handed thing they’ve done to this point involving student media. We were talking about the concept of “actual malice” today in class, in which people are held to account for libel when they know they’re doing something wrong and yet they do it anyway. I can’t think of a more apropos term to describe what’s been going on here in regard to the administrative action as it relates to the IDS.
If you are in driver’s seat, you get the ticket for driving recklessly. Same basic concept applies here. Everyone on EARTH seemed to be telling these people, “Stop. What you’re doing here is wrong” and they didn’t seem to really care. If we don’t want to have another mess like this one, IU needs to mete out some punitive measures to make them care about the results of their actions.
Arizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU.
But several professors whose content Atom pulls from were surprised to learn that their materials—including video lectures, slide decks and online assignments—were being perused, clipped and repackaged for these short online course modules. The faculty wasn’t told anything about the app, ASU Atomic, they said.
(SIDE NOTE: I so DESPERATELY want to use a video clip here from “Ted 2” that smack talks Arizona State right now, given how stupid this situation is, but I think the editors at Sage might pop a brain bleed. The tamest thing said in that exchange was, “Do you say Arizona State University or just HPV-U?” Anyway… I digress…)
BACKGROUND: The university is doing everything to both say that tapping the braintrust of the faculty through this AI thing is the greatest thing on earth while also telling faculty this is just experimental and there’s no real concern here.
As with most things administrators SWEAR aren’t problems, the faculty members refuse to buy this bull-pucky:
As is the case for many AI chatbots still in their infancy, Atom gets things wrong. In the module it designed for Hanlon, it included clips from an old lecture he gave focused on the work and career of 20th-century literary theorist Cleanth Brooks. Throughout the course it called the critic “Client” Brooks.
<SNIP>
Ostling is worried that Atomic “will start being used widely, and I have content on my Canvas shelves that would be very inappropriate to show up without context in a course,” he said. “Not only do I think the students will be poorly served because they might learn things that aren’t true, but it could potentially get me in trouble.”
I’m feeling this as well, given that I often have students interview other students for classroom-only exercises that get posted to Canvas. So, for example, a student talking about their experience at the local Pub Crawl might not be all that thrilled if that info becomes part of a database of content for everyone to see.
Even more, I have to occasionally create “alternative timeline scenarios” for the students. For example, to have my students write an “announcement press release,” I make up the scenario that our current chancellor resigned a while back, the university did a search and today is announcing the hiring of the next chancellor. It’s a logical scenario that would be something students might be expected to do as PR practitioners (hiring news release) and it forces them to focus on what to include in a short space.
However, I obviously have made up the name of the person we hired as well as that person’s background and accomplishments. If AI slurps it up and treats it as gospel, that’s not going to be good for anyone involved.
This all led me to today’s throwback post about our system trying to steal faculty content for what I would assume could be a situation like this. Even if the Universities of Wisconsin folks double-pinky promise not to turn my work into AI slop, I still don’t want them co-opting my life’s work for all the reasons listed below.
I did a check on how this is going and the board of regents hasn’t passed this yet, but I’m always leery of summer months, as that’s a great time for universities to pass these “take out the trash” bills, because nobody’s looking.
The Universities of Wisconsin System is trying to steal faculty’s copyright rights to educational material. Please help fight this stupid power grab.
(The system says, “We would never look to diminish your rights or take your hard-earned work away from you.” What the system actually does is more accurately depicted in the scene above.)
THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Here’s a deep dive on the way the system is trying to recreate its copyright policy in a way that disenfranchises its faculty:
The UW System is proposing a new copyright policy that professors say would eliminate faculty ownership of instructional materials. The revisions are stoking alarm among professors statewide who say such a move would cheapen higher education into a mass-produced commodity.
“This policy change is nothing less than a drastic redefinition of the employment contract, one that represents a massive seizing of our intellectual property on a grand scale,” professors from nine of the 13 UW campuses wrote in a recent letter to UW System President Jay Rothman. “It would allow any UW campuses to fire any employee and nonetheless continue teaching their courses in perpetuity with no obligation to continue paying the employee for their work.”
Aside from owning faculty syllabi, lecture notes and exam materials, UW would also have ownership rights over the scholarship faculty create:
A draft of the new policy, obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, would eliminate existing copyright language and replace it with the assertion that UW System holds ownership of both “institutional work” and “scholarly work.”
<SNIP>
“Scholarly work” includes most of what professors produce, such as lecture notes, course materials, journal articles and books. The UW System transfers copyright ownership to the author, as is customary in higher education, but notes that it “reserves” the right to use the works for purposes “consistent with its educational mission and academic norms.”
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Given that I’ve got about a dozen textbooks in the field, I edit a journal that needs scholarly work to keep it running, I spent seven years crafting hundreds of blog posts and that I’ve built a ton of courses over my nearly 30 years of teaching, this was basically my calm, metered reaction:
I’ve already sent a copy of the proposal to Sage for its team of lawyers to go over, so I’m hopeful that I receive an answer along the lines of, “Calm down… Have a Diet Coke… This isn’t going to destroy what you’ve spent decades creating…”
In the meantime, let’s lay out how stupid and problematic this is:
The quality of your courses depend on the people you’re pissing off: We essentially went through this in my media-writing class today and a collection of sophomores and juniors understood it, so I’m hoping it might make sense to the Board of Regents.
I proposed the following scenario to one kid in the class: Let’s say you turned in a really good story as an assignment for this class. In fact, I thought it was so good, I took your name off of it, put my name on it and submitted it to the local paper. The paper then paid me $50 for the story.
I then asked the kid, “So, given that every time you turn in something good, I’m going to take it, put my name on it and make money from it, how likely are you to put forth your best effort in this class?”
The kid said, “There’s no way I’m going to do anything good for you anymore.”
Right. So, let’s play that out here: If every time I work REALLY hard on making good stuff for my class, the U is just going to claim it as its own, why would I bother to do anything more than the bare minimum to make my class work?
I guess you could make the argument that pride in our work and a desire to make things better for our students could inspire us to do great things, even in the face of a naked power grab by the system, but if you’re going to treat us like mercenaries, we’re going to behave that way.
This will stifle innovation, limit interest in developing new courses and create a general sense of animosity among faculty. It will also likely inspire professors to find new ways to hide stuff from the administration folks, as one person on social media suggested to me:
This stuff isn’t a product, but rather a process: Inherent to the system’s argument is the basic premise of work product: You built this stuff while you were employed by us and required to do so. Therefore, since we paid you for this, the stuff is ours.
That works in the private sector, where we’re tasked with specific outcomes and granted special provisions to create this kind of work product. For example, I know that when I worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, I wrote a lot of articles that the paper published. Implicit in my employment agreement was the premise that I was acting on behalf of the paper, writing things that the paper tasked me to write and publishing those things in a copyrighted publication. They own that stuff and I’m cool with that. I don’t think I’m ever going to want to republish a weather story I wrote in 1996, and if I did something cool I wanted to show my students, that’s acceptable use.
However, when it comes to my media-writing class, I didn’t get hired to write lecture notes and syllabi for that class. In fact, what I wrote was a tweaked version of something I’d been working on for decades. I’d drafted some of this conceptual stuff when I was working at UW-Madison, improved upon it when I was at Mizzou, reconfigured it at Ball State and then adapted it here. This isn’t like you hired me to bake a cake for your birthday. This is a tree I’ve been growing and tending for years and years.
The material might not be UW’s to steal: Even if you don’t buy the argument above, the instructors might not own the material they’re using in the first place.
Textbook publishers aren’t just sending out desk copies of a dead-tree books and telling fledgling professors, “Vaya con Dios.” They actually build a ton of back-end stuff into the educational packages they provide these days, which includes a lot of the stuff the system is trying to get its grubby little paws on.
I know for my books at Sage, we have sample syllabi, PowerPoint slides for lectures, notes for instructors, exercises and test banks crammed with questions. I might even be forgetting some of the stuff we provide.
(Shameless Plug: Sage really is amazing when it comes to this kind of stuff. If you ever need a book, check these folks out first, especially if you need some help with the shaping and molding of the entire class experience.)
These things are available to instructors because Sage built them to go along with the authors’ textbooks. The professors can use them as they are, add stuff, cut stuff or otherwise tweak what they receive. That said, it’s not theirs to sell or give away. Sage holds the copyright for this stuff and I imagine Sage and the other book publishers who pour a ton of time and resources into building these things would be more than a bit peeved if the UW System tried to claim it as its own.
The Coy and Vance Duke Theory of Education: When I was a kid, I loved “The Dukes of Hazzard” television show, which ran every Friday for about seven or eight years. The show involved two cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, getting into scrapes with the corrupt law enforcement of Hazzard County and doing amazing car chases in their 1969 Dodge Charger. Along with patriarch Uncle Jesse Duke and the lovely cousin Daisy Duke, the boys were “makin’ their way, the only way they know how,” to quote the theme song.
It was a simple show that drew a good audience and it seemed to work well. However, around the fifth season, John Schneider and Tom Wopat (who played Bo and Luke, respectively) got into a contract dispute with the studio over salaries. Rather than pay them and move on with life, the studio had the idea in its head that the car (the General Lee) was actually the star of the show, so it didn’t matter who was driving it and that they didn’t need these two pretty boys at all.
If ever there was a knock-off of a brand name, this was it. Like the original Duke Boys, one was blonde, one was brunette. They essentially wore the same wardrobe, had the same catch phrases and did the same insane driving stuff. That said, the ratings took a dump and after one season, Bo and Luke “returned from driving the NASCAR circuit” and Coy and Vance ended up fading from memory.
What the universities are doing here is essentially the same kind of thing. They figure, “Well, hell, if we have the notes, the syllabus and the PowerPoint slides, we don’t really need the professor who created them at the front of the room.” These folks assume that once we decide to leave, retire or whatever, they can just plug in an adjunct at a fraction of the cost and things will run like a Swiss watch. And that’s not just me being paranoid, as other folks see it as well:
I pretty much know my notes aren’t going to be helpful to other people as I wrote them based on a lot of my experiences in the field. Notes like (BUS FIRE STORY GOES HERE) or (EXPLAIN DRUG DEALER SHOT THING) probably won’t work for a random Coy or Vance they bring in to teach my class after they decide they don’t need me anymore.
HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: One of the biggest reasons I’m worried about this is because it impacts what I can do with my materials. That’s also the main reason why I think you should care about it, too.
I never took this job to get rich and I certainly don’t like the idea of coming across like Daffy Duck when he found the treasure room:
However, when I know stuff is mine to do with as I please, that tends to benefit a lot of other people as well. Whenever someone shoots me an email and says, “Hey, how do you organize your class?” I’m always happy to give them a copy of my syllabus. When someone needs an assignment I’ve built, I’m glad to share it with them or on the blog.
When we went into COVID lock down, I basically dumped everything I ever did that I thought would help people into the Corona Hotline section of the blog for free. All those goodies remain there to this day, so feel free to help yourself.
If this policy passes, I might not be as free to offer that kind of generosity any more, and that would really tick me off.
Although this isn’t a great look for a guy accused of drinking to excess, the author of the Atlantic article on Kash Patel stated that this is among the least worrisome moments of his time as FBI director.
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, sued The Atlantic on Monday, accusing it of defamation over an article that claimed his excessive drinking and unexplained absences were putting his job in jeopardy.
The article, under the headline “The FBI Director Is MIA,” was published on Friday and detailed Mr. Patel’s behavior in his role leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, citing more than two dozen anonymous sources. The author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, wrote that Mr. Patel’s conduct had “often alarmed officials at the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.” The article said he “has also earned a reputation for acting impulsively during high-stakes investigations.”
Mr. Patel denied the claims in a statement to The Atlantic, which the article included.
THE BACKGROUND:Sarah Fitzpatrick’s article focuses on a string of incidents in which a long list of unnamed sources note that Patel was exhibiting all the textbook signs of an entitled frat boy. These allegations included:
He was drunk and missing a lot of work because of it.
He was drunk at his favorite local bar while hanging out with co-workers.
He frequently jetted off to Las Vegas, where he got plastered at another favorite hangout.
People had to rework his schedule to avoid early morning meetings because Patel was sleeping off the action from the night before.
He was too messed up to do his job when people tried to reach him, or they just couldn’t reach him at all.
He bragged about things that weren’t true, including misinforming the public about the capture of the Brown University shooter.
The White House issued a statement with a blanket denial of these allegations and Patel himself was quoted as saying, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”
A federal judge in Texas has tossed a defamation suit brought by FBI Director Kash Patel against former FBI assistant director-turned-MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi.
Patel had sued Figliuzzi over comments he made on “Morning Joe” about the FBI director’s evening activities.
“Yeah, well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” Figliuzzi said on the show last year.
<SNIP>
U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. (wrote) “Figliuzzi’s statement, when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.”
“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building,” the judge added.
I’m glad about the verdict, but given what we’re seeing these days in terms of “reasonable intelligence and learning” out there, I’m worried where that bar will be set in the future.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE AS A JOURNALISM STUDENT: This article and Patel’s suit provide a pretty interesting look at how defamation (or libel) tends to work or not work, as well as an opportunity to look into building stories like this. Here are some key issues:
UNNAMED SOURCES: This whole story is built on the backs of sources that Fitzpatrick did not name in the article. That is ALWAYS a huge risk in journalism for a variety of reasons. Source credibility comes into question, issues of people having axes to grind show up, sources who eventually get IDed might backtrack and leave you holding the bag… The list is pretty long and the dangers are pretty strong.
The things that make this a little more stable than many of the other stories that show up with an unnamed source along with a wing and a prayer are:
A) The volume of sources. Fitzpatrick is stacking people like cord wood in this thing, noting as many as a dozen people have corroborated the things she’s putting into her piece. If that is accurate, and I have no substantive reason to doubt it, that means this story has some stronger legs to stand on than most.
B) I go back to a conversation I had with my friend Allison, who covered the Chicagoland Catholic church molestation scandals of the early 2000s. I used to ask her how she knew for sure that the priests in her stories were serial pedophiles. The information she gathered came from the accusers, usually years or decades later, and was almost impossible to back up with documents or other “official source” content that I had gotten used to using in my own work.
Her answer was simple: She did a ton of digging, verified in every way she could and then she published the content and waited. In almost every case, if she published one or two accusations, she immediately heard from at least three or four other people who told her the same things had happened to them.
“My response is that I stand by every single word of this report,” she said. “We were very diligent. We were very careful. It went through multiple levels of editing, review, care.
“And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after – immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information.”
The only way Fitzpatrick was going to get this story was by providing anonymity to her sources, so she took a risk. That said, it wasn’t a foolish risk, which is something to keep in mind when someone says, “Hey, I have a story for you, but you can’t use my name…”
A HIGH BAR TO CLEAR: As a public figure, Patel has to demonstrate that the Atlantic engaged in actual malice, as opposed to mere negligence, and that’s a pretty tough thing to do. As the folks at Poynter point out:
Can Patel actually be successful in his suit? Sure, anything is possible, but it’s unlikely.
During an appearance on CNN, Brian Stelter, CNN’s media reporter, said, “Actual malice is the very high legal standard that public figures have to prove in order to win a defamation suit. They have to prove that The Atlantic knew these claims were false or had a reckless disregard for the truth.”
This kind of goes back to the first point in a way: When you only have one anonymous/unnamed source, there’s a huge risk you are buying the Brooklyn Bridge and you should know better. When you have a dozen or more people telling you the exact same thing, it’s going to be hard to prove a vast conspiracy among those folks and the reporter, with them all knowingly trying to frame you for something.
It also merits pointing out that what makes for a public figure or not isn’t always easy, so it’s important to think about the stories you’re writing that might cast aspersions. Patel is obviously public, but if you’re writing a similar “too drunk to work” story about the school librarian or a local business owner, if things go south, this might be a concern.
GETTING SLAPP-ED AROUND: We have discussed the concept of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, suits here before. The John Oliver/Bob Murray Suit was one of my favorite versions of SLAPP suits, primarily because not only was it so blatantly obviously meant to silence criticism, but also because it allowed me to use the name “Mr. Nutterbutter” in my textbooks.
This brings to bear an unfortunate point: Just because you’re right, it doesn’t mean some yahoo won’t sue you to make your life miserable. What’s important to know before you go after a story is to what degree your media outlet will support you, to what degree you can accurately defend your work and to what degree you think the juice is worth the squeeze. Then, you can decide how to move forward.
In Patel’s case, it was obvious he would be coming after the Atlantic, and it was obvious the Atlantic had a big enough war chest to fight back. That said, these kinds of suits can create a chilling effect on quality journalists who want to do important work. It’s not supposed to happen in a society in which the First Amendment provides us with some of the best support in the world, but we do have to deal with the reality of our surroundings.
The rapper Afroman did not defame seven sheriff’s deputies or invade their privacy when he put out a series of catchy, flamboyantly insulting music videos about them after they raided his home in 2022, an Adams County, Ohio jury ruled on Wednesday.
In a three-day trial that pitted two very different notions of personal outrage against each other, Afroman, whose legal name is Joseph Foreman, successfully argued that he had a First Amendment right to mock the deputies, as public figures, and that the over-the-top lyrics of his viral songs could not reasonably be taken as literal statements of fact.
BACKGROUND: The 2022 raid was based on a warrant seeking evidence that Afroman was engaged in drug trafficking and kidnapping. The rapper’s house had multiple cameras recording the raid, one of which captured a deputy doing a double take of a glass cake dish containing a loaf of lemon pound cake.
Meet Officer Pound Cake, who did not put down his gun and grab a slice and thus cannot testify if Mama’s recipe was, in fact, so nice.
The raid produced no evidence of either allegation in the warrant, but it did lead to a lot of video footage of deputies looking through Afroman’s property, breaking down his door and other miscellaneous actions.
Afroman used the footage in several music videos to mock the law enforcement officials. After the videos went viral, merch began to arrive in the form of “Officer Pound Cake” T-shirts and the like. At that point, several deputies sued for defamation and image appropriation, claiming the rapper used their images without their consent and that his album of songs and subsequent videos caused them significant harm.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: What people who sue in cases like this fail to realize is:
A) You’re essentially trying to put out a fire with gasoline. The minute this thing began, people started paying more attention to Afroman, his videos and even Officer Pound Cake. I haven’t thought of Afroman in more than 20 years, but now the guy is all over my feed thanks to this lawsuit.
B) Unless you can prove (and I mean REALLY prove) that you were directly defamed in a clear, obvious and serious way, You have absolutely no shot of winning a suit like this, which means all your doing is what we outlined in Point A.
Case after case involving rappers, parody artists and other similar entertainment-based performances has demonstrated that this kind of stuff is protected speech. It also does nothing more than draw people to the very thing you didn’t want them to see.
When the PMRC put out its list of the Filthy 15, the artists and albums listed there spiked in popularity. When Jerry Falwell sued over a spoof ad in Hustler magazine, he targeted a publication that would be here one month, gone the next and likely only seen by a few hundred thousand people. However, now his name is associated with a Supreme Court case that every student in media law has seen, along with seeing the ad.
I get that it’s not fun to be the butt of the joke (believe me, after 12 years of Catholic school as the awkward kid in class, I get it.). That said, mockery is protected speech and pretty much everyone in public life gets their turn in the crap-barrel. The sooner you learn to let it go or embrace it, the less likely this will come up every day of your life.
This is a photo of me at a high school journalism workshop, apparently trying to explain something that I hope isn’t what it looks like I’m trying to explain. If I can handle this photo of me existing, Pete Hegseth can handle whatever the hell photos they’re taking of him these days.
THE LEAD: The folks in the government are getting grumpy about the way the media is treating them to the point of threatening and banning outlets and coverage they don’t like.
The chair of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licences after US President Donald Trump criticised their coverage of the US-Israel war with Iran.
Brendan Carr told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that broadcasters’ licences were not a “property right” and warned they can be revoked if stations did not serve the public interest.
Carr’s threat came after he accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions”, saying they can still “correct course” before their licence renewals.
Some Democratic lawmakers called Carr’s comments unconstitutional. The FCC issues licences to individual broadcast stations, but does not license TV networks.
In a “hold my beer” moment, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth went one step further, barring photo journalists from his Pentagon briefings for not making him look pretty enough:
The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering,” according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
I FEEL PETTY, OH SO PETTY: The media and the government have long had an adversarial relationship, with many political figures badmouthing and blaming on the fourth estate for whatever ails them. We’ve had politicians literally beating up reporters as well, with one “bodyslamming” a journalist in Montana, and yet still winning the election anyway.
This isn’t the standard fare of one saber-rattling chucklehead with limited power and an unlimited ego. This is the head of the FCC basically issuing a mob threat, which Democrats immediately rebuked him for making. Even Republicans who generally view the media as somewhere between a swamp rat and the crud that grows on your teeth when you forget to brush for two days are not having it:
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Sunday rebuked Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over TV networks’ news coverage.
“I am a big supporter of the First Amendment,” Johnson said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.” “I do not like the heavy-handed government, no matter who is wielding it. … I would rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”
“The federal government’s role is to protect our freedoms — protect our constitutional rights,” the Wisconsin Republican added.
Johnson is my senator and I can’t remember the last time I fully agreed with him on anything, so to have us both on the same page might be as rare as seeing Jesus riding a unicorn. (You’re welcome…) Johnson’s essential position of, “I might not like what you are saying, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it,” is good to see, given that too few people tend to think about how life might look if the shoe were on the other foot.
The backlash against Hegseth isn’t as loud or strong, but the underlying concern of controlling the media shouldn’t be any less alarming. As much as his staff is now backtracking and claiming there’s a “space and fairness” issue driving this, I tend to believe the first report a little more for obvious reasons.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Let’s start with Hegseth because it’s easier. I’m a guy who has had his picture taken at a number of podium-based events and I swear to God, I never look good. I either look like I’m gesturing in hope of winning a game of Charades or my mouth is in some sort of position that looks like I’m eating rotten food or about to spit on someone. I’m also old and bald with bad neck hair, so that’s not helping anything either.
So, from that perspective, I can honestly say: Grow up, dude.
You were once on TV and you considered yourself a journalist, so it’s not like you don’t get the idea of how freedom of expression works. I can pretty much imagine the general outrage you’d put forth if a Democratic administration had tried to crack down on whatever you were doing on Fox News. For you to punk slap the media over a couple photographs you didn’t like when this photo of you exists seems a bit stupid:
As for Brendan Carr, his lack of understanding and his use of threats makes more sense. Carr got a bachelor’s in government before getting a law degree. He was a private practice attorney before being brought into the governmental machine in 2012. He never worked in the media, nor is his expertise in that field.
Carr reminds me of a number of school district attorneys and college counsel-folk I’ve dealt with over the years when school media got censored. They had this vibe like, “I’m a lawyer, thus I know everything and I’m way smarter than anyone else in the room.”
I remember one case in which I had to keep correcting a school lawyer about cases he claimed supported his position. Finally, I outlined several reasons he was wrong before turning to the superintendent and saying, “Ma’am, with all due respect, you’re getting terrible legal advice and likely overpaying for it.”
When governmental people come from the business or legal world, they fail to understand that they don’t have as much free reign as they used to. Being “in charge” back there meant they had unfettered power over anyone or anything within their fiefdom. In the government, we have rules and laws that constrain people from acting on their stupidest instincts.
People love the police blotter, because it includes tiny nuggets of drama, intrigue and joy. For instance, in Gillette, Wyoming, cars get “cheesed,” meaning people will cover them with slices of American cheese. Who doesn’t love reading about a good cheesing?
But along with the weird and wacky things that show up in a police blotter are numerous inaccuracies that follow people for life.
“There’s a lot of problems with blotters in general,” Secrest told me. “An initial charge can change really easily. They can up the charge, they can lower it, they can dismiss it entirely. Things can get challenged pretty quickly. Also, people can be acquitted.”
COP TALK 101: For those uninitiated in crime news, the blotter is a list of all the incidents law enforcement officials within a department deal with in a day. It usually lists a mix of things, including the time of the incident, the name of the person involved, the place where the incident occurred, the date of birth of the person involved and any criminal charges associated with the situation.
The blotter only represents what the law enforcement officials are doing at the front end of a situation, not the resolution of the case or any changes made later that day (or week or month).
So, for example, let’s say I’m driving to the aluminum recycling place to turn in some beer cans when I hit an icy patch on the road and skid into the ditch. The cop sees beer cans all over my car, notices that I totaled my vehicle and wants to check me for drunk driving. However, I’m too woozy and messed up from the crash to do field sobriety and the ambulance takes me to the hospital, where instead of a breath test, they do a blood draw.
The officer might list Operating While Intoxicated as an expected charge, pending the results of the blood test. So, it goes into the the blotter as an OWI. However, it turns out I’m as sober as a judge, so the charges eventually get dismissed.
If all the paper is doing is publishing the blotter info and not really following up, that can lead to several problems, like one noted in Poynter’s story on the Wyoming situation:
Although the staff received some pushback when they announced the change, “now that it’s gone it doesn’t seem to be missed,” Secrest said. “Also, this week we had a man call us and tell us that his booking sheet incorrectly designated his charge as a felony and our publishing of that, prior to this policy, caused him to lose his job. We will be able to correct that once he provides the court document confirming the charge. But that was published about 10 days before this policy took place. It felt like a good reminder of why we did this.”
A CHECK OF THE INTEREST ELEMENTS: One of the things we always talk about is balancing people’s right to know something versus people’s right to be left alone. A key way we do this is looking at the FOCII elements (Fame, Oddity, Conflict, Immediacy and Impact) to figure out if we should be doing something or not.
The blanket publication of the blotter tends not to showcase any of these elements other than Immediacy, but as we note in the book, Immediacy always has to be tempered against accuracy. In short, fast and wrong is worse than slow and right.
That said, the Oddity element often shows up in the blotter, which means checking it for information still merits value. The Fame element can also come into play, as people who are well known often end up on the wrong side of the law.
Here are two examples I remember from working with the crime beat:
At UW Oshkosh, the Advance-Titan used to run blotter items under the heading of “Busted!” In looking at the revelations put forth by the Wyoming paper regarding accuracy, that probably wasn’t the best of titles.
In one case, Busted! featured a brief bit of news in which two students were caught having sex in the middle of the day behind the giant UW-OSHKOSH sign on the main drag of campus. When the officer began to write the students up for this tryst, the guy begged the cop not to do this, because he said he knew it would end up in Busted! and thus his girlfriend would find out about his “extra-curricular activities.”
At another place and time, we had a blotter item that really tickled our irony meter. A local radio personality who went by the moniker “The Altar Boy” got busted for OWI. He apparently also gave the cops a bit of a rough time in arguing with them over the bust, noting he was someone of great import.
The folks in Wyoming noted that in cases like these, obviously, the information would be covered, but done so in a more complete way. Meanwhile, minor incidents involving regular folks would not make the paper.
DISCUSSION TIME: Does your media outlet have a blotter section of some kind and how popular is it? What kinds of things do you think are fair game and what feels like a bridge too far? Also, how would you feel if the minor indiscretion you committed in college suddenly became something anyone could find on the first page of a Google search? A lot of student newsrooms have struggled with balancing this, so it’d make for an interesting classroom discussion.
The University may record a class or access existing classroom recordings without the permission or knowledge of the instructor being recorded for the following purposes:
To gather evidence in connection with an investigation into alleged violations of University policy, when authorized in writing by the Provost and the Chief Human Resources Officer; and
For any other lawful purpose, when authorized in writing by the Provost and the Office of University Counsel, who will consult with the Chair of the Faculty.
BACKGROUND: The university had run into several issues related to recordings of professors over the years, only to figure out it really had no policy in place to deal with such things.
When called to account for this surreptitious move, the U fell back on the “well, we’re a one-party consent state” thing, which is true but a bit wobbly at best.
A FEW BASIC OBSERVATIONS: I found myself thinking about a couple aspects of the policy that either people haven’t considered very well or they just hope they won’t have to deal with in the future. Consider the following:
Rules for student recordings:I’m not sure exactly how this came into play, but the document makes it against UNC law for students to record in the classroom, except under specific circumstances:
Students may not record classes, including online classes, without express advance permission from the instructor teaching the class they wish to record. Students approved for recording as a University Compliance Office (UCO) accommodation to address a disability, pregnancy, or religious accommodation must notify instructors of their approved accommodation by sending an accommodation notification plan in advance of any recording. The approved accommodation plan must indicate the means by which the recording will be accomplished and any other details pertaining to the recording or its use.
Well, for starters, how are you going to monitor that, given students carry about 97 digital devices on them at any point in time? I guess if I’m in my computer lab at UWO with 20-some kids, maybe I might notice a kid’s phone set to record, but most likely not. In a UNC pit class, though? Not a chance in hell.
Add that to the lack of a specific “or else what” in this policy and I’m thinking this thing is going to be relatively toothless when it comes to enforcement. I’m not an expert on university policy or UNC’s policies in particular, but I don’t see a “If you do X, you will suffer Y” in this document. The document also doesn’t say, “See POLICY X for punishments” so I’m left to wonder if the kids will record anyway depending on how strict the policy and problematic the punishment.
Martyrs to the cause:Most of the kerfuffle I’ve seen in relation to classroom recordings getting out into the world is related to students trying to “expose” professorial bias. We’ve covered a few of these here, and there are dozens more cases elsewhere in which a student records a professor doing or saying something that upsets a large group of the perpetually offended. Once that match of outrage hits the kerosene of social media, the professor’s goose is cooked.
With that in mind (and the previous point in mind as well), I somehow doubt this kind of thing will stop. Even more, I imagine that a kid who “exposes” a professor via an illicit recording at UNC will now be hailed as a martyr to the cause if any punishment befalls that kid.
(“Let’s all remember the brave sacrifice of Jimmy, who recorded Professor Jones misgendering a piece of wicker in Underwater Basketweaving 385. That ‘stern talking to’ he got from the dean will haunt him always…”)
We have a world in which social media rules, “gotcha fame” is aspirational and people are way too full of themselves around the academic world. Recordings are going to happen.
To Chill or Not To Chill: I’ve studied the concept of the Willingness to Self-Censor for a number of years and found that many people have an innate sense of how willing they are to speak out or shut up when faced with controversy. Certain topics tend to spark this more in all people, but many topics spark it in specific people. In short, there are a lot of reasons why people will hold their tongues and it’s not always because they don’t have something to say.
Conversely, I’ve dealt with academics all my adult life and I found that many of them apparently have some sort of condition that makes them think everyone should hear what they have to say about everything, regardless of the circumstances.
Michael Palm, president of UNC’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors and associate professor in the UNC Department of Communication, said faculty members are aware they may be monitored by the University or even outside groups.
“My sense is that most faculty, at this point, just assume they’re being watched,” Palm said.
<SNIP>
“I think it is unquestionable that there has been a chilling effect on campus and that many more faculty now than at any other time that I’ve been a faculty member — and I’ve been at UNC for 18 years — are self-censoring out of fear for what might happen if the wrong people disapprove of the content in their classes,” Palm said.
If I’m being honest, there are days I have a “come at me, bro” vibe going on when it comes to my classroom. If you think I’ve said something stupid, childish, offensive or whatever… well… take a number, I guess. Then there are other days where, if I think about all the potential ways something like this could screw me, you couldn’t pull a needle out of my keester with a tow truck.
What I foresee here is that the students are going to lose a lot, thanks to this policy. The professors who really SHOULD be curbed a bit in regard to their histrionics and side-rambles will be the ones thinking, “Well, that’s for other people…” The folks who are more like academic prairie dogs, popping their little heads out of their holes juuuuuusssst enough to see if the coast is clear, will stay under ground for fear of getting whacked.
As if this semester hasn’t been weird enough, I got this email from a colleague on Monday:
In case you hadn’t seen this, Anthropic is being sued for copyright infringement. Two of your books were swept up by them, and you are entitled to file a claim for damages: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/
Abiding by the “if your mother says she loves you, go check it out rule,” I did a search on the site and found that he was right.
I’m honored that someone considers my work worthy of theft…
In one of the largest copyright settlements involving generative artificial intelligence, Anthropic AI, a leading company in the generative AI space, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of authors.
<SNIP>
The settlement, which U.S. Senior District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco will consider approving next week, is in a case that involved the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems. It also suggests an inflection point in the ongoing legal fights between the creative industries and the AI companies accused of illegally using artistic works to train the large language models that underpin their widely-used AI systems.
BACKGROUND: Anthropic trained its AI using a ton of content, including a boatload of books and other copyrighted material. In the case of things that were open to the public or properly purchased, this was apparently fine, based on the “fair use” doctrine associated with copyright.
(It’s also why Roy Orbison is likely spinning in his grave over 2 Live Crew’s version of “Oh, Pretty Woman” or why we get thumbnail images before clicking on a link to visit “Perfect 10” magazine, so maybe it hasn’t always been the greatest of things… )
(The judge) also found that Anthropic had illegally acquired millions of books through online libraries like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror that many tech companies have used to supplement the huge amounts of digital text needed to train A.I. technologies. When Anthropic downloaded these libraries, the judge ruled, its executives knew they contained pirated books.
Anthropic could have purchased the books from many sellers, the judge said, but instead preferred to “steal” them to avoid what the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, called “legal/practice/business slog” in court documents. Companies and individuals who willfully infringe on copyright can face significantly higher damages — up to $150,000 per work — than those who are not aware they are breaking the law.
If this dude thought getting the books the legal way was a “slog,” he should try writing a book once…
In any case, I reached out to Sage and they are on this, noting I should be getting a letter or email from them to explain what to do and how to fill out a claim form. News stories noted that authors could get up to $3,000 per text, but I’m pretty darned certain there’s no way I’m getting that.
Sage is really the aggrieved party in this, given that the folks there put in the “slog” to get this book built, shipped, marketed and in the stores in time for the Christmas rush. There’s a mention of royalty percentages, so I might get like 5-10% or whatever of whatever the actual amount is. Then again, I might get nothing.
That said, let’s do the thing we all do when we buy that Mega-Millions ticket: Plan to spend money we might never get…
FUN WITH MONEY:As I noted on the “About” page, comedian John Oliver is my spirit guide in everything I do here. One of the things I love most about “Last Week Tonight” is when Oliver does something incredibly weird to sponsor something he finds particularly important.
I’m sure I lack that kind of star power and I might end up getting $50 and a ham sandwich out of this, at best. Still, not for nothing, but Oliver’s weird fundraising efforts got a Koala Chlamydia Ward named after him, so let’s reach for the stars on this one…
Here’s the deal:Whatever I get, I’ll see if Sage would be willing to match it. Then, whatever we scrape together, we’re gonna do something with it that you think is fun, weird, good or all three and more.
Either post below or use the contact form on the website to tell me what you want me to do with my pirate’s booty, whatever of that I actually get.
A donation to the Student Press Law Center, for all they do for student journalists, in the name of the administrator who has done the worst job of supporting student media rights.
Buying anything from this website, which was the first actual seller that came up when I Googled, “What is the dumbest thing you can buy?” for any reader who asks for it.
Funding whatever insane open-records request you think would be awesome.
Honestly, it could be anything, or nothing if we get shut out. The point is, let’s plan to do something to commemorate this one time where the words “Vince Filak” and “lawsuit” is a cause for celebration, as we make a point to help someone or something important in a random and oblique way.
If you would like to speak up on Rodenbush’s behalf, please email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know you stand with Rodenbush and the students at the IDS, who could also use your support (ids@indiana.edu).
THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Jim Rodenbush, who had been the director of student media at IU since 2018, was summarily fired on Tuesday after he refused to tell the staff of the Indiana Daily Student what they should publish in the homecoming edition.
A formal termination letter, signed by Dean David Tolchinsky, was making the rounds on various media outlets late Tuesday night:
Multiple generations of student editors at the IDS were adamantly against this approach, as well as opposing the idea that the free and independent media outlets they ran were going to be kind of “folded into” the media school.
At the time, I’d been in contact with Rodenbush, who was more than polite in his refusal to crap all over this idea, telling me he had faith in the kids and was working within the system to keep the ship afloat.
In a blistering letter on the IDS website, co-EICs Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller explained exactly what happened to Rodenbush, bringing the receipts with them. In pulling quotes from emails and multiple meetings, they outlined the brazen attempts of the administration to force the students to bend to the school’s whims:
Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship, established by legal precedent surrounding speech law on public college campuses.
Administrators ignored Rodenbush, who said he would not tell us what to print or not print in our paper. In a meeting Sept. 25 with administrators, he said doing so would be censorship.
“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.
Not to put too fine of a point on this, but if you have to ask how to “frame” something so that it doesn’t look like censorship, you’re committing censorship and you damned well know it.
And the students know it too:
IU will attempt to frame this censorship as a step toward a balanced budget. The IDS, along with the Student Press Law Center and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, see it very differently.
“The Media School’s order limiting the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition to homecoming coverage isn’t a ‘business decision’ — it’s censorship,” the Student Press Law Center said in a statement to the IDS. “This disregards strong First Amendment protections and a long-standing tradition of student editorial independence at Indiana University.”
If administrators disregard our rights as student journalists now, what will stop them from prohibiting the IDS from publishing certain stories on our website and social media, should they deem it appropriate?
AN ALUMNUS SPEAKS: In looking for Tolchinsky’s contact information on the IU Media School website, I came across a familiar face in the “Proud Alumni” section of the site.
Andy Hall is a 1982 graduate of the IU journalism program and former editor of the IDS, and we worked together for a bit at the Wisconsin State Journal. The media school gave him a well-deserved write up, where he discussed the foundation of Wisconsin Watch, an investigative journalism outlet here in the Badger State.
I’m not sure if IU full grasps the irony that the Media School is literally championing a free and independent media outlet, founded by a relentless investigative journalist, at the same time it’s trying to undermine the place that helped launch his career.
(SIDE NOTE: Here is my best Andy Hall story. Every year, staffers at the WSJ were assigned a high school graduation to cover as part of their duty to civic journalism. Andy’s assignment coincided with a planned trip back to IU for a reunion of some sort, so he hit me up to ask if I could cover for him that weekend.
Andy explained that not only would I get paid for the work time and mileage, but that he’d kick in a six-pack of some Indiana beer and a bucket of Tell City Pretzels as a pot sweetener. After I agreed to do that, word got around the newsroom pretty quickly that the college kid could be bribed into taking your graduation story gig if you ponied up some free beer. I think I wrote like 10 or 12 grad stories that year and had the best beer fridge of anyone my age.)
I got a hold of Andy late Tuesday night and filled him in on the situation, asking what a guy who cut his teeth at the IDS thought of the school’s actions. He didn’t mince words:
“As a former editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, I am deeply disturbed by this apparent attempt to censor the decisions of its student editors. The IDS charter specifies that ‘final editorial responsibility for all content rests with the chief student editors or leaders.
“I hope that the Media School leadership finds ways to work productively with the IDS editors to ensure that the student news organization retains the full independence granted by its charter. Ultimately, that journalistic independence is in the best interests of the school, the students and, most importantly, the public.”
I wonder whose profile the school will be taking down first, Jim’s or Andy’s?
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is what happens when you train great student journalists and then try to play them for fools. The level of ham-handed stupidity involved in not just what was done, but how openly it was discussed in various meetings where journalism folk were present makes some of the Watergate stuff look nuanced by comparison.
I mean, even the mob knows better than to talk about how they plan to whack a guy in terms this blatant.
As far as Rodenbush is concerned, he’ll be getting the red carpet treatment on a national stage, according to Mediafest 25 Convention Director Michael Koretzky:
Jim Rodenbush is coming to MediaFest. SPJ is paying his way.
Jim will be recognized during Friday’s keynote, and we hope to get video of the room applauding him – then make sure it gets back to campus. (Two IU TV students are attending MediaFest. Hopefully, they’ll record the moment along with the rest of us.)
If you’re coming to MediaFest, please say hello to Jim at Friday’s CMA/ACP reception and around the Grand Hyatt halls.
We have other things planned for Jim upon his arrival. SPJ president Emily Bloch is excited to host him, and SPLC’s Jonathan Falk will invite Jim to speak at one of his sessions. CMA leaders haven’t gotten back to me yet, but I’m sure they’re just as excited.
Let’s stand with and for Jim.
As for what’s next for the IDS, I’ve got an email in to Tolchinsky and his admin crew asking that question. I’ve also got emails in to the co-EICs to see if they want to fill me in on anything. In the name of full transparency, I did get one reply:
I don’t know about you, but I can practically hear Langosa’s sigh of relief in that message from here. If anything else comes through, I’ll update it here.
It’s out of pure, morbid curiosity that I want to see the job posting for whoever the hell IU thinks is going to saddle up for this gig.
In the mean time, please feel free to email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know if you disagree with this act of censorship. Also, please feel free to offer your support to the IDS staff (ids@indiana.edu), because they definitely deserve better than they getting, but they aren’t going down without a fight.
