Southern Illinois U. Sends Police After Student Journalist for Asking Questions
“should be ashamed of its strong-arm tactics to silence its own students”
Where are all the members of the professional media on this?
The College Fix reports:
Southern Illinois U. sends cops after student journalist for asking questions
Campus police quickly closed an investigation into the editor-in-chief of the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville newspaper for “harassment.”
Editor Dylan Hembrough and his advisor were ordered to speak to campus police after the student journalist criticized the school’s media team for what he saw as restrictive interview policies.
Hembrough (pictured, middle) told The College Fix on Thursday that the interview took only 15 minutes or so at the police station and the matter is now “closed” after the meeting earlier this week on Tuesday.
Two officers were present for the “short interview,” Hembrough said.
“It was really cordial, I didn’t feel any malice from them,” the student journalist told The Fix. “After a couple question he said he was going to close the case because it’s not harassment,” Hembrough said.
The investigation is the latest battle between the student newspaper The Alestle, and Director of Communications Nicole Franklin.
The newspaper objects to a university policy that appears to require a spokesperson to be present at all interviews with staff or professors.
Over the summer, Franklin “stopped a reporter…from interviewing a staff member without her presence,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The College Fix via email.
FIRE, which is intervening along with the Student Press Law Center to fight the policy, criticized the latest maneuver by the university.
The school “should be ashamed of its strong-arm tactics to silence its own students,” Marie McMullan told The Fix via a media statement on Wednesday. “Siccing cops on journalists is something you’d expect to see from a tinpot dictatorship, not a university in the heartland of America.”
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Comments
As an employer the university has every right to such a policy. It does not give its employees permission to be interviewed without it.
I have to agree with Milhouse. This policy applies to staff and faculty, not media and press personnel.
If university officials dispute the “objectivity, truthfulness, and accuracy” of media reporting, the proper response is to publicly rebut the reporting, with actual evidence to support their claims, not send their pet police after the reporters.
Who ‘ordered’ the student newspaper personnel to talk to the campus police, and what was their authority?
Considering this was a policy issue from the start and not a criminal matter, why did the campus police open an ‘investigation’ in the first place? Who was the complainant and what was alleged?
The proper response would have been a letter or a phone call. Involving the campus police is over the top, and reminiscent of certain European countries. One has to wonder what the campus authorities are afraid of…