May 8, 2024
Student Journalists Are Needed Now More Than Ever
By Finn Cooley
While the mainstream media repeatedly mischaracterizes pro-Palestine protests on campus, police and university administrations are attempting to repress the student press.
(Stephanie Keith / Getty)
On May 3, we celebrated World Press Freedom Day, an international holiday dedicated to the importance of journalism and a free press. And, as of May 3, more than 140 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7—an average of five per week. In fact, in Gaza, more journalists have been killed in the first three months of the war than in all of World War II and the Vietnam War combined.
On May 5, the Israeli government raided and shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in the United States—where the freedom of the press is enshrined in our Constitution’s First Amendment—law enforcement and university administrations have routinely disregarded the rights of student journalists who have been working tirelessly to cover the ongoing pro-Palestine campus protests.
At UCLA, Daily Bruin reporters were gassed, assaulted, and threatened with arrest. Four Daily Bruin reporters were also directly targeted and assaulted by pro-Israel counterprotesters—while the LAPD took nearly four hours to intervene. At Dartmouth, two student journalists were arrested for criminal trespass despite repeatedly identifying themselves as members of the press. Their charges have yet to be dropped. At Columbia, student journalists at the Columbia Daily Spectator and WKCR were threatened with arrest by the NYPD, mocked, pushed, and shoved, and then barred from their own campus. And just this past weekend, student reporters with USC’s Annenberg Media and the Daily Trojan were denied critical access to cover the LAPD’s predawn raid—a direct violation of California Penal Code, which grants student journalists the right to freely cover any campus activities.
