Student journalists are put to the test, and sometimes face danger, in covering protests on campus
NEW YORK — Ordered by police to leave the scene of a protest on the UCLA campus after violence broke out, Catherine Hamilton and three colleagues from the Daily Bruin were suddenly surrounded by protesters who punched, kicked and sprayed them with a noxious chemical.
On American campuses engulfed in anger this spring, student journalists are at the center of it all, sometimes uncomfortably. They become immersed in the story in a way that journalists from large media organizations often cannot. And they face dual challenges: as members of the media and as students at the institutions they cover.
Across the country from the University of California, Los Angeles, a student-run radio station broadcast live Tuesday night as police cleared a building overrun by protesters on the Columbia University campus, while other student journalists were locked up in dormitories and facing arrests were threatened.
Hamilton’s attackers wore masks. But she recognized the voice of someone as a counter-protester who sympathized with Israel’s cause because of previous reporting when some of them filmed her while she was working and harassed her by name. She left the hospital on Wednesday after learning that injuries to her arms and chest were bruises.
“While it was terrifying and, honestly, will take a lot of mental processing, the experience confirmed for me the importance of student journalists, because we know our campus better than any outside reporter,” said 21-year-old Hamilton. prevent me from continuing this reporting.
Fear and anger were evident in the voices of students who narrated the action on Columbia’s WKCR radio on Tuesday. The station’s website briefly went off the air because so many people were listening to an audio stream, and the announcers recommended people tune in to FM radio instead.
Although he wore a badge identifying him as a member of the press, police ordered Chris Mandell and other reporters from the Columbia Daily Spectator to a dormitory. When he tried to open the door, Mandell said he was told he would be arrested if he did it again.
Mandell has been working on the demonstrations and planning for months. While he considers it a learning experience, he said “it broke my heart” to see the police presence on campus and how the story was covered by outside journalists.
The Daily Spectator has followed the story every step of the way and has not hesitated to confront Columbia University’s leadership in print. In an editorial late last month, the students sharply condemned university President Minouche Shafik, saying administrators were uncommunicative beyond “ominous late-night emails.”
“This is your legacy,” the Spectator wrote — “a president more focused on your university’s brand than on the safety of your students and their demands for justice.”
On campuses across the country, 24-hour coverage of protests and student disciplinary hearings has led to nightly vigils in encampments turning into morning classes, homework and final projects squeezed in between interviews.
Student-run news websites from Yale and the University of Texas-Austin are covering the action with innovative live blogs. The print editions of the Daily Trojan have ended this semester at the University of Southern California, but editor-in-chief Anjali Patel tries to keep a reporter and photographer available at all times to feed the website, post news to to go. flow. All during graduation season.
“At the end of the day, we are still students,” Patel says.
At Columbia, where the journalism school is considered one of the best in the country, Dean Jelani Cobb wrote a memo Wednesday to the group of aspiring journalists who are his students: “You are now part of history. Your perseverance during a confusing and challenging moment cannot be underestimated. You told the stories that global audiences deserved to hear. You helped the school achieve its mission.”
The protest movement has become a training ground for students who are grappling with complicated editorial decisions for the first time in their careers. They face the awkwardness of reporting on their peers and the challenge of not getting carried away by emotions.
“This is a moment in the history of our campus,” said Arianna Smith, editor-in-chief of The Lantern at Ohio State University. “Being able to contribute to its reporting is a privilege that we do not take lightly. We’re under a lot of pressure to do well and be accurate, so that’s what we’re trying to do.”
More than three dozen Ohio State University students and protesters are facing misdemeanor charges following the university’s Thursday night crackdown on protests over investments in Israel.
Lantern staff members are holding meetings about balancing the experiences of pro-Palestinian protesters and Jewish students or counter-protesters, Smith said. They debate whether to publish the names of students facing discipline, compare language choices with those of other news organizations and consider what viewpoints are missing from stories. Editors instruct reporters to keep opinions to themselves.
At the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill’s The Daily Tar Heel newspaper, student journalists are also making tough decisions about anonymous sources. Editor-in-chief Liv Reilly said photographers were careful not to take photos showing the faces of people fearful of being arrested.
Josie Stewart, senior content editor at Ohio State’s Lantern, said she recognizes classmates on both sides of the protest. Newspaper reporting is discussed in her classes and friends regularly ask her about it.
“It’s definitely hard,” she said. “Every journalist has to weigh ethical interests against each other, but that is more difficult when you are staring at someone in class.”
Sometimes Reilly feels the instinct to say hello to classmates involved in the protest, but stops. She worries about saying their names out loud if they fear being identified, and considers the boundaries between classmate and reporter. She makes sure to identify herself as a reporter, but “people’s attitudes sometimes change when you say you’re in the media.”
Annika Sunkara, social media editor for The Huntington News at Northeastern University in Boston, said it was emotional talking to fellow students, some in tears, about their experiences with law enforcement. About 100 people were arrested there Saturday morning as police cleared pro-Palestinian camps on campus.
But as national news media descend on campuses across the country, student journalists say their connection to their campuses is their greatest asset. They have built relationships with student groups, teachers and administrators. They follow many of their peers, who have now become protest leaders, on social media.
“We’re the ones on the ground seeing what’s happening with our own eyes,” Stewart said. “We have a different level of access, of trust on our campus and of understanding.”
Some universities, including UCLA, have also seen scattered protests and student organizing since October. The Daily Bruin has been there “every step of the way,” Hamilton said, so that its staff “understands the demands of the students, the diverse perspectives on campus and the stakeholders in a way that other news outlets cannot.”
Wearing a Daily Tar Heel hoodie, Reilly spotted national news reporters standing in front of the cameras for live footage before heading home on a recent evening. She sat down with water bottles and blankets, ready for a 14-hour shift.
“This is a monumental piece of history for my generation and my colleagues,” she said. “And it was difficult to navigate, to make the right editorial decisions, to remain as neutral as possible while not harming any community. But we are here and we are learning, and we are ready to continue providing coverage.
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Bauder reported from New York, Fernando from Chicago. AP journalists Jake Offenhartz and Mallika Sen contributed to this report. The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory reporting on elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.