The College Fix

Western Illinois University didn’t take kindly to a student journalist covering a brawl on its property Dec. 12 and then selling his video of the scuffle. It suspended him, and he must go through a student judicial hearing where he could face expulsion.

Now journalism groups are accusing the school of using a flimsy work-product pretext to clamp down on news it doesn’t like.

The Society of Professional Journalists said it’s the latest to contact the school on behalf of Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Stewart, following the Student Press Law Center and Illinois Broadcasters Association.

Stewart was using his own equipment and he had first posted breaking news on his own YouTube channel with the university’s blessing many times before, SPJ President Dana Neuts told WIU President Jack Thomas in a letter Thursday.

The university was on break and the school paper was on hiatus when the brawl happened:

Stewart should have been allowed to work as a freelancer during this time. The First Amendment gives him the right to
record a news event with his own equipment and post it or sell it as a freelance journalist. …

He should be celebrated for seeing a breaking news story and covering it. He should be commended for taking the initiative to do journalism. It would have actually been unethical for him, as a journalist, to see this breaking news story and not cover it and publish it via whatever means available.

It’s idiotic to call Stewart a “threat” because he may have used the university’s watermark in the video, and the university has no claim on the money Stewart earned for his video, Neuts says:

It sends the message that student journalists must now fear suspension for publishing news of which the university does not approve, and that the First Amendment is only looked upon favorably when it benefits the university.

Read the SPJ letter.

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