Missouri students, faculty physically block reporter from documenting protest
Monday was a historic day on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia as a student group successfully lobbied to have the university chancellor and president step down from their jobs over what they believed were poor responses to racial issues.
The group was led by graduate student Jonathan Butler, who staged a hunger strike until the school president stepped down. Butler’s efforts were supported by the Missouri football team and student association, among other groups.
While Butler and the rest of the Concerned Student 1950 group reached one of their initial goals, we cannot support the behavior of some protesters on campus Monday.
The video below shows the way some of the student protesters, with the aid of some faculty members, bullied a student journalist who was trying to document the protest.
The woman at the end of the video who asks for some “muscle” in pushing out the person recording the video is actually a media professor at Missouri who days earlier wanted the media’s help.
Featured in the video is student reporter Tim Tai, who tweeted the following:
I tweeted this out a few days ago but there's literally a state law on the books affirming right to access quad: https://t.co/vACHgnbBaj
— Tim Tai (@nonorganical) November 10, 2015
.@Mizzou students want to control message, extreme attempts to block media. Home of renowned journalism school. pic.twitter.com/vei5LY7ksN
— Robert Cohen (@kodacohen) November 9, 2015
Tai and any other reporter have a right to be on the quad in the public space. As Tai said, the US constitution gives the media the right to photograph and cover the event just as much as it defends the right of the protesters to protest in public. That a group fighting for equal rights would physically bock and prevent a reporter from doing something he has a right to do is shameful. It is incredibly ignorant of the group to argue they are fighting for equal rights and better treatment, yet they are treating a journalist in that way. And then you have a faculty member at the end of the video ask for some “muscle” to help push out the guy who was recording the video.
Oh, and then the student group tweeted this:
It's typically white media who don't understand the importance of respecting black spaces.
— ConcernedStudent1950 (@CS_1950) November 9, 2015
If you have a problem with us wanting to have our spaces that we create respected, leave!
— ConcernedStudent1950 (@CS_1950) November 9, 2015
It seems to me that this is a group making a lot of noise just to make noise rather than have actual goals aside from having a university president step down. I’d hate to see what the country or university would look like with these bullies in charge.
