Allie and I recently got an email from Kirsten, our faculty advisor, about censorship in campus newspapers. She forwarded us the College Media Insights newsletter containing an article about the effects that university-level censorship has had on a number of student newspapers.
One headline illustrated the very real effects that universities’ attempts at censorship have—even on, or perhaps especially upon— student newspapers. At Baylor University, campus tour guides confiscated a front-page story entitled “Fifth alleged rape reported.” The University of South Carolina’s The Daily Gamecock issues were also stolen, possibly because of student government association election coverage.
In an era in which so much of our daily media consumption is largely unfiltered, it’s easy to think that censorship is no longer an issue that bears consideration. And yet, accusations of censorship, or attempted censorship, continue to flood news stories today. The New York Times just ran an article written by a reporter who reviewed an art show covering the history of the LGBTQ community in New Orleans. The article was censored in Qatar. However, these concerns aren’t limited to countries outside of the U.S. The 2018 World Press Freedom Index ranks the United States only 45th of 80 for freedom of press.
On the much smaller scale, university papers battle issues of censorship every year. Historically, EMU has not been exempt from these conversations. However, in recent years, we have been incredibly fortunate to have a student newspaper that is allowed to flourish without censorship on campus.
The Weather Vane’s relationship with censorship has been sticky. In a History of The Weather Vane lecture, Kirsten told us that, before the 1960s and 70s, the assistant to the president read through the newspaper with a red pen, making marks through any references to drinking or dancing. However, during Myron Augsburger’s presidency in the 1970s, the institutional policy changed, releasing EMU students to freely write the paper without any kind of oversight or claimed responsibility on the part of the university.
The conversation around censorship in university-level media has become increasingly heightened in the past few weeks. Donald Trump, in response to conservative voices expressing anger over perceived censorship in their universities, has announced that he will issue an order ensuring that campuses allow free speech, according to an Associated Press news piece.
The article went on to quote Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, who noted that this executive order is in large part meaningless because public universities already do require free speech.
Trump’s rhetoric, which has been so explicitly antimedia, is directly at odds with this latest announcement. In an article for the advocacy group, The Committee to Protect Journalists, journalist Alan Huffman notes the deeply “authoritarian” underpinnings in Trump’s frequent and loud objections to common U.S. media sources. Huffman particularly notes Trump’s threats to increase the stringency of libel laws. These sentiments make already vulnerable journalists still more vulnerable in their incredibly important work of truthfully sharing information.
Returning to the context of EMU’s contributions to campus-wide journalism, it is easy to wonder what to do in the face of a national political battle over free press and a national university context facing very real concerns of censorship from all sides. It appears to me that the real instances in which censorship is of concern for university newspapers is in relation to news pieces that carry information and ideas difficult for the university to accept. These are the pieces that create problems for marketing—like Baylor University’s report on campus rape. Censorship of the kind that old Mennonites in boardrooms carried out for most of EMU’s history was a serious ill in the university’s history, and well worth remembering and recognizing.
However, we also must remember that, to some extent, censorship—in the form of self-censorship—is a part of all of our work as journalists. Call it editing or selectivity, we all do it. It’s also just part of interacting with other people in all of our daily lives. However, in the context of this newspaper, we are incredibly fortunate that we can make those decisions about censoring ourselves in the name of telling stories better without any official oversight from a biased university. I like to think that this ability makes us all better journalists.
Next time you open the newspaper, think about the ways in which a lack of university-wide censorship is incredibly important for all of us—and how even small campus news sources like ours benefit from a lack of prior review and institutional censoring power. However, please also acknowledge that sharing ideas with distinct consciousness about intended audience is a crucial part of all good writing.
I am so incredibly grateful that EMU’s higher powers no longer have oversight of this newspaper. Finally, I want to acknowledge the respect that this requires on the part of the university—although EMU is not affiliated with this student-run newspaper in any way, it trusts the student body to share its campus news with attention to journalistic quality and ethical standards.
