The Daily Northwestern’s unfortunate
apology
Badgered by classmates, NU’s student newspaper staff apologizes
for reporting a news story as Medill dean defends journalistic integrity.
By Neil Steinberg Nov 12, 2019,
11:32am CST
WARNING! THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS GRAPHIC EXPRESSIONS OF RIDICULE,
PLUS IMAGES OF NAKED DISGUST REGARDING BELOVED UNDERGRADUATE PIETIES, AND SO
MIGHT NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR MORALLY CERTAIN YET EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE
INHABITANTS OF WILDLY OVERPRICED UNIVERSITIES WITH HABITUALLY DEFEATED FOOTBALL
TEAMS.
Dear Northwestern:
Hi? How ya been? Thriving, I know. That new music center? Fan-tastic.
I’m good, thank you for asking. Old now. But hanging on. Still
cranking out a column, just like I did for The Daily
Northwestern in the early ’80s.
Sorry I haven’t written in, gee, 37 years. But I’ve been busy,
working, in the real world. At a newspaper. Which isn’t easy. Readers don’t
always like what I write. Barack Obama once called and yelled at me. Trump fans
fill the spam filter with brutalities. Last week my son’s old kindergarten
teacher wrote a nasty letter. You need a hard shell, and to focus on your goal:
telling a good story.
You know what was a good story? Former Trump attorney general
Jeff Sessions coming to Northwestern’s Evanston campus Nov. 5 to speak, or try
to. It was difficult, with protesters pounding on doors and breaking windows,
tussling with campus cops. More evidence the Left can have the same
authoritarian tendencies as the Right.
The Daily covered the event, which is what newspapers do. They
cover events.
Protesters caught in the act didn’t like the idea of being
documented. They might get in trouble, so harried The Daily staff until it
clawed back their names. Unsatisfied, they pushed for a jaw-dropping apology that instantly became
notorious for its crushed capitulation.
The Daily admits covering the protests, then concedes: “We
recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced.”
What harm? The harm of having your public misbehavior reported??
That’s called living in a democracy.
“Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter
accounts retraumatizing and invasive,” the mea culpa continues.
“Those photos have since been taken down. On one hand, as the paper of record
for Northwestern, we want to ensure students, administrators and alumni
understand the gravity of the events that took place Tuesday night. However, we
decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students who were photographed.”
Isn’t that what Counseling and Psychological Services is for?
Worse follows:
“Some of our staff members who were covering the event used
Northwestern’s directory to obtain phone numbers for students beforehand and
texted them to ask if they’d be willing to be interviewed. We recognize being
contacted like this is an invasion of privacy.”
That isn’t an invasion of privacy any more than knocking on a
door and canvasing for a candidate. It’s a cornerstone of democracy. The Daily
operates independently of the school, and Medill Dean Charles Whitaker
issued a strong statement supporting the paper,
deftly shifting blame from The Daily to the NU activists.
“I am deeply troubled by the vicious bullying and badgering that
the students responsible for that coverage have endured for the ‘sin’ of doing
journalism,” Whitaker wrote.
You and me both, buddy. I can’t remember an administrator’s
statement being as important as Whitaker’s. Before reading it, I felt like
running my Northwestern diploma through the shredder and mailing the confetti
to the president’s office. His statement made sense of the disaster: The same
folks who shouted down Sessions leapt to muzzle The Daily. Which is why
stifling speech is always wrong, whatever that speech happens to be. Because it
becomes a habit.
At first I blamed The Daily staffers; now I feel sorry for them.
They didn’t join the paper to face what Whitaker called a “brutal onslaught of
venom and hostility,” nor to be forced to kneel and recant in one of the most
jarring blots on American journalism since last night’s Fox News. Here’s an
irony. The protesters whose names The Daily dutifully erased are spared the
buzzsaw of social media. While The Daily staffers who signed the confession are
now open to ridicule, which Whitaker also decried.
“Give the young people a break,” he wrote.
Point taken.
The good news is that most shame fades — trust me on that — and
this will certainly be part of the education.
College is a challenging time. But it’s supposed to be the
challenge of toughening yourself to face the world as it is, in all its
unfairness. Not the challenge of shouting down anyone you don’t like, or
sealing yourself off in your own little crib of self-regard, wrapped in a soft
blankie of privilege, demanding that life fluff your pillows while you practice
the yowls of grievance you’ll emit whenever your delicate skin is brushed by
the gnarled hand of reality.
Space dwindles. Donald Trump hates the media because it
documents his criminality and lies. He labels it “fake news.” The NU protesters
wanted to both squelch Sessions and avoid any risk of getting in trouble due to
real reporting. The media gets flak from both sides. Which perhaps is the
lesson The Daily’s staff should take away from this fiasco, assuming they still
want to be reporters at all. As Abe Peck, my revered magazine writing professor
at NU once taught me long ago, quoting the last line of a great Marge Piercy poem, “You have to like it better
than being loved.”
That doesn’t change. Thanks for listening. Go Cats!
Neil Steinberg
Medill School of Journalism
Class of 1982