Last week at Northwestern University, former Trump Administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions was hosted for an on-campus event. The student-run newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, sent a reporter to cover the event. However, the event was met with an onslaught of student protests and demonstrations. Many of the students regarded the photos and overall coverage of the event, and specifically of Jeff Sessions, to be “retraumatizing and invasive.”
Ultimately, in light of the massive protests and anger directed at the coverage of the event, the editors of The Daily decided to remove the photos in hopes that this would alleviate the pain and anger.
The decision to pull the photo coverage from The Daily has been met with a great deal of frustration from outsiders who argue that journalism cannot be censored or altered merely because something may offend readers. The paper issued a formal apology for running the photos and stood by its decision to remove them claiming, “Something we thought about a lot this week is how challenging it is to be student journalists who are reporting about other students. We’re thinking about what our role looks like specifically as student journalists who have to cover this, but at the same time we have to go to class with those students tomorrow.”
Read more at The Hill.
