The Emerald Media Group is deeply alarmed by the blatant attack on press freedom witnessed this week at the Indiana Daily Student, the independent student newspaper of Indiana University.
The termination of Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush for standing against school-sponsored censorship is completely unacceptable. Censorship of the press from any government body is intolerable, let alone from a public university where the free exchange of ideas should be encouraged, not silenced.
Rodenbush was terminated after refusing to stop publishing news content in the Thursday edition. The university cited a “lack of ability to work in alignment with the university’s direction for the Student Media Plan” as the reason for his termination.
Students had been told by the university on Oct. 7 that they were only allowed to report on Homecoming and “no other news at all.”
On Tuesday evening, IU fully cut the IDS print edition. Such an order is a clear infringement on the First Amendment and an unprecedented case of interference with the IDS’s longstanding history of editorial independence from the university.
IU administrators argue that their actions don’t constitute censorship because the IDS can still publish digitally. That is categorically false. The university began by attempting to control what was published in print. It was only when IDS students and Rodenbush courageously pushed back that the university halted all print products.
If the objective of stopping print was truly a financial decision, the university would have initially cut print rather than censoring the product and later cutting it as a consequence to pushback.
Furthermore, this is a frightening escalation in what has been a series of attacks on student press throughout the Big Ten in recent months, including at Penn State University and Purdue University who have faced similar infringements from school administration.
The Emerald Media Group has proudly been an independently funded 501(c)3 non-profit for over 50 years and will offer support to the IDS in whatever ways possible.
With attacks on press freedom rising globally, student media is now more important than ever for holding our institutions of higher education to account; it is impossible to do so without full — unimpeded — independence from the university.
As a member of the Big Ten conference and in support of our fellow independent student newspaper, the Emerald Media Group stands in complete solidarity with the Indiana Daily Student and calls on the university to reinstate Rodenbush immediately and restore the editorial independence for the student journalists at Indiana University.
– Daily Emerald Editorial Board
