Wow, no. You’re mixing and matching here. The photographer wasn’t invading anything, he was on public ground and he had every right to photograph other people and objects on that public ground.
Then don’t appear in public spaces that will have a media presence. You’re arguing against a free press.
Twitter blew up last night with a lot of the same sentiment, and IMHO it’s being used as a cudgel against the BLM/Mizzou movement to depict them as bullies or unintelligent loudmouths, which they most certainly are not. Take the win with the removal of Wolfe and the Chancellor, and learn to pick your battles, because this isn’t a good one for the cause.
Nobody involved in this conflict was violating the First Amendment, only the government can do that. In our society, non-governmental actors routinely try to drown out or suppress the speech of others. The more powerful the actor is, the more successful they can be at preventing others from exercising speech. None of that violates the First Amendment.
And that’s why the US Government and its constitution can never give us truly free speech, or any other kind of freedom. You are defending a freedom which does not exist for everyone. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that not everyone is invested in upholding that ideal on the same terms that you are.
If you don’t want journalists photographing and writing about your protest, don’t invite them to your protest, and don’t conduct your protest in a public space.
I’ll take another term, especially in this context. I’m open to suggestions. But if we go on the assumption that not everyone (especially allies) is Bill O’Reilly then “thuggish” is still an acceptable term, especially if it’s being used to describe a relatively privileged if cash-poor white academic who should know better.
“Out of order” is fine, but still downplays the call to use unnecessary force. She was calling for “muscle” against a pesky and perhaps clueless but non-violent campus student freelancer for ESPN, not a brutal cop or an agent provocateur.
It isn’t a violation of the reporter’s free speech rights (she’s not a government official), although it is a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment in its support for a free press. Her behaviour also goes against the academic spirit of free intellectual discourse. Which is why people are pointing out the irony.
From what I can see, this professor’s main motivation is to be a big-shot People’s Hero™ who talks like a 1950s Teamster in front of her students, and that blinded her to the ironic aspects of her behaviour.
Given the absolutely loaded term thug has become, and given that this is about racism, I think using a different term would be the obvious choice. The point isn’t to assume you’re Bill O’Reilly, it’s to get all of us to think about the words we use and how we use them.
Who is using that in defense of black students. So there is that.
Again, I’m not necessarily saying that what she did was right, just that the backlash is undeserved and that there are far more questions here than the video suggests.
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And then there is this. The first amendment and the constitution are not perfect and were created in part to bring the southern slave-holding states into the union in the first place. These protections have been historically used to protect the elites against the rabble, not to protect the rabble.
I think if Tai wants to press charges, he’s within his right to do so. And he should.
You are right that journalists cannot go anywhere they want, but putting up a sign that says “no reporters” in a public place with no reasonable expectation of privacy doesn’t put the law on your side.
There’s no real backlash, just pointing out the obvious and amusing irony.
And I would definitely not have used the term “thuggish” if she’d been African-American, precisely because I do think about words and how and when we use them.
There are definitely other questions here, questions she could have asked and started a dialogue on if she hadn’t gotten caught up in playing Jimmy Hoffa for her students.
She’s already been banned from the Journalism department, where she had a guest (secondary) appointment and her own Media department is examining her employment. It seems like the university isn’t liking her behavior.
The quad in a state university is a public space, but subject to state law, not municipal law. This can include not always being open, for example state parks are public but are often not open 24 hours. Authority on setting these parameters is usually delegated by the legislature to the university’s board of regents, and from them to the campus chief operating officer.
I like the idea of students having “safe spaces”, but I’m afraid the idea’s death became inevitable years ago, with the disappearance of the doctrine of in loco parentis. For example, one of the campuses in my state recently tried to bar student reporters from a student senate meeting, but apparently the courts here have ruled that student senates are subject to our sunshine laws. What is troubling about this is that students no longer have a venue in which they can develop a fully-formed sense of polity without their attempts being recorded for posterity.
And the “pepper spraying” thug in that incident received compensation but not the assaulted students.
I wonder if all those outraged white men, who are ah so offended by a tiny 5 foot woman calling for “muscle”, were also this feisty and outspoken four years ago, at the time to defend the 1st Amendment Rights of UC Davies Students?
Basically, if the agents of the state, who are exhibiting thuggish behaviour would restrain themselves to this kind of thuggery, there would be no need for a Black Movement and people could just get on with their lives.
I think it is pretty obvious that the protestors were utterly unprepared for national news coverage, who is?
They are learning on their feet and it is depressing to see that on the way they have lost a supportive ally.
Right. Thank you for engaging on just what I was attempting to bring up - that it’s not so clear cut. First amendment does a number of things, but speech and press are listed separately. So there is already an acknowledgement that these are two different things. What concerns me is that there is little acknowledgement that these are kids (black students who are leading this protest) who have historically been denied first amendment rights. And there is also the tricky balancing act between free press and the rest of us having both free speech and privacy, in this sort of space. I have a problem in imagining that these kids (and the professors backing them) are somehow the ones with the upper hand here. Because they aren’t. The only reason the president stepped down was because the football team backed them.
For what it’s worth, this outraged white man who thinks the prof acted in a thuggish way also thinks the pepper-spray cop acted in a thuggish way, albeit with less irony.
Chances are I called him a thug at the time, because that’s how he acted. I’m not too pleased that the administrators at the other end of his leash made sure he got compensation when the students didn’t.
That doesn’t change the fact that calling for needless force to solve one’s problem is thuggish behaviour, whatever the height of the person.
Much more likely the university isn’t liking the press coverage and have accepted a the judgement of the twitter lynch mob, who decided that it is far more convenient to descend on a woman with insecure employment status than to actually deal with the situation by opening up the discourse on many different levels.
As a parent of a student I would hope that my daughter has Professors like Click, who is willing to take stand (even if it might not always be 100% right).
I believe it is every citizen’s responsibility to not hinder the work of first responders and emergency personnel, and within the rights of those personnel to secure the area and help the injured.
But I don’t believe it’s their right to ask them to stop taking photos altogether, or completely leave the area beyond that which is required to perform their duties.
Again, it’s fine to draw hard physical limits on human bodies and objects and distances in specific well-defined scenarios (stay behind the crime scene tape, etc.), but you cannot simply declare large swaths of public space off limits to the media, for the simple reason that there is no credentialed definition of “the media” - all of us can choose to be “the media” at any time, and that is a GOOD thing.
Full stop.
And to the specific larger question of media “intent”, it’s fairly obvious that no actor in any incident ever in the history of time is truly objective, so rather than try to guarantee objectivity, the role of “the media” - indeed, “media” in the sense of documentation and physical things - should be to provide as many sources of information as possible, and to let the public determine what narratives make sense and what do not.
I hope the lesson they’re learning is to ask clownish and attention-seeking “allies” at future demonstrations to stop “helping” and go home.
With a few exceptions progressive protest organisers, even ones with decades of experience, never seem prepared for national news coverage, because these clowns are always allowed to show up and, via the mainstream media, undermine very important messages.
Point being that at UC Davies the assault resulted in actual physical harm to people, which also was utterly uncalled for, while here no one was hurt. My reading of the images is that students prevented Tai from going where he wanted to go. He walked towards the students and was determined to walk through/ past the group of students. They didn’t want him to walk past and stood their ground calling on people with stronger physical presence.
I have no idea of the legality here, and would like to be enlightened. E.g. If I stand on the street with a few of my mates and you want to walk past, but we refuse to oblige ,and just continue to chat and stand our ground. If you then walk into us, have we assaulted you? or have you assaulted us? There is of course plenty of space around and you could just to walk around us onto the road. This is a very real scenario for me as I have to walk past a pub where the punters block the pavement all summer, and is bloody annoying.
Point being, people were in Tai’s way he pressed on in their directions because he wanted a different shot, they blocked him. Thuggish, yes, assault, definitely no. All he needed to do is take two steps back and take a picture there.
