Student Journalism Is Fraught, Too

In late July, a group of student-journalism advisers convened on Zoom to discuss a brewing controversy over opinion, reporting, and religion. They were preparing for MediaFest—the nation’s largest conference of student reporters and their mentors, which will take place in Washington, DC, this week. Steven Sandberg, a student media adviser at Oregon State University, had been browsing the event schedule when he came upon a list of speakers slated for a portion of the conference called the “faith track.” “I saw pretty far-right, anti-LGBTQ language,” he said. He raised his concerns with MediaFest’s organizers—the College Media Association (CMA), the Associated Collegiate Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)—which prompted a fierce debate about the ethics of platforming certain figures, and revealed that the world of student journalism can be just as polarized as the mainstream.

Speaking with coordinators of the event, Sandberg said on Zoom that he wasn’t willing to send his students to MediaFest if it included Virginia Allen, of the Daily Signal; Mary Margaret Olohan, the author of Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult, who writes for the Daily Wire; and Michael Ryan, of The Lion, a publication owned by the Herzog Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that promotes biblical values and covers Christian education, politics, and culture, often from an anti-abortion, anti-trans perspective. “These speakers’ work doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Sandberg recalled telling MediaFest’s planners. “LGBTQ students are feeling targeted by our administration, by the government, and by society. So I was disappointed to see them bring in people who espoused anti-LGBT views.”