Lovejoy Journalism and News Literacy

A hazardous extracurricular?
By Cliff White '06
 
When I moved last year to State College, Pa. – Happy Valley, home to Penn State and their vaunted football program – I knew the level of excitement surrounding Saturdays here would be a few notches higher than what I had experienced in Southern Maine. I did not, however, expect a riot.
 
Even though I write for a magazine here and cover local events, I was watching from the comfort of my own home when Penn State beat Ohio State last Oct. 25. Michael R. Felletter, an unpaid photographer for The Daily Collegian, the university’s official newspaper, was asked by his photo editor to cover the crowd gathering downtown. He grabbed his camera and headed out into the morass. Thousands of celebrating students began to convene in a row of apartments known as Beaver Canyon, halting traffic, generating a huge volume of noise, and as the night wore on, eventually uprooting trees, light posts and street signs, setting cars ablaze and battling local police officers for control of the streets.
 
Felletter, a 20-year-old junior at the time, was one of 14 students arrested during the melee. He was later charged with five counts of failure to disperse and one count of disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors under Pennsylvania law. According to the criminal complaint, police said Felletter's photographing caused the crowd to become "more exuberant, excited and destructive.”
 
Following the event, police also approached both Felletter and Collegian Editor-in-Chief Terry Casey to obtain unpublished photos in order to identify riot participants for possible prosecution. Both refused to surrender any photos, telling the authorities that it was against the newspaper’s policy to hand over photos that had not been published. Police “did not press the issue,” according to Casey.
 
The charges against Felletter were withdrawn in January, but one charge of failure to disperse was re-filed in March. Centre County Judge David E. Grine dismissed that last charge on July 22, ruling the prosecution's evidence was “unclear in showing whether Felletter complied with police orders to ‘move along,’” according to the Collegian. But District Attorney Michael Madeira filed an appeal July 31 to the Superior Court and was quoted as saying the case would “definitely” go to court. Madeira, a Republican, faces a tough reelection fight in November in a county split between the largely liberal university town of State College and the overwhelmingly conservative rural area surrounding it.
 
This story has captured my attention not for its particulars, but rather as an example of how academic journalism can become politicized and how student-journalists for college papers such as, for example, The Colby Echo, can be at a higher risk of running into trouble with the authorities. I find myself asking: would a photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or The Philadelphia Inquirer in the same situation be subject to the treatment Felletter has received?

This isn’t the only case of zealous prosecutors taking aim at student journalists in the news these days; The New York Times reported that in Cook County, Ill, students involved in the Medill Innocence Project, run through Northwestern University’s graduate program in journalism, are having their grades and personal e-mails subpoenaed by local prosecutors who are questioning the work they did in researching the background of a murder case currently undergoing judge’s review.

Situations like these threaten college journalism itself. A student facing a possible lawsuit for work they’re doing for the school newspaper is less likely to stick his or her head out to collect news that might be the source of any sort of controversy. Many students, whose gateway into journalism is the school paper, might be discouraged from even joining in the first place for fear of the expense and inconvenience of facing potential prosecution.

The controversies also bring up the larger question looming in the modern world of journalism: in this day and age, where anyone with a cell phone or a Twitter account can potentially engage in journalism, what does and does not constitute a journalist? And who gets to decide?

Cliff White graduated from Colby in 2006. He is a reporter and assistant editor for the Pennsylvania Business Central.