Contact: Rebekah Entralgo, rentralgo@cwa-union.org (202) 304-2241
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Amid growing unrest on college campuses over the Israel-Gaza war, The NewsGuild-CWA, the largest union representing America’s journalists, stands in solidarity with the courageous student journalists working under precarious conditions to deliver accurate, reliable news to not only their communities, but the nation at large.
On April 24, a photojournalist at University of Texas Austin, was slammed to the ground by a law enforcement officer and charged with criminal trespassing. He has since been released and faces misdemeanor charges. At the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), student journalists at the Daily Bruin report law enforcement did not intervene when they were assaulted and sprayed with an irritant by counter protestors. At Columbia University – where the prestigious Pulitzer Prize Awards will be hosted in just a week – journalists from the Associated Press and other outlets were denied entry to the campus, while student journalists with the university radio station WKCR reported on-air in real-time as they were barricaded by law enforcement and threatened with arrest.
“Student journalists are journalists, full stop,” said Jon Schleuss, President of The NewsGuild-CWA. “Increased police presence on college campuses – at the invitation of university administrations – has unfortunately come at the expense of a fair and free press. Law enforcement and university administrations should respect the authority of student journalists as the watchdogs of their communities and honor the First Amendment rights of all journalists, student or otherwise. We all have a duty of care towards student journalists to ensure our right to a free press and safeguard the future of America’s journalists.”
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The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933, representing over 27,000 members in newsrooms, online publications, and non-profit organizations across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.