This week in dumb stuff on campus, we have an update in the long-running saga of the Daily Northwestern. For readers who may not remember — and I’d imagine it’s most readers, given that these campus episodes start to blend together over time — the Daily inadvertently found itself at the center of a legitimate legal story on Northwestern’s campus.
Back in October, fake versions of the university’s student-run newspaper appeared on desks in classrooms and in buildings across campus. The faux paper, with a headline reading “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” included the widely reported lie that “an Israeli air strike killed 471 Palestinians” at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
When this happened, Daily staffers were quick to clarify that the fake papers were not theirs; some people seemed to have missed that the title of the parody was “Northwestern Daily,” which, if you glance at it quickly, reads a lot like Daily Northwestern. The paper posted on X that it was “aware of tampering with copies of The Daily’s print edition and [was] investigating the matter.”
Its publishing company issued its own statement the next day, explaining that “hundreds of copies of the October 23, 2023, edition of The Daily Northwestern were tampered with in the past two days, with a false ‘front page’ placed over The Daily’s print edition, resulting in the campus-wide distribution of stories, headlines, graphics and photos that were neither produced nor sanctioned by our newsroom nor anyone else affiliated with our organization.”
The publishing company went on to “reject and condemn this act of vandalism” and note that it had “engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.” The university got in on the act as well, writing that “someone or some group distributed fake copies” of the Daily and that the paper was “looking into the issue.”
Now the update: A bevy of student organizations and individual faculty members signed a letter to the editor published in North by Northwestern, the alternative news source on campus, decrying that the Daily’s publishing company pressed charges “against two Black Northwestern students” and contending that the “situation is yet another instance of a widespread effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices, disproportionately impacting people of color.”
On Monday, a separate letter appeared in the Daily in which signatories described their intention to boycott the paper, declaring that they “will not speak, collaborate, or engage with The Daily Northwestern.” Now, I’m certainly not opposed to boycotting the Daily Northwestern, though for different reasons from these signatories’. But the paper’s response was ridiculous (though not out of character). After that letter — which described the charges being pressed against the students who tampered with the copies of the newspaper as “a manifestation of the systemic racism that targets Black individuals” — the Daily’s editors issued their own words about the charges.
“While the students’ alleged actions may violate Illinois law,” the editors wrote, “we believe [the publishing company’s] decision to engage the criminal justice system during this investigation was unnecessary and harmful.”
The editors bemoaned the publisher’s actions as “perpetrating harm against the communities we aim to serve” and argued that “our University and community — along with the American policing and justice system as a whole — has a long history of placing people of color in harm’s way. As a publication that strives to unearth these injustices through our reporting, we remain wholeheartedly opposed to any course of action that would entwine our publication with this harmful legacy.”
The publishing company itself released its own statement Monday, writing that “tampering with the distribution of a student newspaper is impermissible content,” and “just as you cannot take over the airwaves of a TV station or the website of a publication, you also cannot disrupt the distribution of a student newspaper.”
But let’s get back to the editorial. What we have here, aside from the nonsensical idea that the charges should be dropped simply because the editors want them to be, is yet another instance in the Daily’s history in which its staffers have seen themselves as being on a particular side — and as always, the side of “the marginalized.” It’s the same thing as the former editors writing (while I was on staff at the paper) an apology to students after following standard journalistic practices while reporting on a protest against Jeff Sessions’s speaking engagement on campus.
Then, the Daily wrote that its reporting “harmed many students,” with its photographs published on X being “retraumatizing and invasive.” It wrote that it “hurt students last night, especially those who identify with marginalized groups.” It wrote that it had to do a better job in working “to balance the need for information and the potential harm [its] news coverage may cause.”
Now, while its reporting is not the target of scrutiny on campus, the Daily has decided it isn’t worth prosecuting students who tampered with its paper — who are charged with theft of advertising services — because it could further harm those same marginalized groups.
If you’re wondering why the mainstream media so often take a side in their coverage, look no further than the campus.