It’s unlikely that either Tim Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri, or R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the university’s main campus in Columbia, slept soundly Monday night, each having resigned under fire earlier in the day. But the night might have been worst of all for Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media in the Department of Communications and also an adjunct professor in the School of Journalism.
“No,” she replies fiercely, pointing an arm in the direction she wants him to go.
“All right,” says the woman, who then turns toward a clump of tents and people behind her.
But Click personally didn’t fare so well. Comments following a heavy.com report on her behavior ring with incredulity:
An online discussion of Click and the Mizzou demonstrations by Journalism School graduates (I’m one myself) was a lot more nuanced. Making no apologies for Click, one grad nevertheless declared himself “not a very big fan of how the journalists reacted.” He believed they’d gone “from being reporters to being counter-protesters.” He asked, “Was the photography, or even this video, worth the cost in community trust and respect for the media?”
Click’s actions are astonishing because of the animus someone who teaches journalism—OK, communications—directs at someone else for practicing journalism. The only way to begin to forgive her is if she insists she is no sort of journalist at all, repudiates journalism ethics as not for her—and if we accept her on those terms.
