Lesson Learned

(Wednesday update: As many outlets have noted, Dr. Click has resigned the courtesy appointment and issued both a public apology and a personal one to the reporter she confronted. Good for her. Some of the other adults seen in similar videos badgering and bullying student newspeople have yet to follow her lead.)

The young Friar, as he thought about colleges, included the University of Missouri. He was from Missouri and actually had a cousin who graduated from the journalism program he considered applying to. But out-of-state tuition with relatively small prospects of sufficient financial aid put it off his list.

Which is a good thing, because now he doesn't have to return his diploma to a journalism/communications school that hires people who don't have a single stinking idea about what their discipline is supposed to represent. My apologies for the link to the overwrought and link-farmish Daily Caller, but there weren't many stories of any kind highlighting Dr. Click's boorish behavior, and the DC link was the least overheated of what I saw. Here's a link to The Daily Mail's story about the incident, which is a little better. (America's paper of record now has an item about the incident as well).

If you don't want to click on their page, the short version of the story is that during the protests staged by Mizzou students against their president, assistant professor of mass media Dr. Melissa Click obstructed a student journalist trying to cover the event and called for "muscle" to "help me get this reporter out of here." Which was a change from Saturday, when she apparently asked for media coverage of the protests.

You may think what you want about the protests, about the words and actions of former University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe and about how students perceived them. I might suggest you chuckle at the irony of Wolfe only feeling real pressure once African-American football players said they would not suit up, practice or play, or at how academic folks who didn't like him but have always hated collegiate sports had to grit their teeth and smile along. But that's as far as I go in suggesting what you think of the overall series of events.

In consideration of the incident in the video, though? Well, we've got a teacher calling for "muscle" to bully a student. A student who was covering an event on public property at a public university. A university renowned for its journalism program. An event designed to garner publicity for a cause. It's pathetic.

Some have called for Dr. Click to be fired, but I disagree with the idea she should be booted off the Mizzou campus. She quite obviously belongs in school, but among those in front of the lectern rather than behind it.

(ETA: The faculty of the actual school of journalism at Missouri, where Dr. Click holds a courtesy appointment outside her position in the communications school, is conducting an e-mail vote about whether or not that courtesy shall be withdrawn. I might not have had to send that diploma back after all.)