Mizzou media professor tries to ban press from covering protests
A media professor at the University of Missouri has been caught on video trying to "muscle" the press from covering the student protests about racism on campus.
And yes, she gets hysterical, screaming at the crowd that she "needs some muscle over here" to bodily remove reporters and cameramen.
After desperately trying to gin up media coverage of student protests at the University of Missouri, one of the school’s media professors is nowfuriously trying to “muscle” the press off campus to prevent them from covering student protests that rapidly spiraled out of control Monday.
Mizzou president Timothy Wolfe announced his resignation on Monday after members of the school’s 4-5 football team announced they wouldboycott team activities unless the school acceded to certain demands surrounding racial equality. Unsurprisingly, Wolfe’s resignation did little to quell the mob.
On Monday afternoon, activists who had demanded Wolfe’s resignation abruptly demanded that media stop covering their activities on the public campus of the taxpayer-funded university. At the center of those demands was Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media within Mizzou’s communications department.
In the video below, you can see Click ask for “muscle” to help her bully a Mizzou student into not covering the ongoing mob protests:
Communications professor Melissa Click can be heard and briefly seen at the beginning of the video, screaming, “you need to back up if you are with the media,” while student journalist Tim Tai is confronted by a group of protesters while he is taking photos.
“You need to back up, respect the students,” Click says. “BACK UP! They have asked you to respect their space, move back. This is their time. You need to step out of here now. You need to go.”
Click appears in the video again at the end, at about the 6:18 mark when she tells the student photographer filming the incident, Mark Schierbecker, who was asking a student if she wanted to be interviewed, that he has to “get out.”
Schierbecker says “no I don’t” have to leave the area, and Click responds by grabbing his camera and again telling him to “get out.”
After he again refuses, she steps away and yells out, “Hey who wants to help me get this reporter out of here. I need some muscle over here!”
A media professor who wishes to prevent the media from covering a news event? I may be an old-fashioned guy, but shouldn't that, like, lead to her being fired?
Not in a million years. She's the new heroine of the mob that has taken over the campus. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech – these are irrelevancies to people like Click, who see our constitutional freedoms as an inconvenience to imposing their views on everyone else.
The actions of Click are reminiscent of Nazi storm troopers in the 1930s before Hitler came to power. (Yes, I'm going there.) Intimidating the press was one of the Sturmabteilung's primary tasks, and if you can't see intimidation in Click's hysteria, you're not paying attention.
Click is not alone. Apparently, the "leaders" of the protests want to maintain control of the narrative. In order to do so, they wish to ban all reporters from interviewing student protesters. "Hey hey, ho ho, reporters have got to go," they chanted while creating a "No Media Safe Space." Right out of the SA's playbook.
As chilling as all this is, it's probably going to get worse. The protesters have tasted power and have developed quite an appetite. They are now calling for the resignation of the chancellor of all Missouri state universities. Hopefully R. Bowen Loftin is made of sterner stuff than former president Wolfe.