‘Really discouraging’: Student Journalists Struggle with First Amendment Freedoms

The majority of the top 25 public and private colleges in the nation are banning journalists from reporting on their campus, directly censoring college publications and prohibiting faculty and staff members from speaking to student journalists without permission from the universities’ Public Relations teams.

Editor's note: Abby Wilt is a Pepperdine University alumna (‘24) and the former executive editor of Pepperdine Graphic Media. The Graphic started facing issues with access to sources within Pepperdine’s administration in 2022 when Pepperdine’s administration put a policy in place that student journalists need to go through the University’s IMC department for interviews of senior-level university administrators, which students' said resulted in emailed responses to questions, rather than in-person interviews.