“Who Gets to Tell the Story?” That question was supposed to be the theme of a “press freedom” event this week at Columbia University, home to one of the world’s leading journalism schools. However, as first reported by the Columbia Spectator, the event was canceled after student journalists had the audacity of offering their own views on the coverage of the alleged Cornell rape case.
After the independent student newspaper The Sundial ran a column by deputy editor Nikos Mohammadi and writer Christina Ma criticizing the one-sided coverage of the allegations, the Columbia students went into a familiar groupthink, cancel mode. The students were shocked that Mohammadi and Ma took the invitation to “tell the story” literally by offering a different perspective on the still developing case.
The event, “Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom & the Public Square,” was billed as an inclusive panel of student journalists from various campus publications that included the editor-in-chief of The Sundial.
However, just hours before the event, the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, a student “free speech and open dialogue” group, canceled the event. It issued an announcement that was long on virtue-signaling and short on journalistic values: “We felt that we couldn’t host a conversation about who gets to tell a story at this sort of a moment when so many survivors felt that their stories were under attack or weren’t being believed.”
The editors dragged out the old saw of cancel campaigns, saying that they could not guarantee the safety of the event in light of the recent publication. However, it was worse than yielding to the mob. The Alliance seems indistinguishable from the mob.
Notably, if security were such a concern, the Alliance did not explain whether the university had been asked to supply greater security or why the event could not be held virtually.
The triggering event was the publication of the student column, which was notably part of a two-column display of opposing views on the coverage. In other words, Sundial did precisely what the event seemed to advocate: it allowed all voices to be heard. The response to such a balanced discussion was that Columbia students went into collective vapors and immediately canceled the event.
I have previously written about the Cornell case and raised concerns over what I saw as the same pattern emerging that we saw in the Duke rape case.
When that allegation was first raised, press, pundits and professors quickly joined a chorus of condemnation of the accused students. When some of us raised doubts about the allegations (including the total absence of supporting forensic and other evidence of a gang rape), we were attacked as being insensitive to rape victims.
Duke University abandoned its students as the media whipped the public into a frenzy.
The media quickly lionized Durham District Attorney Michael B. Nifong as he pandered to the mob in portraying the students as personifying a racist rape culture in the United States.
Then the case collapsed. Crystal Mangum later admitted that she had lied.
Nifong was disbarred and Mangum later went to jail for murder in an unrelated case.
All the politicians and pundits who declared the Duke students guilty simply shrugged and moved on to the next scandal, demanding instant, uninformed judgments.
I have stated that the Cornell case is different and has a stronger foundation than the Duke case. However, there are conflicting accounts and major questions that must still be answered.
Nevertheless, the same voices are being heard in denouncing those who want to wait for the evidence before passing judgment.
Even high schools are now engaging in censorship. I just wrote a column about a high school student in California who was disciplined for simply writing “Free the Cornell 7” on his personal Instagram account. Hundreds of students called for their fellow student to be expelled or suspended for expressing his opposing views of the case.
In their column, Ma and Mohammadi criticized the immediate judgments reached over the case and the orthodox narrative that now pervades the coverage. They asked why there was not greater discussion of difficult issues of consent and personal responsibility:
“In a liberal society, women are allowed to make bad decisions, ones that may later reveal themselves as deleterious. The discourse, nonetheless, seems to omit the possibility that consensual sex, to the woman participating in it, can later reveal itself as traumatic and immoral.”
I understand that such views are provocative and triggering for some. However, this is a case that touches on difficult social and legal questions. Universities are supposed to be places where such questions can be discussed openly and freely.
Unfortunately, the response is all too familiar: those claiming to advocate understanding and empathy unleashed a vicious cancel campaign against these two students.
In a column in UnHeard, Mohammadi said he has been inundated by threats “urging me to commit suicide or demanding that my career and life be destroyed.” He added:
Even the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, or CODA, of which I was once a board member, has condemned us. The group wrote in a statement that “CODA exists because we believe in free expression and the open exchange of ideas, including ideas we disagree with.” But, you know, not really.
Alliance president Aum Desai has responded to the controversy with an explanation of the cancellation that is perfectly Orwellian: “We did so not in spite of, but because of our commitment to free expression.”
Ok, let’s unpack this: You canceled a free press event after two student writers expressed an opposing view of a story because of your “commitment to free expression”? That is akin to saying that your commitment to free exercise of religion compelled you to cancel religious services until others felt comfortable with the exercise of the right by different faiths.
Desai offered the same excuse of past cancel campaigns that preventing these voices from being heard was the only way to ensure that all voices could “feel safe to come forward and be heard.” All voices, that is, except Mohammadi and Mo, or others with opposing views of the coverage.
The Alliance had to choose between the values of the media and the demands of the mob. They chose the mob by canceling this event.
As the famed journalist Edward R. Murrow once said, “Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
You mean the “Cornell 8”. Why take sides? These are overindulgent youth who are learning how bizarrely primate their behavior becomes when intoxicated and drugged. At least, you would hope that is what they’ve learned.
As for the media, I don’t think activist journalists understand, or even want to understand how alcohol overconsumption puts to sleep the part of the brain (PFC) responsible for learned social mores, leaving the older, more primitive parts of the brain to do the talking.
You’re not going to get that level of psychosocial fact-based reporting from journalists.
Top o’ the Mornin’ to all.
The good professor’s post today is in such tandem with his coverage of the Piner High School case yesterday and the lengthy comments from contributors to the debate. Fun to read.
Despite my back and forth with commenter “X,” I continue to stand by what I said, and this current matter at Columbia confirms my views in agreement with JT. The present case regards on-campus speech; I’ll get to that in a minute.
I was the first to bring up the Mahanoy case (I wish to apologize for hurriedly misspelling/typing in “Mahoney” before I left for the day–I had a longtime colleague named Mahoney with whom I worked often, and that obviously overtook my brain).
Full circle now, the Mahanoy case, I believe, was the first to rule on OFF-campus social media speech, and what many commenters were missing a/o glossing over was the fact that the Mahanoy ruling clearly outlined three factors to consider in LIMITING school discipline, while at the same acknowledging the need for schools to be able to regulate off-campus speech that may cause “substantial disruption” among students. The Mahanoy Court expressly found schools to have “diminished” rights to regulate off-campus social media compared to on-campus reach.
To the crux:
Of the three considerations in LIMITING a school’s ability to reach off-campus social media speech, there is one which has significance to today’s post: “public schools are the nurseries of democracy,” said Justice Breyer, who wrote the 8-1 opinion.
The professor is right about mob majorities silencing dissenting views, especially among students still attempting to define themselves and who are especially sensitive to rejection. Indeed, Turley has reminded us of so many educators and professors who have JOINED students in such repression–even often starting/stoking the controversy. I can’t think of a better way to encourage “substantial disruption” over a disfavored view than by recruiting young gullible students into thinking their superiors are always “right” about these things. Who stopped these educators in their off-campus rants on social media?
How can we expect our students to critically think and learn how to maturely develop/fashion an opposing view if they are contemptuously shot down every time, irrespective of geo-location or forum/platform? How many times has Professor Turley cited examples of surveys showing student silence and taciturn self-censoring out of fear of retribution for expressing contrary views?
Have educators failed us in teaching students how to comprehend, assess, and appropriately RESPOND TO opposing views or OPINIONS without simply punishing/silencing them or blocking their ability to express them?
sorry for the lengthy post.
Lin,
Great comment.
I think you have aptly pointed out the failures of our public education system, and in this case, that of higher education in the school of journalism.
I mentioned the other day, it should be pointed out that the Cornell 7 have the right to due process, the right to trial by jury of their peers and the presumption of innocence until proven, in a court of law, guilty. Not by the mob or by slanted press. We are a nation of law and order. Not a nation of mob rule. That is what needs to be pointed out in both high schools and higher education, namely journalism schools.
Even with mitigating facts, the Cornel 7 are toast. Hochul and James will draw on a thoroughly tainted jury pool. Moreover, after what happened to the holdout juror in the Clancy murder trial no juror will dare vote for acquittal.
Yours is the perspective of a media-saturated person. If the Cornell case ever gets to a jury (civil, forget criminal), not everyone serving will be slave to the media onslaught. Some will be normal people who don’t live their lives through a screen. I trust those jurors will sort out the facts, and come to a just conclusion.
I can identify recent high profile cases in Manhattan where (presumably curated) juries reached idiotic conclusions.
The Legacy Media / Democrats are the enemy of America.
Transgender Teacher Convicted of Threatening ‘Murder Spree’ at School, Media Bury Gender Identity
A Virginia jury found transgender former Loudoun County substitute teacher Hadyn Dollery guilty on “two counts of threatening to injure or kill a person, one count of making threats on school grounds, and one count of threatening to damage a building,” charges that bring up to 25 years in prison combined, Loudoun Now reported.
The media have obfuscated Dollery’s gender identity as a woman, with various reports referring to both Dollery and his ex as either men or women. Assistant Public Defender Tamara Lazarus identified Dollery as “a transgender woman undergoing hormone therapy” in the context of Dollery’s incarceration conditions, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported in June.
https://tennesseestar.com/news/transgender-teacher-convicted-of-threatening-murder-spree-at-school-media-bury-gender-identity/jtnews/2026/10/16/
Trans-identified male arrested in Illinois for attempted mass shooting at Hindu temple
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat who represents Illinois’ 8th congressional district in the US House, had been in attendance with his family at the temple on the day the shooting was set to take place.
He said in a statement, “The threat of such violence shows how dangerous anti-Indian hatred and white supremacy have become, and we cannot wait until innocent people are killed to take these threats seriously. I am grateful to the suspect’s coworkers who alerted police and commend the law enforcement officers who intervened. Every American deserves to live and worship without fear, and we must stand together against hatred in all its forms.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/trans-identified-male-arrested-in-illinois-for-attempted-mass-shooting-at-hindu-temple
No mention by the Democrat that the arrested individual is a she receiving testosterone injections to pretend it is a he, aka Transmale.
Democrats / Legacy Media will not stop at destroying Western Civilization until they have created another USSR run by mini-Stalins, their very own Union of Soviet Socialist Democrats
NB: The word soviet comes from the Russian sovet, council , from Old Russian sŭvětŭ
Estovir:
The “obfuscation” of gender has been complicated by media’s little game and spreading use of the referential pronoun “they” -despite referring to a single person. I cannot imagine how confusing this is to English teachers, students, and those learning the English language.
Estovir,
Thank you for pointing out the facts and the biased MSM.
When Trump first said MSM was the enemy of the American people, I thought it was a bit over the top. Now, it appears he was right.
Sounds like Columbia U’s journalism students are learning totalitarian journalism very well!
“Who Gets to Tell the Story?” = “Who Gets to Tell the Narrative?”
John Brennan
Hillary Clinton
Jack Smith
James Comey
Christopher Wray
… ?
THE LIST
Adam Schiff | Alexander Downer | Alexander Vindman | Alvin Bragg
Andrew McCabe | Andrew Weissmann | Andrew Whitney | Azra Turk
Barack Obama | Bill Clinton | Bill Taylor | Bruce Ohr
Charles H. Dolan | Christopher Steele | Christopher Wray | Cody Shear
Dana Remus | Daniel Goldman | Don Berlin | Donna Brazile
E.W. (Bill) Priestap | Eric Holder | Emmet Sullivan | Eric Ciaramella
Eugene Vindman | Evelyn Farkas | Fani Willis | Fiona Hill
Gen. Mark Milley | George Soros | Gina Haspel | Glenn Simpson
Gov. Janet Mills | Hillary Clinton | Huma Abedin | Hunter Biden
Igor Danchenko | Jack Smith | Jake Sullivan | James Baker
James Clapper | James Comey | James E. Boasberg | Jeff Sessions
Jerry Nadler | Joe Biden | John Bolton | John Brennan
John Kerry | John McCabe | John Podesta | Joseph Mifsud
Juan Merchan et.al. | Judge Arthur Engoron | Kathy Ruemmler | Kevin Clinesmith
Kurt Campbell | L. Jean Camp | Letitia James | Lisa O. Monaco
Lisa Page | Lois Lerner | Loretta Lynch | Marc Elias
Matthew Colangelo | Merrick Garland | Michael Cohen | Michael Kortan
Michael Sussmann | Mike Pompeo | Nancy Pelosi | Nellie Ohr
Paul Vixie | Perkins Coie et.al. | Peter Fritsch | Peter J. Kadzic
Peter Strzok | Richard Schiff | Robby Mook | Robert Muller
Rod Rosenstein | Rodney Joffe | Ron Klain | Sally Yates
Samantha Power | Sir Richard Dearlove | Stefan Halper | Stephen Laycock
Stormy Daniels | Strobe Talbot | Susan E. Rice | The Mueller-Team
Timothy Thibault | Tom Rice | Valerie Jarrett | Victoria Nuland
ABC | BBC | CBS | CNN
FOX | MSNBC | NBC | NPR
PBS | New York Times | Washington Post | …
Everything Is Russia’s Fault (Even Global Warming!)
Globalists see ‘Russian disinformation’ everywhere!
“… That’s the rough genesis of the Russia Collusion Hoax, a political scandal of epic proportions that the propaganda press have largely covered up. …”
By: J.B. Shurk via American Thinker | October 15, 2026
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/10/everything-is-russia-s-fault-even-global-warming/
Alt.: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/everything-russias-fault-even-global-warming
To all those ready to absolve the guys from any wrongdoing because the girl “consented” isn’t it possible that she consented to group sex with two boys but was then given a hard core drug (she wasn’t old enough to legally drink) and then didn’t fight back against sec with 4 or 5 more guys?
Anyone defending these scum bag kids should imagine a sister or daughter in that position. Those boys were bad, maybe not legally or maybe even legally, but they are abusers.
Wait for the evidence to come out.
Ahahaha, nope. She still had full awareness of what was going on around her due to her rejecting a guy in the same instance, only to accept MORE guys later that night. She is a promiscuous vixen. Stop wasting air on this now-viral heathen. And you are neglecting, as is standard for the thought of man, one of the 7 men claimed that he was effectively passing in and out of consciousness, yet ole cowgirl still was bounding on his beef jerky. Was he not raped?
Why take sides? Overconsumption of alcohol mixed with ketamine is going to unleash primal instincts that seem to the intoxicated hilarious at the time — but look utterly depraved after sobering up.
The “Cornell 8” are guilty of depravity, and frankly don’t deserve anything but mockery for their immature, thrill-seeking escapade turned ugly in retrospect.
Two of them apparently had no contact with her at all and a third’s contact consisted of kissing her once.
l’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut not one these “over educated” students can balance a checkbook.
Another item for the file marked “school administrators are weasels”.
Great reason to not send your children to any university in the Northeast or greater New York. I commend the 2 students who tried to give alternative discussions. I think they are wasting their time there and should seek education elsewhere. Presently they are seeking enlightenment in a cesspool.
Professor Turley begins by saying Columbia University is “home to one of the world’s leading journalism schools”. If that’s true, the so-called “leading journalism schools” are failing … big time. Give me high school graduate Nick Shirley anytime.
That sentence in the column should have been written in the PAST tense: “was home …” I wonder when it produced its last (real) journalist?
“Who Gets to Tell the Story?” That question was supposed to be the theme of a “press freedom” event this week at Columbia University, FORMERLY home to one of the world’s leading journalism schools.
FIFY Professor. You’re welcome!
Liberals: Freedom of the press for me, but not for thee.
Hypocrites.
Well here comes the “SHE MUST BE BELIEVED” crowd again for another wild and wooly ride through society! There can be no other set of facts other than the ones presented by the ‘alleged’ victim because to do so would undermine the crowd’s mantra!! Further, the independent minded that should never sit on the jury need to have their mindset adjusted via crowd-sourcing so they understand that in America we must think in lockstep! Oh wait, that was a Soviet ideal wasn’t it? Oh well, how timely for the rising communist (oops, I mean socialist) movement in the USA.
This all began with Columbia in the late sixties. The university should be shut down, it’s professor’s ability to indoctrinate held criminally responsible, and these students are banned from any campus.
The late ‘60’s? Think so? Look back to the late 1920s/early 1930s when Columbia University established the Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn, the purpose for which was clear with respect to keeping certain ethnic groups away from the Morningside Heights campus.
So Columbia’s intolerance is a long-standing one! Thanks for the history lesson.
Disciples of the Goebbels Institute for propaganda, disinformation, obfuscation, and fabrication. All the news that fits, they print.
Nobody is less “liberal” than liberals, nobody less tolerant of free speech and free expression than leftwing Fascists. They are completely Orwellian in their approach to “wrongthink”.
This is amazing. These would be journalists who want to cancel free speech should not be deemed qualified for a degree in journalism.
Why so amazed? That mindset has been abroad in journalism and in the law for years now and appears to be growing. Termites feeding on two of the pillars of our Constitution, manifesting the soft bigotry of low expectations for the intelligence of the low information voter. What matter the price of a gallon of gasoline if there’s no longer anywhere free to travel?