U.S. Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) told The Tennessee Star that today’s media needs more reporters like Matthew Giffin.
Giffin resigned his position as editor-in-chief of Sidelines, Middle Tennessee State University’s student digital newspaper, after he said the publication’s editorial board caved into pressure by anti-Israel students who opposed his story profiling a MTSU student concerned about his friends in Tel Aviv.
“It is both abhorrent and outrageous that the sentiment among higher education faculty and a large majority of students is to sympathize with terrorists,” DesJarlais, who represents Murfreesboro, home of MTSU, as part of the 4th Congressional District. “I commend Matthew for his reporting efforts that were unfortunately squandered by his editorial board and faculty adviser. People like him are needed now more than ever in today’s media.”
In a College Fix commentary, Giffin (pictured above) wrote that since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel last month, “students and faculty at colleges across the U.S. have given way to the pressures of antisemitic, pro-Hamas voices, abandoning moral clarity and sound judgment.”
But it’s not just the usual suspects in the far-left Ivy League schools, Giffin asserts. Students in deeply red, southern states “have joined in supporting terrorism and suppressing pro-Israel voices.”
After he wrote the piece on the MTSU student worried about his friends in Israel, Sidelines received “unprecedented feedback from students on the article’s Instagram post.” Apparently, much of it wasn’t positive. The student Giffin profiled asked that he take down the article out of concern for his safety. The editor-in-chief honored the request.
“But then the editorial board, against my expressed wishes, published a statement: “In retrospect, Sidelines failed to report on the casualties the Palestinian people have suffered and focused only on damage done to the Israeli population.”
Giffin wrote that the editors and faculty advisor of the student newspaper did not say he had “failed to report” on anything until they started taking heat from the “Free Palestine” crowd.
The board ignored his objections to the wording of the editor’s note, which insists that Sidelines’ goal is “to cover news equitably. Going forward, we will take care to be inclusive of differing viewpoints.”
“Unable to stand behind a dishonest and harmful representation of my story, I resigned,” Giffin wrote in the op-ed piece.
In a statement to The Star, the university said, “Sidelines is editorially independent of the university, and this was a matter handled internally by its student-led editorial board.”
The student newspaper does have a faculty advisor, however, as Giffin noted in his column. An MTSU official did not respond to The Star’s follow-up email asking about the faculty advisor’s role in the editor’s note.
Giffin said he has now joined the ranks of Yale student Sahah Tartak, who, in a Yale Daily News opinion piece, dared to write about the raping of women, the beheadings and other atrocities committed by the terrorist group. The student newspaper’s editorial board censored her with a “correction.”
As Tartak wrote in The Free Beacon:
Appended to the article now is the following correction, made without my knowledge: “Editor’s note, correction, Oct. 25: This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
The claims are not claims at all. They have been thoroughly substantiated by Israel’s government and Hamas — through terrorist helmet cams. Yale Daily News’ editor-in-chief Anika Seth, who describes herself as one of the newspaper’s “inaugural Diversity, Equity, an Inclusion co-chairs,” apparently didn’t want to be bothered in explaining the decision to stifle the truth, according to a Free Beacon editor’s note.
The student newspaper was later forced to apologize after learning publications such as Reuters had publicly verified Hamas had raped and beheaded Israelis.
“I had not expected such things to happen at the likes of Middle Tennessee State University. However, my university is not the only red-state public campus where students have attempted to suppress sympathy for Israel,” Giffin wrote in the opinion piece, citing several examples of students engaged in anti-Israel, pro-Hamas activities at conservative state campuses around the country.
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn said the rise in antisemitism on college campuses across America, including campuses in Tennessee, is appalling.
“I am deeply disturbed to hear about an incident at Middle Tennessee State University where a student spoke the truth and was forced into silence by Hamas sympathizers,” the Tennessee Republican said in an email to The Star. “It is also unacceptable to hear from university leadership that they are aware of the situation, but will not get involved.”
Blackburn said the incident is “part of a broader trend across the country where pro-Israel voices are afraid to speak out in the face of rabidly antisemitic students and faculty who celebrate Hamas’ actions.
“I am glad my bipartisan resolution condemning antisemitism on college campuses and calling on college administrators to act unanimously passed the Senate. Colleges and universities must crack down on antisemitism and protect their Jewish students no matter the circumstance,” the senator said.
“There are too many people within the ranks of higher education who only believe in free speech and a free press when it matches their point of view,” U.S. Rep. DesJarlais said.
Governor Bill Lee’s office did not return The Star’s request for comment.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Matthew Giffin” by Matthew Giffin. Background Photo “Middle Tennessee State University” by MTSUGoRaidersGo. CC BY 3.0.
