The editorial board for the Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) student newspaper issued a statement Wednesday in defense of the newspaper’s faculty adviser following the publication’s apology for running a story on an MTSU student worried about his friends in Israel.
But Matthew Giffin, the former editor-in-chief of Sidelines who wrote the profile piece, told The Tennessee Star that associate professor Stephen Leon Alligood was “in the room” when the editor’s note was crafted.
“Leon was not involved in initiating the process for making the statement, but he was in the room while the statement was being created,” Giffin (pictured above, left) told The Star in an interview Wednesday afternoon. “He did kind of passively agreed with what was happening.”
Giffin said that when he was with the paper that Alligood would “step in every now and then.”
“We would consult with him when we needed help. He kind of had the final say. He was our boss,” Giffin said.
As The Star reported on Tuesday, Giffin, a MTSU senior, resigned his position as editor-in-chief of the student digital newspaper after he said the publication’s editorial board caved into pressure by anti-Israel students who opposed his story profiling the MTSU student.
In a College Fix commentary, Giffin wrote that since Hamas’ terrorist attacks 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 asserted. Students in deeply red, southern states — including his own Murfreesboro-based university — “have joined in supporting terrorism and suppressing pro-Israel voices.”
After he wrote the piece, Sidelines received “unprecedented feedback from students on the article’s Instagram post.” 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 in the commentary.
He noted that the editorial board members and the faculty adviser 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.
Alligood (pictured above, right), the faculty adviser, returned a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon. He was joined by Beverly Keel, dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at MTSU, in a prepared statement:
“A student newspaper is a hands-on training ground where young journalists learn not only the practice of journalism, but about history and current events as they write about local, national and international issues. Sidelines is designed to be the students’ voice, and one that is not influenced by the university or its administration,” they wrote.
“It is not the role of the faculty adviser to tell young journalists what to think, or whether their opinions are right or wrong. The student journalists did what they thought was best.”
The MTSU Sidelines Editorial Board issued a statement denying that it silenced Giffin. He made no such claim.
“Late last month, the student editorial board took part in a timely and ethical discussion about the article in question and decided to publish a statement explaining why the article was removed. In addition to addressing the threats to the student being interviewed, the board also recognized an imbalance in the story’s reporting of casualties resulting from the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel,” the board wrote in the statement to The Star.
The editor’s note described Giffin’s October 27 story as “a profile of a student who expressed his alliance with Israel after the Hamas attack that happened on Oct. 7.” That terrorist attack claimed some 1,200 victims, most of them innocent Israelis, raped, beheaded and burned in the biggest assault on Jews since the Holocaust.
Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported last week that the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 10,000. However, The Associated Press notes that the ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The MTSU student newspaper editorial board insisted Alligood, the faculty adviser, did not advise the removal of the article. Giffin instead decided to “retract the story prior to meeting with the editorial board and faculty adviser.”
The journalistic definition of retract is to “withdraw (a statement or accusation) as untrue or unjustified.” Giffin took down the article only at the request of the source because the source was concerned about his safety, not because Giffin had erred in his reporting.
Sideline’s editorial board asserted Alligood did not advise the board to publish the editors’ note.
“After the article was retracted, we felt it was necessary to provide an explanation to our readers,” the board said. “Sidelines is a publication where student journalists learn through real-world experiences such as this. We continually strive for accuracy and balance.”
The board thanked its former colleague “for his contributions to and leadership of Sidelines and wish him the best in all his future endeavors.”
According to the associate professor’s biography page on the MTSU website, Alligood has worked as a reporter and writer for more than 30 years, 22 of those working for the old Nashville Banner and The Tennessean. While at The Tennessean, “he primarily wrote human interest and narrative stories on a variety of beats. He also was an embedded reporter covering the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan and Iraq.” In 2017, he was inducted into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame.
State Representative Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education, said he was unfamiliar with the controversy at MTSU but said the students should run student editorial boards.
“If you’ve got faculty members sticking their noses in, putting the thumb on the scale, that starts to take a little different flavor than having journalistic independence,” Lafferty said.
MTSU spokesman Jimmy Hart reiterated that Sidelines is a student-led media outlet, “therefore the administration does not have a say over its content or editorial operations.”
“Sidelines does not represent the university’s position or speak on our behalf,” he said.
However, Alligood is employed by the university, earning an annual salary of more than $78,000, according to MTSU’s Employee Salary Database. MTSU received more than $138 million in operating state appropriations for 2023-24, according to the university.
In June, MTSU approved an approximately 3 percent increase in tuition, fees, and housing rates.
In its apology note, the Sidelines Editorial Board stated it “condemns any actions that cause harm in response to an expressed opinion.
“People should feel free to express their opinions without fear of harm,” the editors’ note said.
But critics said the safe spaces are only for the liberals who share the far-left beliefs of many of America’s institutions of higher education.
“I think it was late 1990s, 2000, with the rise of social media and Facebook, when academic intolerance, as we’ve seen right here at MTSU, accelerated and the possibility of the free exchange of ideas without intimidation began to evaporate,” Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Star News Network told Nashville’s Morning News with Dan Mandis Wednesday morning on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN.
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) told The Tennessee Star on Tuesday that today’s media needs more reporters like Giffin.
“It is both abhorrent and outrageous that the sentiment among higher education faculty and a large majority of students is to sympathize with terrorists,” said 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.”
– – –
M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Matthew Giffin” by Matthew Giffin. Photo “Leon Alligood” by Middle Tennessee State University.
