Watch University Of Missouri Assistant Professor Melissa Click Attempts To Stop Freedom Of The Press At Protest
Watch a University of Missouri assistant professor, as she attempts to stop freedom of the press when a journalist, reporting on the student protests on campus, tried to get past a group guarding a gathering.
Students who were protesting several racist incidents at the University of Missouri were supported by some faculty, including who the Daily Caller identified as assistant professor of mass media, Melissa Click. However, things got confrontational when student photographer, Tim Tai, recorded Click asking for “muscle” to push journalist Mark Schierbecker, who was reporting on what is said to be an anti-free speech event.
The disturbing video surfaced Monday, when the activist group called Concerned Student 1950 came out to celebrate the resignation of school president Tim Wolfe. As Schierbecker approached the group to film the gathering, students formed a circle to keep the media away from what was happening next to one of the buildings on campus.
First, a man tells Tai he cannot push back the group to try to get close to the activists, who have staged protests for days. A woman is heard screaming, “You need to back up, respect the students, back up!” as Tai tells the man he is doing his job and holds his camera over the groups while trying to take pictures of the meeting.
In the video, you can watch a University of Missouri assistant professor instigate students into pushing Tai to try to make him leave. The footage shows Melissa Click yelling at Tai, telling him “You need to go!” as he argues again he is doing his job.
At the same time, protesters had set barricades to prevent the media from approaching their gathering. Schierbecker recorded the most intense exchange when protesters who opposed Wolfe put their hands up, trying to block him from filming, and at one point during the confrontation, University of Missouri students are heard chanting “hey, hey, ho, ho, reporters have got to go.”
“You need to get out,” Click tells Schierbecker in the video.
“No, I don’t,” Schierbecker argues. To this, Click responds by trying to grab his camera and shake it.
“Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?” Click shouts to the crowd. “I need some muscle over here.”
Following the disturbing video which shows University of Missouri assistant professor Melissa Click trying to intimidate members of the media, a petition to get her fired was started on the site Change.org. The petition describes Click as “a white professor… captured on video verbally intimidating and bullying an Asian-American student photojournalist, Tim Tai, shooting news photos of student demonstrators encamped on public university property.”
“What is particularly galling is that — as Assistant Professor of Mass Media — Ms. Click should be defending the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects the right to a free press. Instead, she is captured on video actively denying the freedom of the press. She is not just a bystander in an assault against the press, she is the frontline commander of this assault.
Ms. Click should be fired for violating the First Amendment of the Constitution in her role as a professor of a public university.”
According to her biography page, University of Missouri assistant professor Melissa Click is currently teaching subjects, such as Fifty Shades of Grey readers, “the impact of social media in fans’ relationship with Lady Gaga, masculinity and male fans, messages about class and food in reality television programming, and messages about work in children’s television programs.”
Click has not returned requests for comment at this time, but has come under fire for the controversial videos in which you can watch the University of Missouri assistant professor trying to deny media access to a public event.
In July, Governor Jay Nixon signed the Campus Free Expression Act, according to Hot Air. The bill expands free speech zones to the campuses of public institutions of higher education in Missouri and allows protests and speeches to take place on any outdoor space.
According to the American Constitution, Freedom of the Press is the right — guaranteed by the First Amendment — to gather, publish, and distribute information and ideas without government restriction — this right encompasses freedom from prior restraints on publication and freedom from Censorship.
What do you think of University of Missouri assistant professor Melissa Click for attacking freedom of the press?
[Photo by Brian Davidson / Getty Images]
