The Mercury takes pride in its reporting and journalism and constantly seeks out new opportunities to develop its skills. We collaborate with and learn from local journalists, including everyone from independent reporters to groups like the Dallas Morning News, and regularly attend student journalism conferences to connect with other student publications, advisors and mentors. But as of Aug. 23, UTD’s Director of Student Media Lydia Lum has prohibited The Mercury from attending any future journalism conferences, calling it a “business decision.”
Lum said her decision was motivated by The Mercury’s management team not allowing her to attend all private meetings over the summer, a time in which The Mercury operates asynchronously because of staff and management’s schedules. Lum said she felt she had been denied access to meetings, making it difficult for her to know what the management team needs educationally. Unless we grant her — an employee of UTD administration – full access to every meeting The Mercury holds, Lum said she is left with no option but to prohibit The Mercury from attending conferences and award ceremonies. Lum’s ultimatum, designed to give her heightened oversight and reviewing powers, goes against The Mercury’s commitment to editorial independence and the integrity of student press.
The first sentence of The Mercury’s mission statement is: “The Mercury is an award-winning, editorially independent news publication that focuses on UTD, its people and its surrounding communities.” A crucial part of this statement is our commitment to being “editorially independent.” As a student-run publication, everything The Mercury creates is made by current UTD undergraduate and graduate students, and decisions about coverage, distribution and internal operations are made by the students themselves–not outside administrators. Part of editorial independence includes resisting prior review; that is, allowing administrators, sources and other overseers to view or change articles prior to their publication. Banning prior review protects both the independence of The Mercury’s content from outside intervention and lessens the pressure on Student Media in cases where The Mercury publishes something UTD’s administration dislikes — it is difficult to punish the Director of Student Media for a bold newspaper team when the director has no say over its content. The director has historically had no ability to unilaterally review or censor our material beforehand. Allowing the director to view our content and influence our meetings prior to publication, as Lum desires, entails a new form of administrative censorship against The Mercury.
What Lum euphemistically calls a “business decision” is her prohibiting The Mercury from attending conferences held by the national collegiate journalism associations that The Mercury pays to be a part of: the Associated Collegiate Press and the College Media Association. ACP and CMA provide workshops, seminars and other learning opportunities in addition to organizing college media awards. Lum justified this by saying if she cannot sit in on every meeting, then she does not know which management members to send to conferences, and if she cannot offer unsolicited advice, she assumes The Mercury’s management team believes they have no more learning and growing left to do. This reasoning is paper-thin. The prohibition is clearly punitive.
Withholding our conferences falls in line with other punitive measures administration has taken against The Mercury in recent months. The Mercury’s summer was full of exciting events such as, the demotion of our former director Jonathan Stewart; his replacement with Senior Director of Marketing and Student Media Jenni Huffenberger as interim director until Lum was hired; late staff payments; and now a new mandate from Lum wanting unlimited access to not only our staff meetings, but also our confidential editorial and management meetings. This is a frightening deviation from the years of precedent, in which the director offered advice when solicited and critiqued The Mercury’s content after publication, not beforehand.
The Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression is a non-profit civil liberties organization that outlines seven key warning signs for student press censorship: defunding and derecognition; investigations; theft and destruction; censorship demands; prior review; pressure on advisers; and suppressive media relations policies. With these criteria, FIRE found that between 2021 and 2022, “60% of student newspapers at four-year public institutions faced some form of censorship.”
In 2024 alone, UTD has checked off four of the seven warning signs. Regarding censorship, UTD removed hundreds of copies of the March 18 issue from Mercury kiosks inside the Student Union and Student Media administrators prohibited The Mercury from submitting its May 20 issue to the ACP Pacemaker competition. Regarding pressure against advisers, the demotion of Stewart mere days after the publication of the May 20 issue is perhaps one of the most extreme forms of pressure which can be exerted. Regarding suppressive media policy, not only have higher ups in UTD administration refused to speak with The Mercury unless a questions list is provided through the Office of Communications, but even groups like the Comet Cupboard have enforced gag orders on their staff to keep them from talking to The Mercury. And now, the fall semester starts off strong with ultimatums being made calling for prior review. It is deeply unfortunate our own adviser wishes to threaten The Mercury when we already face opposition from campus administrators.
The Mercury reaffirms its commitment to providing students with editorially independent journalism and hopes Lum is willing to cooperate with the students of Student Media instead of throwing out hostile ultimatums. We have offered Lum a plethora of compromises which maintain our editorial independence while keeping her informed about operations, plans and educational needs. However, if Lum continues pushing for prior review, The Mercury will lobby the Student Media Operating Board to amend the Student Media bylaws to better protect independent journalism on campus.
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