BYU-Idaho student journalists get valuable freedom of the press lesson with Medicaid decision
When we send our kids off to college, we expect them to get a good education. The students at Brigham Young University-Idaho are getting quite the education. This month, their lesson plans include politics and attacks on the free press.
As reported earlier this month, BYU-Idaho stopped accepting Medicaid as health insurance coverage, forcing full-time students to buy a university-backed plan.
The move coincides with Idaho’s Medicaid expansion, which was passed by Idaho voters in November 2018 and goes into effect in January.
The move set off a backlash among students, who say the action by the university is morally wrong and hurts families.
“The nearly 20,000 students at BYU-Idaho must have health insurance in order to enroll,” two students, Sam Ruiz and Esther Spencer Rivas, wrote in a guest opinion to the Idaho Statesman. “Until last week, Medicaid was an option for students to fulfill this requirement. Without warning or explanation to anyone, the BYU-Idaho administration suddenly rejected Medicaid and Medicaid expansion. Students are in shock.”
University officials originally sent a terse statement simply stating the university would no longer accept Medicaid without further explanation. This week, the university sent out another email, stating the university did not want to overwhelm local medical facilities with Medicaid patients.
Amid all this, according to reporting by the Post Register and Rexburg Standard Journal, staff members at the student newspaper Scroll have been told the newspaper’s funding could be at risk if they cover the controversy, according to a recording of a staff meeting obtained by the Post Register.
The student newspaper Scroll wrote an in-depth article last week when the news first broke, but since then has only been posting the university’s official statements on its website, according to the Post Register.
“Basically, the deal is, there are people that would be very happy to cut Scroll funding in the Kimball (administrative) building, and so we keep getting told to not poke the bear,” a Scroll staffer said, according to the Post Register article.
Similarly, staff at the university’s radio station KBYI, which is part of a different department than Scroll, has also been told by the administration not to cover the controversy, according to the Post Register’s reporting.
That led the Idaho Press Club, of which I am a board member, to issue a statement Thursday:
“If a university is confident in its decisions, it shouldn’t stifle coverage of them.
“The Idaho Press Club unequivocally stands by student reporters at Brigham Young University-Idaho’s Scroll newspaper who are being discouraged from reporting on the university’s recent announcement that it will no longer accept Medicaid in lieu of other health insurance.
“Student media exists not only to teach budding reporters, but to also inform the campus community about important issues. BYU-Idaho discouraging coverage of this issue is not only a slap in the face of the First Amendment — it prevents students from accessing information that directly affects their health.
“If BYU-Idaho is serious about training student journalists, it is doing them an incredible disservice by preventing them from reporting on the news of the day. The Idaho Press Club encourages the administration to stay out of the way of student coverage.”
The only thing I disagree with in this statement is the part about doing the students a disservice. The administration is actually teaching its student journalists a valuable lesson that when faced with negative press coverage, those in power will do everything they can to try to quell that coverage, including discouraging the reporter, complaining to the editor, shouting “fake news” as a means to discredit the media, threatening to pass a law that would take away legal notices, even threatening to sue a newspaper if it doesn’t run a press release from the government as is.
Personally, I’m glad the student journalists at BYU-Idaho are getting a taste of what they’ll be facing as professional journalists.
When they get their first job, I know they’re going to be ready to take on the powers that be.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 10:04 AM.
