Indiana student paper says state politician’s posts about outlet threatening

The student newspaper at Indiana University Bloomington was targeted on social media by a state politician on Nov. 12, 2024. The outlet said the posts were intended to chill its reporting.

Micah Beckwith — Indiana’s newly elected lieutenant governor and a self-described Christian nationalist who serves as a pastor in Noblesville — used his official accounts on the social platforms X and Facebook to criticize the Indiana Daily Student’s Nov. 7 front cover. The cover featured an illustration of President-elect Donald Trump overlaid with unfavorable quotes from his former allies.

“This is WOKE propaganda at its finest and why most of America looks at higher education indoctrination centers like IU as a complete joke and waste of money,” Beckwith wrote. “This type of elitist leftist propaganda needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”

Beckwith also asserted that the publication was “Your tax dollars at work.”

IDS reported that Beckwith’s posts were meant as a threat to both the newspaper and the university.

Co-Editor-in-Chief Jacob Spudich defended the newspaper’s cover, telling the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the intention was to engage multiple interpretations.

“If you are somebody who didn’t vote for Trump and are feeling devastated, you can look at and just kind of be, like, ‘Wow, all this stuff happened yet he still won,’” Spudich said. “And if you're a supporter of Trump, you can look at all this, all the quotes and everything that his former allies and advisers were saying, and say, like, ‘Wow, all this was said about him, yet he still triumphed and won the election.’”

Spudich added that the paper welcomes any criticism of its content, but will staunchly defend the First Amendment and the freedoms it grants the press.

Beckwith, when reached by phone, told the Tracker that he also respects press freedom and that his intention was to identify the coverage as symptomatic of an issue he sees within the university system as a whole.

“It’s not just the student newspaper. I think it’s a general problem that we’ve seen at IU over the course of the last few decades, where it is, again, silencing conservative viewpoints,” Beckwith said. “So I think it’s appropriate to say, ‘OK, our tax dollars are going to this: Is it giving a fair and honest voice to everyone involved?’”

Beckwith clarified that this is not an official stance of Gov.-elect Mike Braun’s administration: “This is just me calling out something that needs to be addressed and bringing it into sunlight.”

Beckwith also said that the university’s board of trustees or the president of the college should be involved in evaluating whether the student publication is being “fair and honest.” In an interview with IDS, Beckwith said the state should investigate whether the university is using taxpayer money in “covert” ways to support the newspaper.

Spudich told the Tracker that IDS is financially and editorially independent from the university, so doesn’t receive any tax dollars. The newspaper reported that it generates its revenue through advertisements and events, and pays a tax to the university for the space it operates out of on campus.

While any threats to the press are concerning, Spudich told the Tracker, the student journalists remain undeterred.

“For the most part, we have an incredibly resilient newsroom,” he said.