What My Gen Z Students Taught Me About Journalism and America

“What are we to do when our president labels leading news organizations ‘the enemy of the American people?’”

Winter/Spring 2019 issue, Iowa Journalist (credit: Lauren Himan)

The striking image above of the Bill of Rights being torched was created in the fall of 2018 by Lauren Himan, one of the many talented and devoted journalism students I had the honor of teaching at The University of Iowa during the first Trump presidency. It’s a detail from the cover of the Winter/Spring 2019 issue of Iowa Journalist—the top-notch alumni magazine my students put out that semester—and reflects their No. 1 concern at the time: “the growing threat to free speech and a free press in the U.S. and abroad.” Much of that concern arose from a sitting U.S. president labeling well-reported, fact-based news stories “fake news” while calling respected U.S. journalists “bad people,” “scum,” “slime,” and their First Amendment protections “disgusting.” In the past six years, Trump’s attacks on the press have only intensified. As the Committee to Protect Journalists reports, he’s pledged to “further his anti-press agenda …