Some Jewish students, including reporters and editors, viewed post-October 7 coverage by campus newspapers as biased. Their concerns largely went unheard.

Throughout her first three years at a small liberal arts college on the East Coast, nothing mattered more to her than her work on the student newspaper. Already interested in writing, “Rachel” arrived on campus in the COVID fall of 2020, with students largely confined to their dormitories and all classes conducted online. Only after joining the newspaper staff was she able to meet a few other students and feel some connection to her new college community. In her sophomore year, with the campus coming back to life, she saw the newspaper as her “home base,” the place where she established her closest friendships and did her most meaningful work. In her junior year, she was named one of the editors. Two or three nights a week, the group would gather at the paper’s office to discuss and review stories together, share dinner and socialize until midnight or later. “I looked forward to those nights,” she says. “It was my favorite thing. I loved it so much.”

But in the fall of her senior year, the October 7 massacre and the subsequent campus protests shook up her college community, disturbing many Jewish students like herself. Rachel is not her real name, and she doesn’t want her college identified. Even in her previously cozy student newsroom, she felt increasingly out of place, distressed by the deep hostility to Israel evident in some of the news stories and op-eds the other editors were approving for publication and by a willingness to downplay Hamas terrorism.