Jonathan Turley slams UNC journalism dean who asked ABC News to 'protect' Nikole Hannah-Jones

close

Video

Media top headlines August 2

In media news today, Chris Cuomo gets ripped for accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of holding the U.S. 'hostage' to COVID, critics slam DC Mayor Muriel Bowser for violating her own mask mandate, and ABC's political director calls out the Biden admin's 'confusing' COVID messaging

Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley feels the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill dean who urged ABC News to "protect" New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones was participating in "advocacy journalism." 

"It’s the ultimate of advocacy journalism," Turley said Monday on "America Reports."

Amid the controversy to bring the "1619 Project" author as a tenured professor to the school, UNC's Journalism and Media Dean Susan King requested that ABC News' deputy political director "protect" Hannah-Jones. Their correspondence was among a batch of emails obtained by Fox News in connection with the ongoing saga in the spring. 

UNC JOURNALISM DEAN ASKED ABC NEWS TO 'PROTECT' 1619 PROJECT'S NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, EMAILS SHOW

Turley penned a column in response titled, "Advocacy Journalism 101: UNC Dean asked ABC to ‘protect’ Hannah-Jones in its coverage," which criticized King’s efforts to dictate ABC News programming. 

"The request from the dean of the UNC shows how casual journalism professors have become with these ethical lines between reporting and advocacy," Turley wrote. "Reporters and academics continue to destroy the core principles that sustain journalism and ultimately the role of a free press in our society." 

Video

Turley, a George Washington University law professor, joined "America Reports" to elaborate on the "chilling trend."

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES ONCE CALLED CUBA 'MOST EQUAL MULTI-RACIAL COUNTRY IN OUR HEMISPHERE

"This is part of a chilling trend we’re seeing across universities, a leading professor at Stanford a while back denounced the concept of objectivity in journalism and said that journalists must be advocates," Turley said.

"This model of advocacy journalism has taken hold. Hannah-Jones, herself, recently declared, ‘Yes, I believe journalism is advocacy.' We recently had the Times justice reporter calling all Trump supporters … all 74 million, enemies of the state, so we’re seeing more and more advocacy in the media and it’s open and it’s being embraced," Turley said, adding that NPR recently permitted its journalists to engage in protests. 

"All of this is building in to a very serious challenge for journalists," Turley said. "What it will do is undermine further confidence in journalism." 

Though UNC’s Board of Trustees eventually voted to grant Hannah-Jones tenure, she turned it down, choosing instead to work for Howard University, a historically Black University in Washington, D.C.

UNC DONORS SLAMMED CREEPING ‘MARXISM’ AMID DEBATE OVER TENURE FOR NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, EMAILS SHOW

The email thread was first reported on by Campus Reform. 

Jonathan Turley feels the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill dean who urged ABC News to "protect" New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones was participating in "advocacy journalism." 

Fox News has reached out to both ABC Deputy Political Director Averi Harper and King but did not hear back before publication. 

Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for her commentary in the "1619 Project," which "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the United States' national narrative." The project was praised by many on the left, while others, including some historians, criticized the work over its inaccuracies. 

Five academic historians signed a letter claiming the 1619 Project got several elements of history wrong, including its notion that the Revolutionary War was fought chiefly to preserve slavery.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.