Hi everyone,
Conservatives thought cancel culture had been defeated. After the cancel-crazy years of 2016 into the pandemic and through Biden's presidential term, conservatives thought that by starting new media outlets and podcasts, launching and remaking social media sites, and gaining vast numbers of readers and viewers across those platforms, they'd essentially beaten back the scourge.
But it turns out the cancel movement has just grown quiet on the surface while raging like the fires of Centralia, PA, just below the surface. We saw Kamala Harris' call for Hollywood creatives to infuse their characters and stories with woke, progressive messaging, but it's also happening in journalism where one annoying complainer can cause a cancellation that ripples out for a generation of up-and-comers.
MediaFest, the largest conference for student journalists in the nation, banned The Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan and The Daily Signal's Virginia Allen from speaking. Why? Because a "student media advisor" at Oregon State University complained about it and took it up with organizers on a Zoom call, saying he wouldn't allow OSU students to attend if these two were speaking.
Steven Sandberg told the Columbia Journalism Review that he was tipped off by the "faith track" portion of the conference. "I saw pretty far-right, anti-LGBTQ language," he said. He took his concerns to the College Media Association, Associated Collegiate Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists who jointly organize MediaFest. He said "These speakers' work doesn't exist in a vacuum. LGBTQ students are feeling targets by our administration, by the government, and by society. So I was disappointed to see them bring in people who espoused anti-LGBTQ views."
What he meant by "anti," of course, was "factual." Olohan has written a book recounting the experiences of people who have detransitioned, that's people who were eaten up by the medical industrial complex in service to the lie that they could change sex only to be spit out the other side damaged, maimed, and even worse off than they were before. Allen's big crime was just writing for The Daily Signal, which is backed by the Heritage Foundation.
The organizers tried to push back against Sandberg, saying that students should not be shielded from reality or the current state of journalism, which contains opposing views. So Sandberg reframed his complaint, attaching "the quality of their journalism" and the fact that they are writing about these issues at all. MediaFest canceled the two writers. Then said "we didn't eliminate them because of their opinion," but "because they were selectively quoting and manipulating the news to bolster their opinion."
So who is now slated to be speaking for the "faith track" at MediaFest? No journalists of faith who publish at large non-faith-based conservative outlets. The speakers are academics, lawyers, pastors, and journalists for a Christian outlet. None of these speakers has the professional reputation that either Allen or Olohan do, both of whom navigate the world of mainstream media while keeping their faith and letting faith inform their views but not obfuscate truth.