Mizzou Prof Who Shut Down Reporters Resigns

Before her fellow faculty members at Missouri’s School of Journalism could vote to rescind her courtesy appointment to the department, Dr. Melissa Click made things easier on herself and just resigned.

Her resignation follows her outright trampling of the First Amendment rights of reporters—calling in “muscle” to block reporters from doing their Constitutionally-protected job of documenting a student protest—despite her role teaching media and working with journalism students.

After the humiliating incident started making headlines, Click offered an official apology for threatening to use force to prevent a journalist from doing his job. Blaming her actions on the “emotion and confusion” of the day, she went on to say she talked to the reporter she threatened and all was okay.

“From this experience I have learned about humanity and humility. When I apologized to one of the reporters in a phone call this afternoon, he accepted my apology,” Click said. “I believe he is doing a difficult job, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with him.”

But as Jazz Shaw notes, there’s a difference between Click resigning from her courtesy appointment with the journalism school and actually resigning her position as a professor of media. It’ll be interesting to see where this one goes.

Here’s the instantly infamous video featuring Dr. Click (she appears around the 6:20 mark):