In the opening week of a new semester — and as roughly 3,000 immigration, Border Patrol and other Department of Homeland Security agents poured into Minneapolis as part of “Operation Metro Surge” — University of Minnesota journalism professor Regina McCombs accompanied four of her students to a “hostile environment and first aid training” course led by journalists who have covered wars.
“We learned how to treat bullet wounds, how to tie a tourniquet, and I was thinking a 21-year-old student should not have to learn to pack bullet wounds,” McCombs said.
McCombs said she worried the training might overwhelm her students, but the experience galvanized them instead. “All four of them were out Friday at the marches and Saturday they were at vigils.” One told her, “‘At least I know something I didn’t know before.’”
“What I have seen in some of them,” she said, “is that they have absolutely caught fire.”
McCombs, along with colleagues Scott Libin and Sara Quinn, all brought decadeslong careers in journalism — and years teaching at the Poynter Institute — to the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. McCombs is a veteran photojournalist; Libin is a former reporter and news director; and Quinn is internationally known for her work in design and visual journalism.
Libin said the shootings, arrests and protests have pushed students into deeper conversations about the difference between the role of journalists and that of bystanders who document moments of violence.
“The more nuanced discussions are about the distinction between other First Amendment freedoms and the role of journalist,” He said, “What is the difference between a ‘constitutional observer’ and a reporter? There are a lot of people out there recording video and audio; very few of them are practicing ‘journalism.’ I try to remind students of the unique role they play. It is not a value judgment of one being more worthy than the other, but I worry about the conflation of roles with so many kinds of content competing for attention. Journalists need to understand how they are different from the person on the corner with a phone, pressing record.”
Libin added that his students see themselves as journalists, and understand that journalism often means moving toward the story, not away from it.
Students work through a live newscast as instructor Scott Libin (background) observes during a journalism class at the University of Minnesota. (Courtesy: Regina McCombs/University of Minnesota)
Safety, he said, is part of that conversation from day one. On the first day of class, faculty walk students through guidelines for covering federal immigration operations and enforcement — while emphasizing that no student is required to do so for any course.
The school’s guidelines outline clear expectations and precautions for students who choose to report on immigration enforcement. What follows is the full safety guidance the Hubbard School has distributed to student journalists who choose to cover ICE operations.
You will not be required to cover protests or to pursue ICE-related stories. If you choose to cover protests on your own time, you should be mindful of potential consequences and discuss your story with your instructor. If you then decide to pursue those stories, here are the protocols you must follow:
- Always go out with a buddy who can stay with you throughout.
- Take your press badge. Wear it tied on a belt or belt loop, but not around your neck.
- Write two phone numbers with a Sharpie on your arm:
- Reporters Committee for Freedom of Press legal hotline: 800-336-4243
- Primary emergency contact (friend or family) who is a “trusted contact” that you know will be available. (The Sharpie ink will eventually come off.)
- Tell the trusted contact where you are going and what time you expect to return. Give your trusted contact your instructor’s phone number and the RCFP hotline number.
- Do a risk assessment before going out by asking these questions with your reporting partner:
- What is your goal? (It should be a clear newsgathering goal, not just to “see what’s happening” on the street.)
- What material do you plan to gather, and how will you gather it?
- Where are the safest places to get what you need?
- If you get separated from your buddy, where will you meet?
- How will you know you are finished?
- What will be the signs you need to leave early?
- Once you are on the scene, keep in mind the following tips:
- Do not park too close to the action, and get there early if you can.
- Review your entrance and exit points.
- Move in and out of crowds; don’t stay in the center.
- Watch for signs that police might be throwing chemicals. Stay well back or leave.
- Agree on “let’s go” if you feel unsafe. Trust your gut. Leave when you must.
- Professional journalists often carry water, an N95 mask and Sudecon wipes if they are available to be prepared for any incident.
- Do not interfere with law enforcement.
- Remain professional. You are a journalist. Act accordingly.
- Suggestions for interactions with law enforcement:
- Clearly identify yourself as a journalist.
- If you need to present your credentials, say, “Can I show you my press badge?” or “I’m reaching for my press badge
I spent more than a decade teaching with Quinn at Poynter, where she consistently pushed journalists to treat design, graphics and photographs not as decoration, but as essential components of their journalism.
“My students see this as a pivotal moment in their lives, and they want to understand it,” she said.
In Minneapolis, she told Poynter, visual journalists are not only documenting events on the ground but increasingly verifying what they did not personally witness. That work now requires sophisticated forensic skills — calculating distance and scale, assessing visual context and, in some cases, moving frame by frame through multiple videos to verify or refute official accounts.
This week, Quinn showed her students a photograph of protester Nekima Levy Armstrong’s arrest that the White House manipulated to make it appear she was crying. She asked them what they thought.
“They were furious that the White House would manipulate an image like that,” Quinn said.
Sara Quinn walks students through the semester timeline for Magazine Editing and Production at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. (Courtesy: Regina McCombs/University of Minnesota)
Libin said his students are more skeptical — and sometimes more cynical — than when he started teaching in Minnesota 12 years ago.
“Go back less than six years to the murder of George Floyd here in Minneapolis; we didn’t worry about AI at the time,” he said. “I don’t remember anybody saying, ‘Could that be the function of artificial intelligence?’ My students have become more appropriately skeptical of things that would not have given them pause in the past. And good for them.”
McCombs still worries that skepticism can still fall short.
“The videos from the bystanders have been so compelling,” she said, pointing to the photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, pictures of a man being sprayed while lying on the ground, and haunting images by Star Tribune photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii. “There has been no question,” she said, “that the people documenting this have had a huge impact.”
At the same time, she said, the power of a single still image is that it “stops time so you can see what really happened, what you might have missed when it all moves so fast.”
McCombs said students notice that local media, not just social media, have played an essential role in telling fuller versions of what is happening in their city.
“The journalists here are doing incredible work. The photojournalists are doing amazing work,” she said. “The news organizations are telling stories, they are not just talking about a spectacular moment. Who are the people on the street? How are they getting organized? Who is bringing food to the neighborhoods and driving kids to school when adults are afraid to leave their homes? For the most part, social media is all of those crisis moments, which is important — but it is not all of it.”
McCombs, Libin and Quinn said the crisis has also crept into everyday academic life.
“I have had a couple of colleagues whose neighbors’ doors have been broken down and people hauled away,” McCombs said. “I have a colleague who speaks with a European accent, and she said, ‘I am so afraid if I open my mouth to an ICE agent that they will haul me away because I speak with an accent.’ It is in your head.”
Libin described getting an alert from his daughter’s school saying ICE agents were in the parking lot. It later turned out they were staging for a raid elsewhere.
“I do worry that all of this focus on what is happening today will derail entirely what we want to do for our students, the learning that we want them to experience,” he said. “But you cannot just pretend it is just another news event.
McCombs, who has spent most of her career in Minnesota, put it this way:
“In any normal winter, all we would be talking about is the cold and bitching about the cold. But now, that is three or four on our list.”
