Student journalism conference ‘killed’ talks by conservative writers

Two conservative reporters were disinvited from MediaFest 2025, a national conference for student journalists that took place over the weekend, after an organizer accused them of biased reporting in articles about abortion and immigration. 

Mary Margaret Olohan, White House correspondent for The Daily Wire, and Virginia Allen, a senior news producer at The Daily Signal, were scheduled to speak at the four-day conference. MediaFest is “the nation’s largest gathering of media students and their advisers,” according to its website. 

However, Michael Koretzky, the MediaFest convention director, self-reportedly “killed those two sessions” after an Oregon State University employee complained.

Koretzky maintains he did so because at least one of Olohan’s and Allen’s stories “played loose with the facts, and neither attempt balance,” he said in an email to a representative of the authors, which Koretzky shared with The College Fix via email.  

Olohan’s article reported on U.S. Congressman Brandon Gill’s legislation introduced in June regarding the disposal of aborted babies’ remains. The bill would ban abortionists from flushing the human remains into the public water systems through toilets or garbage disposals. 

Allen’s article concerned the locating of 13,000 unaccompanied minor illegal aliens who entered the country and whose cases had gone unaddressed under the Biden administration. 

Koretzky, who also leads the ethics committee at the Society of Professional Journalists, did not answer The Fix’s question about whether there is an official stance that journalists who oppose abortion or gender ideology should not be heard at MediaFest.

Organizers disinvited both women after Steven Sandberg, the general manager of student media at Oregon State University, complained about the two journalists.

Sandberg told the Columbia Journalism Review the reason he did so was because, “I saw pretty far-right, anti-LGBTQ language” in their reporting.

He also told the Review he would be unwilling to send his students to MediaFest 2025 if Olohan and Allen were included.  Sandberg did not respond to two emails from The Fix last week asking for comment. 

However, a communications professor at DePauw University criticized the organizers’ decision to disinvite the two journalists.

“If all journalists are prevented from speaking at MediaFest because of supposed inaccurate reporting, then there will be nobody left to speak,” Professor Jeff McCall told The College Fix by email. 

“It is quite ironic that a conference to promote the free press and free expression is unwilling to hear from other reporters who might have different political or social leanings,” McCall said. “This demonstrates that the journalism industry is still beholden to left-of-center advocacy and not interested in a true marketplace of information and ideas.”

Meanwhile, the student journalist conference still welcomed leftist journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to speak at the event this year. She is the author of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a series of articles about America’s founding that has been widely criticized for historical inaccuracies.

Interestingly, conservative British activist Lois McLatchie Miller also spoke at the conference over the weekend. However, she is not a journalist; she is a spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom International, a conservative legal organization.

Miller wrote on X that she somehow “escaped the cancellations.”

Based in England, she said the topic of her talk was “Exposing censorship for religious reasons.”

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