Jerry Falwell Jr. Has a Free Speech Problem

The Liberty University president thinks two reporters' coverage was unfair—so he wants them arrested.

Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of the evangelical Liberty University, has long positioned himself as a torch-bearer of free expression. "Free speech and intellectual diversity are two of the most important pillars of a college education," he wrote last June. "That's why I urge every college and university in the country to encourage open political discourse on their own campuses—just as we do at Liberty University."

Falwell is now demanding the arrest of two reporters he accuses of painting his school in a negative light.

In an interview with radio host Todd Starnes, Falwell derided reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica for how they covered his decision to partially reopen Liberty amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Both pieces, he claimed, unfairly portrayed Liberty's attitude toward the coronavirus as flippant and careless. He singled out, for example, Times journalist Elizabeth Williamson's characterization of a conversation she had with local physician Thomas W. Eppes, Jr. Williamson wrote that Eppes told her "nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19." Although one eventually tested positive, Falwell said the presumptive cases never numbered as high as 12—a depiction he cast as "sensational click-bait."

And so the university president secured arrest warrants for Times photographer Julia Rendleman and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis for trespassing, a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. He told Starnes that an additional warrant is coming against someone with another "big time liberal news organization" (There is no warrant against Williamson because she did not take any photographs, so there's no physical proof that she was on campus.) He also said that defamation "lawsuits will be filed" against The New York Times if a retraction or Liberty-friendly correction isn't issued regarding the contagion numbers.

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