{"id":192771,"date":"2026-02-25T08:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T08:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192771\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T08:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T08:29:08","slug":"fresno-state-students-reject-free-access-to-problematic-nyt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192771\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno State Students Reject Free Access to \u201cProblematic\u201d NYT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Student leaders at California State University, Fresno, don\u2019t want free subscriptions to The New York Times, according to The Fresno Bee<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, Associated Students Inc.\u2014Fresno State\u2019s student government association\u2014rejected a proposal to spend $15,705 to give students digital subscriptions to the Times, considered the newspaper of record for the United States.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Criticism of the newspaper\u2019s coverage partially drove the decision.<\/p>\n

Alya Hassan, a student official who voted against the proposal, accused The New York Times of lacking journalistic integrity for telling reporters to avoid using certain terms<\/a>, such as \u201cgenocide,\u201d \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d and \u201coccupied territory\u201d in coverage of the Israel\u2013Gaza war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New York Times has historically been a little bit problematic and controversial in their reporting and in their journalism,\u201d Hassan said during a discussion before the vote. \u201cIf we were to fund this using student fees, we would essentially be endorsing The New York Times\u2019 editorial positions and their narratives, and that\u2019s where my hesitation comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hassan and other student officials also questioned if there was enough demand to warrant paying for the subscription. But Sarah Sevy, the student official who put forth the proposal, said she\u2019s heard from lots of students who said they\u2019d be interested in a subscription to access news articles, as well as the outlet\u2019s popular cooking and gaming apps like Wordle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead of paying the $30-a-month standard sticker price<\/a> for an individual digital subscription to the Times, Sevy said the proposal would only cost 67\u00a0cents per person in student fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s irresponsible considering some of the other things we spend student fees on,\u201d Sevy said. \u201cLike, do we need tailgates? We still do them because they are fun and they provide a good-quality experience to students on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 10\u00a0million college students\u2014including those at Harvard University, the University of California and New York University\u2014already have free access to The New York Times, and about 25\u00a0percent of those students actually use their subscription, Todd Halvorsen, a Times representative, told the students at the meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for questions about the paper\u2019s quality, Halvorsen said he couldn\u2019t comment on editorial decisions\u2014\u201cthat’s not my side of the business\u201d\u2014but asserted that the paper\u2019s record speaks for itself. \u201cWe have 145 Pulitzer prizes,\u201d he said. \u201cMore than any other news organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"subscribe\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Student leaders at California State University, Fresno, don\u2019t want free subscriptions to The New York Times, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[5676,15,584,112,114,113,8527,1286,100],"class_list":["post-192771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}