{"id":64529,"date":"2025-11-25T16:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64529\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T16:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:22:12","slug":"ut-dallas-journalist-punished-for-article-on-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64529\/","title":{"rendered":"UT Dallas Journalist Punished for Article on Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former editor of the University of Texas at Dallas\u2019 student newspaper, The Mercury, was placed on a deferred suspension this month for \u201cdiscriminatory harassment\u201d after adding an editor\u2019s note to a student opinion piece about antisemitism on campus<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

The journalist, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, states that the disciplinary action follows a trend of retribution against former Mercury staff members that stems from the paper\u2019s coverage of a pro-Palestine protest held on campus<\/a> in May 2024. In fall 2024, administrators fired Gutierrez from his editor role, which led to the paper\u2019s staff going on strike and starting<\/a> their own, independent newspaper called The Retrograde.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gutierrez has appealed the disciplinary decision involving the published disclaimer,<\/a> and as the appeals process is underway, the deferred suspension will be lifted. According to the UT Dallas code of conduct, a deferred suspension means that a student\u2019s suspension from campus is postponed but will become automatic if that student is found responsible for any additional rule violations. In Gutierrez\u2019s mind, it\u2019s only a matter of time before the university finds something additional to punish him for, ultimately forcing him from campus and chilling free speech.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is a clear setup for a future suspension of me if I do something they don\u2019t like. If I publish an article that makes an administrator look bad, [they could say], \u2018Well, Gregorio is already on deferred suspension, now let\u2019s drop the hammer,\u2019\u201d Gutierrez said. \u201c[It\u2019s also] a big, telltale sign of what they plan to do to try to subvert the news coverage [The Retrograde] does.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The deferred suspension comes only one month after Gutierrez and the staff of The Retrograde were named winners of the Student Press Law Center\u2019s<\/a> 2025 Courage in Student Journalism award. In a statement, Gary Green, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said their work \u201cin the face of their administration\u2019s interference with a free student press\u201d is evidence of the importance of student journalism, \u201ceven, and especially, when they face censorship, intimidation or retaliation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Officials at UT Dallas did not respond to the Observer\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Free Speech at UT Dallas<\/p>\n

A letter sent last week to UT Dallas administrators<\/a> by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech advocacy group, urges the university to rescind the judgment that placed Gutierrez on deferred suspension. According to the letter and Gutierrez, an investigation into his conduct was launched in August 2024 while he was still the editor-in-chief of The Mercury.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The complaint centered on a Letter to the Editor submitted to the paper by a leader of the Jewish student group UT Dallas Hillel, regarding campus antisemitism. The piece discussed the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, the resulting cultural shift felt by Jewish students on American university campuses and the authors\u2019 positive perception of Israel. Gutierrez responded to the submission by requesting sources for some of the claims made in the piece, such as the number of people killed in the Oct. 7 attack. The letter also accused The Mercury of perpetuating campus antisemitism<\/a> through its coverage.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re so severed from the law and what a campus ought to do for its students, it becomes almost desensitizing. I\u2019m not surprised that I\u2019m on deferred suspension for editing and asking people for facts that would make their stories stronger, because honestly, that tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, student journalist<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Gutierrez decided to run the article with a short disclaimer even though the edits were not made because he felt it was \u201cimportant to talk about antisemitism\u201d and \u201chear a student express their concerns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The disclaimer read: \u201cThe information presented within this letter to the editor is the opinion of the author and should not be treated as news. On June 12, a UN commission found Israel guilty of \u201ccrimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, forcible transfer, and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment.\u201d The presentation of opinion as fact within this article, despite repeated requests to address the issue, does not meet the journalistic standards of The Mercury.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to FIRE, which has previously represented Gutierrez in free speech issues involving<\/a> the university, the disclaimer was deemed by UT Dallas\u2019 Office of Institutional Compliance to be \u201cunprecedented,\u201d \u201csubjectively and objectively offensive,\u201d and \u201csevere and pervasive,\u201d thereby amounting to discriminatory harassment. Gutierrez said that, over the course of the investigation, he was asked by administrators to defend basic news practices he\u2019d done while in his editor capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like I was explaining basic principles of what an opinion is, what news is, to these administrators who are supposed to be in charge of dealing with severe sexual harassment and actual hate crime [claims] on campus,\u201d Gutierrez said. \u201c[I was] explaining the most basic fundamentals of media to them because, apparently, editing stories for facts counts as discrimination.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a student can get put on deferred suspension or outright suspended for simply doing their job, what does that say to other prospective journalists at UTD? What does that say to journalists across the UT system \u2026 that they are in a school that so brazenly will attack free speech and free expression?\u201d He added.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s notes or disclaimers are a standard practice, outlined in the Society of Professional Journalists\u2019 Code of Ethics, and newspapers are generally under no obligation to print any given Letter to the Editor or submitted piece in the first place. Additionally, the organization argues that Gutierrez\u2019s editorial decisions, as a member of a public student newspaper, are protected by the First Amendment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last three years, FIRE has identified six separate instances of free speech suppression at UT Dallas.<\/a> The group ranks the university 240th out of 257 schools for its protection of free speech. FIRE Student Press Counsel Marie McMullan told the Observer that UT Dallas has never previously reversed a policy or administrative action in response to a complaint from the organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUT Dallas has the opportunity now to correct its course of action through the disposition of Gregorio\u2019s appeal and to ensure a student editor is not disciplined for editing the school newspaper,\u201d McMullan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gutierrez is halfway through his junior year at UT Dallas. While he says he doesn\u2019t plan on stopping his work for the independent student paper he helped found,<\/a> he worries about the precedent that will be set if university processes are successfully \u201cweaponized\u201d against student reporters exercising their right to free speech. After a year of what he describes as administrators working against the former Mercury staff members, he believes that it is clear that UT Dallas is \u201cat the forefront of new ways to censor students.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s tragic that I am used to it,\u201d Gutierrez said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re so severed from the law and what a campus ought to do for its students, it becomes almost desensitizing. I\u2019m not surprised that I\u2019m on deferred suspension for editing and asking people for facts that would make their stories stronger, because honestly, that tracks. I\u2019ll see what [the university] comes up with next.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former editor of the University of Texas at Dallas\u2019 student newspaper, The Mercury, was placed on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1931,160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-64529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-free-speech","9":"tag-plano","10":"tag-plano-headlines","11":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}