Breitbart reports that Beto O'Rourke's campaign ejected Breitbart reporter Joel B. Pollak from a speech at Benedict College, a historically black institution, on Tuesday afternoon.

Pollak claims, "I was being ejected because I had been 'disruptive' at past events." He goes on to say, "This reporter has covered two O'Rourke events...At no point was there any disruption whatsoever." He also claims that members of O'Rourke's campaign threatened him with arrest if he didn't leave. Breitbart is known for their far-right perspective and history of spreading what many view to be fascist propaganda and hate speech.

Soon after the article was posted, Twitter users began to chime in with their opinions. Most controversially, Elizabeth Williamson, a New York Times feature writer, called the ejection "WRONG and hypocritical."

Other major media personnel chimed in, as well, seeming to agree with Williamson's take.

The debate continued to rage on until "Breitbart" started trending on the platform, with over 80k tweets on the subject as of noon on Wednesday.



























The majority of the tweets seem to express outrage at anyone who would legitimize Breitbart's brand of propaganda by calling it a "news outlet" or its employees "reporters." Most Twitter users' arguments seem to hinge on the idea that freedom of the press is a right that should only extend to "legitimate news sources." But how do you define a legitimate news source?

While any rational person can see from even the briefest browse that Breitbart is not a source of unbiased, factual journalism, that doesn't mean freedom of the press shouldn't apply to it. According to Sonja West, a professor of First Amendment law at the University of Georgia, "For the most part, the Supreme Court has said that reporters have the same First Amendment rights as everyone else, which generally means that we all have a right to be free from government interference when we speak or publish. Importantly, there are very few constitutional protections for news-gathering, and virtually none that apply just to journalists." This means that questioning whether or not Breitbart is a "legitimate news source" is entirely irrelevant to their right to express themselves. They had as much right to cover O'Rourke's speech as anyone else.

Of course, it's also important to point out that kicking out Pollak was entirely within the O'Rourke campaign's rights. According to the ACLU, "Generally, a campaign rents space for its rallies, which gives it the right to exclude people for 'trespass' as well as get law enforcement's help to do so. A campaign can declare someone to be a trespasser if their presence interferes with the campaign's chosen message."



Perhaps O'Rourke's team was trying to protect what was probably a mostly black audience from a probably racist journalist. Maybe the school was the one to eject Pollak, or maybe he really had been disruptive in the past. But more likely than not, O'Rourke's team was merely trying to protect the Texas candidate from bad press by being associated with Breitbart. If this is the case, they made a poor choice.



Trump's war on the press is gathering momentum by the day, and he has a long history of ejecting "legitimate journalists" from his rallies and events. So for O'Rourke to eject a journalist—no matter how inflammatory and hateful a publication he writes for—is a disservice to the fight against Trumpism. In fact, this move by O'Rourke's team played right into Breitbart's hands, garnering the publication more attention than it ever would have gained for what undoubtedly would have been biased coverage of O'Rourke's speech. More worryingly, it's a move that works to legitimize Trump's practice of excluding from his events press members that he deems too left-wing or biased.

The line between hate speech and freedom of speech is notoriously blurry, but in order for journalism to remain the watchdog over government corruption, we must err on the side of freedom of expression, no matter how much we may disagree with what is being expressed.