MSNBC's Morning Joe panel chuckled in apparent disbelief Tuesday at a University of Missouri professor shouting down a student reporter covering racially charged protests on campus, at one point saying she needed "some muscle" to get rid of the young journalist.
Mark Schierbecker's video of the professor and other students forming a forceful blockade against reporters went viral Monday. The Daily Caller reports:
The professor is Melissa A. Click. She belongs to the faculty of mass media within Mizzou’s department of communication.
Schierbecker recorded an intense exchange, which unfolded between University of Missouri student photographer Tim Tai and protesters who opposed Wolfe. Shierbecker asked Click if he could interview her as students pushed and blocked Tai.
"You need to get out," Click told Shierbecker in the video, which you can watch below.
"No, I don’t," Shierbecker said, prompting Click to grab his camera and shake it."Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here?" Click shouted to the crowd. "I need some muscle over here."
When Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist said Click was a professor of mass media, audible laughs could be heard on the panel. The irony did not appear to be lost on them that a teacher of media would want to use force to prevent a student from exercising freedom of the press.
Tai, the photographer who was also shouted at by protesters while he attempted to take pictures, won a national award for his coverage of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.