Education

Melissa Click’s Professor Husband Also Harassed Media At Mizzou [VIDEO]

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Prohibiting journalists from exercising their First Amendment rights was a husband-wife affair at the University of Missouri on Monday.

Mass media professor Melissa Click’s anti-media aggression, as recorded by student-journalist Mark Schierbecker, has already gone viral. Videos show Click calling for “muscle” to help remove Sheirbecker as he was filming protests following the resignation of school president Tim Wolfe.

But as The Daily Caller has learned, Click was joined in her media blockade crusade by her husband, Richard “Chip” Callahan.

Callahan, who chairs Mizzou’s religious studies department, is seen at the beginning of Shierbecker’s video shutting down photojournalist Tim Tai as he was attempting to document Monday’s events.

While Callahan’s involvement has been reported — Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple has called for his and Click’s firing — it had not been revealed that the professors are married.

A news article from 2002 documents their engagement. Callahan also acknowledged Click as his wife in a 2008 book he wrote about faith in the Kentucky coal mines.

In the video, Callahan is seen rebuking Tai as he is swarmed by a mob of student-protesters hellbent on blocking media from accessing the protests.

“You cannot push them to get closer and closer,” Callahan told Tai, though the photojournalist appeared to be standing still. As he was swarmed by the advancing mob of student-protesters, Tai asked them to stop pushing him.

“Don’t talk to me. It’s not my problem,” Callahan responds callously.

According to The Post’s Wemple, Callahan apologized to Tai in a phone call on Tuesday. Asked what Callahan apologized for, Tai told the reporter, “Just like the way he acted — “I guess, getting in my face and yelling about it.”

“He tried to follow me around the circle a little bit…hounding me,” Tai said.

Click also apologized to Tai personally and in an open letter. She also resigned from a special position she held with Mizzou’s school of journalism. She does not teach journalism courses, so the move was moot.

The Daily Caller left multiple voice mails for Callahan, including one asking him whether he and Click coordinated in any way Monday to stifle the media. He has not responded.

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