Soon after Morganton-based education reporter Jacob Christopher sat down to cover the Burke County Board of Education’s regular December meeting, he realized it was going to be anything but regular. Skipping past the Pledge of Allegiance, the board and school system superintendent jumped into a slideshow presentation and a statement, read aloud by each board member, section by section, which ended in the announcement that they were revoking his newspaper’s “special media access.”
“It was definitely like getting the rug pulled out from under me,” Christopher told Carolina Public Press.
Since September, Christopher has covered the courts and education for The Paper, a weekly local newspaper now entering its fourth year of publication.
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The school district was unhappy with a Dec. 6 article The Paper had published about a recent budget work session in which Burke County school leaders talked through how they might deal with a forthcoming $4.5 million budget deficit for the 2026–27 academic year.
“Declining enrollment puts Burke Schools on track for layoffs, bigger classes,” the headline read.
Despite several school officials acknowledging the possibility of layoffs during that work session, the district didn’t take kindly to The Paper’s reporting on the matter. Superintendent Mike Swan said during the Dec. 15 board meeting that the article “caused a little bit of an uproar within our staff.”
“I wanted to set the record straight publicly .… There were no discussions of layoffs,” he continued.
In their prepared statement, Burke County school board members alluded to several alleged inaccuracies or misleading statements reported by The Paper in recent months which led them to determine that the outlet “has not met the basic expectations of accuracy, integrity, and professionalism required for enhanced media access.”
However, Christopher and Executive Editor Angela Copeland said, after several meetings with school officials they still haven’t provided more than one purported example of inaccuracies in The Paper’s reporting.
The one instance they did cite was a part of the Dec. 6 article which referred to 2.4% as the amount the school district would lose in state funding. That percentage instead is the State of North Carolina’s overall projected revenue decrease.
Christopher and Copeland said they still stand behind the article’s reporting and its headline.
“‘On track’ does not mean that it’s an inevitability,” Copeland said.
“I could go to the doctor and be told I have a 5.8 A1C and they tell me I’m on track for diabetes. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be diabetic. It means, ‘oh, I need to make some changes now to keep that from happening.’ That’s what the headline was saying. We never said that layoffs were going to happen.”
Swan himself refused to rule out the potential for future layoffs in an interview with The Paper on Dec. 20.
According to its statement, the “special media access” that the school board revoked included advanced briefings, priority interview scheduling, behind-the-scenes accommodations and entry into non-public areas of school sites outside of public events.
Although Burke County Schools insisted that the outlet’s rights to free speech or public information wouldn’t be affected, The Paper’s legal counsel said the episode raised serious legal concerns.
“Whenever government actors retaliate against journalists for news reporting or editorial content, those journalists’ rights of free speech and of the free press in the United States and North Carolina constitutions are infringed,” attorney Mike Tadych of Stevens, Martin, Vaughn and Tadych, PLLC told CPP in an email.
The Raleigh-based law firm has represented news organizations across the state, including CPP.
“Recent North Carolina precedent confirms that additional state constitutional rights — the fruits of one’s labors — are also harmed,” Tadych added.
Retaliation against journalists by local governments isn’t uncommon in North Carolina.
Last year, the Pender Post & Voice sued the Pender County Board of Commissioners for pulling its legal advertising because of critical editorial cartoons, the newspaper said. Similar events have happened across the state, including in Gaston County in 2020.
Burke County Public Schools spokesperson Cheryl Shuffler declined an interview request from CPP, but did provide an email statement and copies of past correspondences with The Paper.
“We have responded to all of their reporter’s requests for information and coverage since the board’s statement,” she wrote.
Shuffler added that “at this time, and for the foreseeable future, we are not discussing or proposing layoffs.”
“While publicizing that we are having early brainstorming sessions, we are being intentionally broad so that all ideas can be explored. When every idea is taken as a ‘plan,’ it creates panic and morale issues for staff. Again, no decisions have been made.”
Practically speaking, Christopher’s ability to report on education in Burke County hasn’t been affected so far, he said. But for The Paper’s leadership team, the manner in which the school board publicly slammed their reporting couldn’t go unaddressed.
“There was no other response we could have had than to push back on that,” Copeland said.
“Not just for them, but for all of our readers and our future readers, that they can count on us to give them accurate, honest and unbiased reporting. If we cannot do that, then the only narrative that’s going to be in the community will be what they want people to know.”
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