The organizers of MediaFest, billed as “the largest media conference” in the country, canceled two conservative journalists scheduled to speak this week at a seminar on faith and religion—and replaced them with a researcher from an anti-Israel think tank who has lobbied officials in Maryland to enact BDS policies and label Israel an “apartheid state.”
MediaFest, organized by the Society of Professional Journalists and two college media groups, disinvited Mary Margaret Olohan, the White House correspondent for the Daily Wire, and Daily Signal reporter Virginia Allen from its “Faith Central” program, which focuses on journalism related to faith and religion. The move came after an Oregon State University student objected to their reporting on LGBT, abortion, and immigration issues.
In response, MediaFest amended its schedule to add speakers from diverse religious backgrounds. “We even have a Muslim coming,” an organizer told Columbia Journalism Review.
That speaker is Erum Ikramullah, a senior research project manager at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), an anti-Israel think tank funded by liberal charities like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Tides Foundation. Ikramullah will speak on a “Faith Central” panel on Friday regarding “story ideas tied to religion on your campus,” according to a schedule for the conference, held at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C.
ISPU has been highly critical of Israel in its war against Hamas. Dalia Mogahed, an ISPU scholar and former director of its research division, justified Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel as legal “resistance” against a “colonial occupation force.”
Ikramullah, who worked under Mogahed and has authored reports on “Islamophobia” at colleges, has personally lobbied Maryland officials against Israel, according to emails that county officials released last year.
In January 2024, Ikramullah petitioned commissioners in Howard County, Maryland, to “consider officially recognizing Israel as an Apartheid State” and to support “a policy of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.”
“Lastly, I call upon the council to advocate for the immediate cessation of all political, diplomatic, and military support for Israel,” wrote Ikramullah.
At ISPU, Ikramullah has written studies on Americans’ views on the BDS movement, as well as Muslims’ attitudes toward the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Ikramullah told Newsweek that, “any candidate wishing to win over Muslim voters would do well to distance themselves from Biden’s Gaza policy in favor of one that secures a permanent ceasefire and reduces military aid to Israel.”
MediaFest’s organizers, which include the Society of Professional Journalists, College Media Association, and Associated Collegiate Press, did not respond to requests for comment.
Ikramullah referred the Washington Free Beacon to MediaFest’s website and said she had “no further comment.”
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, MediaFest nixed the reporters after Oregon State student media manager Steven Sandberg told organizers in July that he would not send his students to the conference if the conservative reporters remained on the itinerary. “I believe we have a choice in whose voices we amplify,” said Sandberg, who objected to Olohan’s reporting on LGBT and abortion issues and Allen’s reporting on immigration.
The Daily Wire blasted MediaFest over the cancellation and defended Olohan’s track record of consequential scoops. Olohan reported last month that Nicholas Roske, who attempted to assassinate Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, now identifies as a woman, part of a last-ditch effort to gain a favorable sentence after his conviction. The judge presiding over Roske’s case bought that argument, sentencing Roske to 8 years in prison, far short of the 20 years that prosecutors were seeking. The judge cited concerns that Roske would not receive adequate medical treatment to continue his transition.
There is some discrepancy in MediaFest’s rationale for canceling Olohan and Allen, who covers the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions.
According to emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, Michael Koretzky, a MediaFest speaker and chair of the Society of Professional Journalists’s ethics committee, claimed that a story from Olohan about an abortion-related bill and a report from Allen on immigration had “played loose with the facts” and did not “attempt balance.”
Daily Wire editors, in an editorial this week, mocked that rationale, noting that MediaFest’s most prominent speaker, Nikole Hannah-Jones, has an extensive track record of shoddy journalistic work and disinformation. Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project,” for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, has been heavily criticized by historians for historical inaccuracies about the role of slavery in the founding of America.
More recently, Hannah-Jones misquoted slain activist Charlie Kirk to suggest that he said black women do not have “the brain power” to succeed. Hannah-Jones, who now chairs Howard University’s journalism department, said the widespread public mourning for Kirk was “unsettling.”
Koretzky is a surprising choice to lead the Society of Professional Journalists’s ethics committee and oversee MediaFest’s “Faith First” programming. Koretzky, whose blog logo is an image of Marxist terrorist Che Guevara, has written about being barred from various journalism events over a blog post he wrote about his sexual encounters in high school at a journalism event.
According to Koretzky, the College Media Association canceled one of his talks at a conference in 2020 after a student complained about his behavior. One said Koretzky claimed to have the ability to “make or break your career,” a claim Koretzky denied. Koretzky fumed in a 2019 blog post that an official at the Society of Professional Journalists accused him of being racist for voting against a Hispanic reporter vying for a leadership role in the group.
Koretzky and Sandberg, the Oregon State University adviser who sparked the MediaFest cancellation, did not respond to requests for comment.
