‘Example of the state of student journalism’: UVA student journalist says she was let go after interim president interview

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WRIC) -- A fourth-year journalism student at the University of Virginia (UVA) was allegedly let go from her campus news organization after refusing to apologize for asking the interim president "tough questions." Some of these questions were related to President Donald Trump's policies.

After her termination, Sophia Bangura, a now-former WUVA reporter and politics major at UVA, shared her concerns during a live Town Hall event on Thursday, Oct. 16, edition of "The Jim Acosta Show" with podcast host and independent journalist Jim Acosta, previously reported by Yahoo.

According to Bangura, she, along with Conwell Morris, Cameron Mottley and Samuel Shibu -- the WUVA president, student interviewer and WUVA vice president and UVA operations manager, respectively -- held a Q&A with UVA interim president Paul Mahoney to address what she describes as "tough questions."

The questions ranged from former UVA president Jim Ryan's resignation following pressure from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to questions about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Trump's "Compact" due to campus concerns.

RELATED: UVA rejects Trump’s funding ‘Compact,’ citing ‘difficult to agree to’ provisions

However, Bangura says that the planned questions deviated during the interview recorded on Friday, Oct. 10. Before the interview concluded, Bangura spoke up to ask some of the tougher questions she wanted Mahoney to address.

The 13-minute interview with Mahoney, which remains on WUVA's website and is advertised as the "exclusive full interview," omits Bangura's questioning.

"Never in that moment did the student interviewer [Mottley] or anybody indicate to me that that was kind of inappropriate behavior," Bangura said. "This was only communicated to me after we had finished the interview and we began the editing process."

During the Oct. 16 edition of "The Jim Acosta" at UVA, Bangura says the student interviewer, Mottley "decided [not to] share those questions and more [went] the softball question route."

Days after the interview, Bangura received a call from Morris, the WUVA president, who allegedly demanded that she apologize to the interim president's office, with Morris saying, "one story does not make or break WUVA, but these relationships with the school are extremely important."

"I made clear that I was not going to apologize. I spoke with members of WUVAs board," Bangura said during "The Jim Acosta Show." "And then last night [the evening of Oct. 15], I was told that I was being insubordinate, not apologizing, and that they would be terminating my affiliation with the group."

Acosta thanked Bangura for standing up for the First Amendment and for doing her job as a journalist.

"Shame on UVA for doing that to you," Acosta said during the show. "Shame on this interim president for doing that to you."

In an email Morris sent to Bangura the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 15, he alleges that her termination can be summed up briefly: insubordination.

"Your repeated disregard for the customs and courtesies of our organization––and its structure––culminated in your poor behavior while conducting the interview with Interim President Paul Mahoney," Morris wrote to Bangura in the Oct. 15 email, just days after the recorded interview with Mahoney. "This behavior is incompatible with our mission at WUVA."

Bangura says her termination forced her to see the realities of journalism, particularly student journalism, and highlighted this as an example of "self-censorship."

"I think that it's more of an example of the state of journalism," Bangura said. "It's scary, especially for student journalists to be in these big spaces, to ask these questions to the president of their university."

8News has reached out to Mottley, Morris, Shibu and the UVA for comment, but has not yet received a response.