The Indiana Daily Student, a newspaper run by students at Indiana University, has taken a stand on press freedom that the professionals ought to take note of.

When Bush’s former deputy national security adviser, Meghan O’Sullivan, came to speak for the school’s Student Alliance for National Security (SANS), she insisted that the speech be off-the-record. This would not be out of character for an operative from the secrecy-obsessed Bush White House. O’Sullivan was also a top aide to Paul Bremer who led Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Government after the fall of Saddam. So O’Sullivan was a key architect of the administration’s disastrously failed policy in Iraq every step of the way.

Concerns were raised about O’Sullivan’s insistence that the lecture be kept private because it was to be given to a group of 70 students in a public hall and was paid for with university funds. That makes it a little difficult to assert that there was plausible anxiety that classified information would be revealed if the press were allowed to report on it.

To it’s credit, the Indiana Daily Student declined to agree to O’Sullivan’s off-the-record demands. Shortly thereafter, O’Sullivan canceled the event saying that she had become “sick to her stomach.” However, she appeared later the same evening at a private dinner with members of SANS. Her speedy recovery notwithstanding, she still refused to repay the fee she received for the lecture she never gave.

The Indiana Daily Student deserves to be congratulated for their adherence to journalistic ethics. It’s too bad that their elders in corporate media have let their idealism lapse so badly.