The Justice Department’s investigation of Associated Press phone records is a “game changer,” said journalism dean Lucy Dalglish, calling it a “fishing expedition” that targets the AP and the press in general instead of specific leaks.

Vice President Joe Biden’s press secretary apologized to a university dean and a student after a staffer demanded the student journalist delete photos from a domestic violence awareness event.

Jeremy Barr, a reporter with the journalism college’s student-powered news wire organization, Capital News Service, was covering the announcement of a new domestic violence prevention initiative in Rockville on Wednesday when a staffer made him clear his camera of all photos he had taken of Biden. The event was open to members of the media, so journalism dean Lucy Dalglish filed an official complaint with Biden’s press secretary, prompting the apology.

Barr, a graduate journalism student who has previously written for The Diamondback as a general assignment reporter, had press credentials but was mistakenly directed to a nonpress seating area. During speeches by Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder and Sen. Ben Cardin, Barr took photos, notes and audio recordings from his seat to write his story for CNS.

Following the event, a staff member pressured Barr to delete photos of the event, he said.

“She said that because I had sat and taken photos from a front area when the press was in the back, I got an unfair advantage, so she would have to watch me delete the photos,” Barr said.

Barr complied with the staffer, who was later identified in a CNS report as Dana Rosenzweig, because he thought he had made a mistake, he said.

She also asked to see his iPhone so she could ensure there were no other photos from the event stored on it.

“I said I hadn’t taken any photos, and she said she needed to see it,” Barr said. “I showed her my iPhone, and she saw that there were no photos, and she even scrolled through my photos to make sure.”

Rosenzweig then spoke with her supervisor and told Barr she was allowing him to keep his audio recordings because the event was open to the press, Barr said.

Dalglish, a former media lawyer and executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, heard about the incident through Barr’s supervisors at CNS and filed the complaint Wednesday, sending an angry letter to Biden’s press secretary.

“Your staff member’s action was clearly some sort of punishment of the CNS reporter,” Dalglish wrote in her letter. “Rockville is not a third-world country where police-state style media censorship is expected.”

Press Secretary Kendra Barkoff apologized to Dalglish and Barr on Wednesday.

In a statement to Politico, Barkoff confirmed the event was open to the press and the incident was “an unfortunate mistake by a staffer who does not regularly interact with the press … it will never happen again.”

Adrianne Flynn, Barr’s CNS supervisor and a journalism professor, said CNS reporters have had trouble in the past with difficult law enforcement and government employees, although conflicts don’t normally stem from seating charts.

“I was very angry and upset, and very frosted that the vice president’s press staff would push around one of our reporters like that,” Flynn said.

Flynn placed part of the blame on the way the White House handles press events, adding she hopes this will be a learning experience for the Biden staff.

“It was a full-throated, immediate apology. It is what we asked for,” Flynn said. “My only wish is they would go through and retrain their press staff to deal with situations like this.”

Barr said it was a learning experience for him as well.

“I definitely appreciated that they apologized, and I’m happy to have the situation resolved,” Barr said. “Going forward, I’m much more knowledgeable about my rights as a journalist, and it’s nice to have a faculty that will stand up for me.”