Another records request sent by a national news network seeks to uncover information relating to Chinese nationals at Murray State.
On June 18, 2025, The Jackson Purchase News filed a record request to Murray State asking for information on all Chinese international students attending the University. The Jackson Purchase News is a local news organization founded by Metric Media LLC, a national news network which owns over 1,200 news sites across the country. Universities across the country have received similar requests from Metric Media-owned outlets.
“We are interested because public universities like Murray State are subsidized by Kentucky taxpayers for Kentucky students, not foreign nationals,” said Metric Media CEO Brian Timpone.
The request asked for all documents and lists of Chinese international students studying at the University. It also asked for scholarship information and policies relating to the “monitoring” of students, including Chinese nationals, to protect the universities intellectual property.
Timpone initially said the reason for the requests is accountability to the tax payer for funding international students in American schools, but the request itself only targets Chinese students studying in the states.
When asked, Timpone said that it is due to a concern on Chinese students “spying” for the Chinese government.
“Chinese students are all obliged to be loyal to the CCP, so there’s that,” Timpone said. “We are interested in all foreign students, but Chinese ones here to spy on the US are of particular interest.”
Timpone said the network planned to publish all given information verbatim on their platform. While the request does ask for lists of students along with scholarship information for each, it does allow the University to redact names if they are protected.
The University complied with this request, providing Metric Media with admission numbers for the 2024-2025 school year. The data only included total numbers of students, and did not include any personal information. The University said it did not have any documents relating to scholarship information or student monitoring.
International students have come under fire repeatedly during the Trump administration, with the president recently considering a proposal to tighten visa durations for students and journalists. President Donald Trump also signed a recent executive order suspending the admittance of international students at Harvard University, and considering revoking visas for current students meeting specified criteria.
Trump has echoed similar concerns about Chinese international students being potential security risks. Despite this, the president said he was looking to allow 600,000 more Chinese international students to study in this country.
Metric Media has been profiled numerous times in the Columbia Journalism Review, a magazine run by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Their investigations found the news network had received financial support from multiple right-wing political action committees and non-profits.
The Columbia Journalism Review has also criticized the news network for its output of low-quality, often computer generated news content. Many of the articles pumped out of Metric Media’s 1,200 news sites are generated from consumer reports like those found at Gasbuddy.com. The Jackson Purchase News has no listed employees, and only some of the articles have authors credited in the byline.
Like the request sent for the University’s syllabus records, this records request was sent by Jules Goonwardena, who, in the request, claimed to be a staff reporter for the Jackson Purchase News. While no mention of Goonwardena’s name can be found on the Jackson Purchase News’ website, his name is listed on Linkedin as a data manager for Local Labs LLC.
Local Labs is another company founded and owned by Timpone. It specializes in sending requests through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for public records to be published or shared with news outlets.
The Jackson Purchase News has yet to publish any information given to Goonwardena and Metric Media.
