Posts Tagged "censorship"

Research project explores news coverage framing of off-campus speech litigation

Posted by JBowen on Apr 29, 2013 in blog, Hazelwood, law and ethics, news, scholastic journalism, teaching, Uncategorized | 1 comment

Trevor Ivan, a graduate assistant in the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State from 2008 to 2012, recently finished his thesis, “A Framing Analysis of News Coverage Related to Litigation Connected to Online Student Speech That Originates Off-Campus.” Below, he discusses the study and its implications for scholastic journalism educators and press rights advocates.

by Trevor Ivan
From my own beginnings as a high school journalist, I’ve always understood that the news media present the public with a window to the world. Without the news, most of the countless interactions, occurrences, triumphs and tragedies that take place each day would remain the experience of but a handful of people.

But it’s always fascinated me to explore how the news media portray specific issues and people. While journalists often preach objectivity and fairness as central tenets of their craft, human nature—as well as time, spatial and resource constraints—influences how they gather and organize information.

Media scholars and sociologists often refer to that selection process as “framing” an issue. Robert Entman described framing in an article in the Journal of Communication as selecting some aspects about a given issue or experience to make them “more salient in a communication text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.” As a simplification, framing is a way to consider likely interpretations—Are the spending proposals in a budget bill a waste of money or an initiative to improve community life? Are police portrayed as guardians of public order or overzealous tyrants seeking power for its own end?

When I entered grad school, I started exploring framing as it related to political issues, namely how the news media framed both foreign policy and political candidates. However, one day the question struck me about how framing might apply to news coverage of scholastic press rights. The idea mulled around in my head, but I never did much with it until I was looking for a clearer focus for my master’s thesis.

I discovered the doctoral dissertation of Megan Fromm (an SPRC member). Her research examined how the news media framed eight seminal court cases related to high school and college student press freedom. It occurred to me that no one had explored how framing applied to coverage of court cases related to off-campus online speech, a very relevant issue given the rise of online social networking and easily accessible publishing tools.

Considering whether public school administrators, who act as government officials, do or should possess the right to discipline students for speech they create away from school grounds is pertinent to scholastic press advocates because government interference in speech always raises First Amendment concerns. In addition, any such discretion afforded to administrators to control off-campus speech could pave the way for discipline of independent student reporting or whistleblowing that take place off-campus.

Pitted against these free speech concerns is the equally pressing matter of finding effective ways to combat cyber bullying, especially when the speech is directed toward another student. Off-campus activities can profoundly affect the school environment. The online world furthers blurs the line between school and home.

This study was aimed at discovering how the news media discuss school discipline of off-campus speech given the somewhat precarious balance of free speech and personal safety. I paid particular attention to the legal context the stories contained as well as to how they portrayed the actions students and school administrators involved in the case and the online speech itself that precipitated the lawsuit.

I performed a textual analysis of 76 news stories related to four recent federal court cases that involved school discipline of off-campus online speech: Layshock v. Hermitage, J. S. v. Blue Mountain, Doninger v. Niehoff and Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools. The Supreme Court denied hearing all four of the cases between October 2011 and January 2012.

Several significant findings emerged from the analysis: a lack of sufficient legal context, a conflicting frame that classified the student actors in the cases as either aggressors or victims of an overreach of school authority, a frame of strategic battle to describe how both parties in the case related to each other, a use of descriptors and qualifiers in place of specific details of the content of the speech that spurred the lawsuit, a general sense that the speech in the four cases was not worthy of First Amendment protection, and a conflicting frame of school administrators as the guardians of order versus overreacting victims.

You can read the full study at this link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/134978665/A-Framing-Analysis-of-News-Coverage-Related-to-Litigation-Connected-to-Online-Student-Speech-That-Originates-Off-Campus

The Ides of March

Posted by JBowen on Mar 12, 2013 in blog, Hazelwood, law and ethics, news, scholastic journalism, teaching, Uncategorized | 0 comments

by Ellen Austin

What is it about March? Even Shakespeare noticed it, putting the soothsayer’s warning out to Caesar about the time span that begins this week.

So the bad news from the early Ides of March rolls in …

I read with great surprise and shock this weekend the news that a well-known and professionally recognized colleague posted to a Listserv about losing his current position as a journalism adviser at in suburban Chicago.

It reminds me of a quote attributed variously to Saddam Hussein, Stalin, and others of that ilk whose names have become synonymous with suppression: “If you have a person, you have a problem; no person, no problem.”

The ultimate form of censorship is eliminating a person’s ability to do or say the thing which might cause concern. It’s also the pernicious form of censorship that too many high schools and universities have used to quell and control the student voices they really wanted to affect.

That adviser is one of our very best, a leader who has devoted himself not just to his students but to the greater cause of scholastic journalism, including outside-of-school service to JEA and state journalism organizations.

If you’re reading this, know that you are also “skin in this game.” It’s not just about this colleague or others whose names flash by on the marquee of a Listserv. It’s about all of us, and the collective work we do. We work at the flash point in our schools, the place where we really get to see what kind of climate of free expression exists on our campuses. I remember being told by a mentor early on, “Be prepared: you will probably lose your advising job at some point, if you’re doing it right.”

Earlier this week, my colleague Paul Kandell and I are heading over to neighboring Mountain View High School to sit in on the board meeting in which the journ advisers are being asked to discuss their programs. Amy Beare, the adviser to the Mountain View Oracle, will be presenting to the board, with (I hope) a room full of supportive parents and students around her.

It’s Monday, and only a couple of weeks after our celebration of Scholastic Journalism Week. This is hard, but meaningful work that we do.

What am I trying to say here? Guess I don’t really know. Mostly, here’s my Monday note to say that this is a hard hard job — and one which sometimes requires us to say, “How much do I believe in this? How strongly can I stand for what I believe? How willing am I to face the cost that may come with standing?”

Good luck to all of us this week as we go through our classes and our deadlines. I will be crossing my fingers tonight across town in the hopes that a neighboring school board sees that student free expression is a scary, but wonderful thing. Love that U.S. Constitution.

Ellen Austin is Dow Jones News Fund Teacher of the Year for this year

Lessons on ‘things we did not want them to know’ result in successful action against censors

Posted by JBowen on Feb 4, 2013 in blog, Hazelwood, law and ethics, news, scholastic journalism, teaching | 0 comments

by Gloria Olman
Hazelwood stories: Twenty-five years before the Hazelwood Supreme Court decision, I was defending students’ right to publish on topics from a teacher strike to locker searches and letters to the editor.

“I will defend your right to publish all the way to the Supreme Court, but it will be on a serious matter, not a gossip column, and you will have covered all sides of the issues,” I repeated each school year.

After four years, I moved out of state. Returning, I tried to substitute teach in that district but was not hired. “You were teaching students things we didn’t want them to know…  …yes, the First Amendment.” That was still prior to the 1969 Tinker and Zucker decisions.

By 1977, I was advising in a different district and always gave the principal a heads up on issues. While he did not always agree with the paper’s content, he expressed his opinion to the students and never interfered with publication. The Hazelwood decision did not change that relationship. However, it did reinforce the importance of educating students on laws, ethics, rights and responsibilities. They needed to understand, not only to be responsible journalists, but also to defend their rights to sometimes hostile faculty members and others.

When a new principal dismissed my protest that he had no legal grounds to remove a story and I refused to do it, he “directed” me to pull it. Students took over, using lessons from our September discussions. As they prepared to file their case, my life became increasingly difficult. Some faculty members and coaches refused to allow the paper sold in their classrooms or to be interviewed. They also would not talk to me. District administrators regularly met with me, trying to limit the paper’s content and to remove me as adviser. It was a miserable time.

Hazelwood cast a pall on scholastic journalism. Advisers may fear loss of tenure and/or job, and allow administration to overrule them on issues. Others may lack journalism background to build and defend programs. Complicating this, administrators often have been given false or misleading information related to student media. This impacts the struggle to establish open forum status as district policy.

Another significant Hazelwood effect is the increase in self-censorship, the “we can’t print that” often heard at workshops and continuing on to college journalism classes.

Yes, Hazelwood did affect my teaching. The principal’s directive led to the 2004 Dean v Utica Community Schools U.S. Federal District Court decision. That case has been called the most important legal victory for student media since Hazelwood, and a turning point in the struggle against increasing censorship. It was a serendipitous end to my career.

Gloria Olman, MJE, is the 1992 Dow Jones News Fund Journalism Teacher of the Year, and taught at Utica High in Michigan.

Tweet16: Know how to fight legal battles, if you must

Posted by JBowen on Jan 28, 2013 in blog, law and ethics, news, scholastic journalism, teaching | 0 comments

If legal battles are necessary, students have to fight them, and know protected from unprotected speech. #25HZLWD http://tinyurl.com/bc98rs4

Advisers cannot fight legal battles for students. It is imperative students understand the difference between protected and unprotected speech and what is worth fighting for. Additionally, students need to know the process and resources available for them to fight censorship. Decisions to enter into legal battles cannot be made lightly. Before this step is taken, know the best ways to fight.

Resources for unprotected speech:
• ‪SPLC/CMA Legal Bootcamp – Student Press Law Center
http://www.splc.org/presentations/pppressfreedom.pps
• Student media guide to Internet law
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=73
• Understanding student free-expression laws
http://www.splc.org/news/report_detail.asp?id=1351&edition=43
• SPLC presentations and handouts usable in the classroom; also lesson plans (scroll down the page)
http://www.splc.org/presentations/
• SPLC podcasts
http://www.splc.org/podcasts/
• First Amendment FAQs
http://archive.firstamendmentcenter.org/Speech/faqs.aspx?id=15822&
• Legal guide for the private school press
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=52

Resources for fighting censorship:
• Fighting censorship: A Checklist
http://www.studentpress.org/nspa/trends/~law0305hs.html
• Fighting censorship after Hazelwood
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=5
• High school confidential
http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=2554
• Censorship statement
http://azaipa.org/?page_id=66
• A student media adviser’s guide to fighting (and surviving)_ censorship
https://www.splc.org/classroomresources/mediaadvisertips.asp
• Fighting journalistic media censorship must start locally
http://jeasprc.org/fighting-scholastic-media-censorship-must-start-locally/
• Posts tagged “The Spoke”
http://jeasprc.org/tag/the-spoke/
• Resources for publications facing censorship
http://friendsofthespoke.org/Resources_for_a_publication_facing_censorship_-_Friends_of_The_Spoke.html
• Press freedom at a public junior or high school
http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?subcat=1

Anniversary provides opportunity to thank, educate decision-makers

Posted by SNichols on Jan 10, 2013 in blog, Hazelwood, law and ethics, scholastic journalism | 0 comments

While next week’s 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision isn’t something to celebrate in a traditional sense, it does offer the opportunity for pause and reflection. And in some cases, it gives us the chance to say thanks.

Thank you to the principals, school board members and decision-makers out there supporting student journalists and the educational experience involved in a media program free of administrative control. Thank you for trusting students, under the guidance of teachers and advisers, to do their jobs as reporters. Thank you for encouraging their journey through a process that involves tireless research, interviewing, critical thinking, writing, editing and revision — the stories they tell truly make a difference.

In many states, principals by law can exercise prior review. Thankfully many know better and decide against this practice. The 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood decision seems like a great time to say thank you to those principals. If you’d like to send a letter or note of appreciation, now’s the time.

Here’s a simple card you can download and customize as a way to say thanks from journalism students to their principal, for example. Ready to print and use — with student signatures, a staff photo or whatever meets your needs.

Want to send a letter or email? Maybe this sample will help: