Circuit Court decisions support student freedoms QT 64
Quick Hits: Student First Amendment Rights
Muzzle Hazelwood with strong journalism and status as a limited public forum. (Dean v. Utica Community Schools, 2004)
The principal of Utica High School told the student newspaper, the Arrow, to cut an article by student journalist Katy Dean, as well as an accompanying editorial and an editorial cartoon. The students had written about a couple, Rey and Joanne Frances, who were suing the school district. They claimed the idling diesel buses in the school garage next to their home had caused the husband’s cancer.
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier allows administrators to censor for “legitimate pedagogical concerns.” The principal said the articles were based on “unreliable” sources and that the article was “highly inaccurate.” Perhaps these reasons were given as his legitimate pedagogical concerns.
The students published a black box with the word “Censored” across it in white lettering, and an editorial on censorship. A local newspaper later published Dean’s censored article.
The case was decided in the United States District Court in Katy Dean’s favor because of the Arrow’s status as a limited public forum, and on the quality of the journalism. (This is a different interpretation of “limited public forum” from the Second Circuit in Ochshorn v. Ithaca City School District..
Establishing a Public Forum in Practice and Policy
The judge ruled that the student paper was a public forum, even though it was produced by a class for school credit. He used the nine criteria established in Draudt v. Wooster. Because it was a public forum and therefore under Tinker,[link] not under Hazelwood, the principal had violated the students’ rights.
To determine if the paper was a public forum, the judge looked at the practice of the publication. In its 25 year history, the officials at the school had never intervened in the editorial process of the publication. The students had no practice of submitting content to school officials for prior review, nor did the faculty adviser regulate the topics the newspaper covered. In practice the paper was a public forum.
School policy also supported the “Arrow’s” status as a public forum. The curriculum guide and the course descriptions provided evidence that it should enjoy the protections of Tinker.
Clarifying When Censorship is Permissible Under Hazelwood
Though the judge ruled the paper was under the Tinker standard, he also closely examined the censored article by Katy Dean using the Hazelwood standards of fairness, research and writing. He found that, even under Hazelwood, “the suppression of the article was unconstitutional.” The school officials had claimed the work was “inaccurate” because they disagreed with the opinions of people quoted in the story. What the district called “inaccurate” was simply an attempt to disguise “what is, in substance, a difference of opinion with its content,” the judge wrote. Even under the Hazelwood standard, the officials had violated the students’ rights.
In his decision, the judge quoted President Harry S. Truman: Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
He also quoted President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
Dean v. Utica shows two avenues for student journalists to free themselves from Hazelwood. The first is to be a public forum in either “policy or practice.” The second is to produce high quality journalism.
Resources: http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.getsnworks.com/spl/pdf/deanvutica.pdf
http://www.splc.org/article/2004/11/dean-v-utica-community-schools
http://jea.org/home/curriculum-resources/deancase/
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Decision protects students’ rights, since 1943 QT 63
Quick Hits: Student First Amendment Rights
What, students have rights? Not until 1943 (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette)
Before the Barnette decision, when students came into conflict with public schools, the courts decided their cases—often against the students—without mentioning students’ right. They considered if the punishment was excessive. (Beating with a rawhide strap was okay in 1859.) They also debated if it was the parents’ right or the schools’ right to discipline the students.
The First Amendment was never mentioned.
Gathie and Marie Barnett* were attending Slip Hill Grade School in Charleston, West Virginia when America entered World War II in December, 1941. The school district installed flags in classrooms (replacing pictures of flags) and required all students to salute the flag. The West Virginia State Board of Education passed rules in January, 1942 requiring the flag salute and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, which Congress would formally adopt in June, 1942.
The Barnett family, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, felt saluting the flag was a form of idolatry and a violation of their religion. As Gathie said some 60 years after the case, “We were taught that bowing down to the flag, saluting it, was like a bowing down and giving reverence to it—it was like an idol. So we believe definitely not to worship idols.”
The Supreme Court released its decision in the students’ favor on Flag Day, June 14, 1943.
Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote these memorable words in favor of students’ rights: If there is a fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official high or petty shall prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by work or acts their faith therein.”
Though the Supreme Court did not specifically address student press rights until 1988, the Barnette case is essential to student journalists. It restrains public schools from restricting students’ religious rights, the first freedom in the Bill of Rights. It established that students as young as elementary school are protected by the First Amendment.
Justice Jackson wrote, “That we are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.
*A court clerk misspelled their name as Barnette
Resources:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/319/624.html
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/319us624
http://www.splc.org/article/2000/12/west-virginia-state-board-of-ed-v-barnette
Related issues and cases: http://jeasprc.org//?s=barnette&x=0&y=0
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What to tell your principal about Prior Review? QT 62
Quick Hits: Student First Amendment Rights
The bad news is that administrators may legally ask to see stories before they are printed or aired, but prior review leaves them in an awkward situation, because of the good news below.
The good news is that they generally cannot ask students to change anything or spike the story. That would be prior restraint, allowed legally only under narrow conditions.*
Prior Review is a bad idea for both students and the school. But how do you convince the administrations?
You have two strong arguments against prior review. The first is a legal argument, the second is a pedagogical one.
First, when administrators review student publications prior to publishing, they and the school district become responsible for its content and policies. These three cases show the protection schools enjoy when they allow student control of student media:
- Because Lexington High School students made all the editorial, business and staffing decisions for both the LHS Yearbook and the school paper, a suit brought against the district failed. The adults were sued because the student leaders of the paper had refused to run two ads. The school’s superintendent, principal, the two publication advisers and the five school members of the school committee escaped unharmed from the suit that alleged they were violating the First and Fourteenth amendments when the school publications refused the ads. (Yeo v. Town of Lexington (1997) in the First Circuit Court of Appeals)
- Because the students, not the school district, decided which senior portraits to allow in the Londonderry High School yearbook, the district was protected from successful suit for First Amendment violation when the students rejected a senior portrait with a shotgun. The judge found that it was not the school district that rejected the photo. It was the student yearbook editors. “The state has not, it seems, suppressed Blake’s speech. His fellow students have done so.” (Douglass v. Londonderry School District (2005) in the U.S. District Court for New Hampshire.)
- Because the students of Roosevelt High School in Seattle practiced strong journalism and controlled the content of their student media, a lower court ruled in favor of the Seattle Public Schools and against slumlords suing the district for libel following an article in The Roosevelt News, “Sisley Slums Cause Controversy: Developers and neighborhood clash over land use.” The lower court ruled that if what the students write is true, it is not libel, and where the students make the content decisions, the school district is protected from successful suit. (Sisley v. Seattle School District (2011 in the Court of Appeals of Washington (state), Division 1)
Second, when administrators exercise prior review, students lose the opportunity to develop skill crucial to democracy, including the ability to recognize sound journalism and fake news. When students choose the content of their publications to please—or at least “get past”—administrators, they are denied the opportunity to apply what they learn in class about news values, ethics and press law.
In contrast, students who control the content of their publication regularly consider their audience’s right to know and individuals’ right to privacy. They judge the strength and reliability of sources. They strive to make their reporting fair and accurate. They come to cherish their audience’s trust and they admit mistakes, issue corrections and retractions, and live with the consequences. They are prepared to be responsible citizens as intelligent consumers of media.
There is no evidence that prior review by administration improves learning in any way.
.
*In states under the Tinker standard, an administrator could restrain stories that pose a clear and present danger of inciting students to commit crimes on school premises or violate lawful school regulations, or substantially disrupt the orderly operation of the school. The administrator could also restrain stories that contain obscenity or slander/libel.
In the states that remain under Hazelwood, the administrator would need a “legitimate pedagogical concern.”
Resources:
QuickHits So what does Hazelwood actually allow administrators to do?
QuickHits The Perks of Being a Wallflower: How a School District Escaped a Lawsuit by Fostering an Independent Student Press. Yeo v. Town of Lexington (1997) in the First Circuit Court of Appeals
Quickhits More Perks of Being a Wallflower: How two other School District Escaped Lawsuits by Fostering an Independent Student Press. Douglass v. Londonderry School District (2005) and Sisley v. Seattle School District (2011)
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How two other school districts escaped lawsuits
by fostering an independent student press QT 61
Student First Amendment Rights
Douglass v. Londonderry School District (2005) and Sisley v. Seattle School District (2011)
Douglass v. Londonderry School District (2005)
The yearbook staff at Londonderry High School in New Hampshire voted against running the photograph Blake Douglass submitted as his senior picture. The photograph showed him kneeling, a broken (open) shotgun across his shoulder, dressed in trap shooting clothing. Shotgun shells appeared to be in his pocket. Though the student journalists rejected it as a senior picture, they did offer to include it in the community sports section.
Douglass and his father sued the school district, claiming his First Amendment rights were being violated. He also claimed the school was using “unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination” by refusing to run a picture of him with his shotgun. Douglass claimed the school could not “lawfully refuse to publish [the photograph] because they disapproved of the ‘message’ they think the readers will take from it.”
The federal judge disagreed. It was not the school district that rejected the photo. It was the student yearbook editors. “The state has not, it seems, suppressed Blake’s speech. His fellow students have done so,” the judge wrote. “The First Amendment does not restrict the conduct of private citizens, nor is it violated when one private actor ‘suppresses’ the speech of another.”
Sisley v. Seattle School District (2011)
The March 2009 edition of “The Roosevelt News,” the student paper for Roosevelt High School in Seattle, included an article on a potential project that would tear down rental homes near the school and replace them with a tall building. “Sisley Slums Cause Controversy” included this sentence: “In 15 years these [Sisley] brothers have acquired 48 housing and building maintenance code violations, and have also been accused of racist renting policies.”
Hugh Sisley sued the Seattle School District Number One for defamation, that is, making false, derogatory claims. He objected to one clause in the article, the clause that read “and have also been accused of racist renting policies.”
The Washington state superior court judge ruled against Sisley and in favor of the school district, writing “a public school student is not an agent or employee of the school district.” In addition, “the public school district is a governmental entity constitutionally prohibited from censoring or otherwise curtailing a student’s First Amendment right to free speech unless there is evidence censorship is necessary to prevent disruption of the school environment. No such evidence exists.”
The Sisleys appealed and the appeals court ruled against the Sisleys—and for the school district–simply because the Sisleys had not proved the statement in the “The Roosevelt News” was untrue.
Read MoreUse of VR by scholastic media QT 60
Key points/action:
According to its proponents, Virtual Reality offers virtual and immersive storytelling that puts audiences into the scene and enables them to feel such emotions as fear. VR, proponents say, gives people authentic reactions of those in the real situation.
Commercial news media, and others,k are trying VR out across the country. Columbia Journalism Review calls VR “ascendant,” and cites ongoing projects like Harvest of Change and Project Syria. CJR also cites growing consumer interest in VR.
Despite commercial use and excitement about VR’s use, questions still remain for its use in scholastic media. The best thing for staffs to consider is whether using VR as telling stories or presenting news is the best platform or approach.
Some questions:
• Accuracy of context?
• Does its use reflect the preciousness of the real event?
• Is the information expressed in context?
• Are the images accurate and in context?
• Has nothing been added not in the “live” event itself?
What guidelines should student media adapt or create for VR that maintain the best of journalism’s ethical standards?
Stance:
We feel there are no quick and easy answers, but plenty of ethical room for discussion and implementation of workable guidelines.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Before spending funds of the tools needed to make VR become a local and effective tool, student study how journalism organizations use it or plan to use it and how they handle ethical concerns.
Resources: The Future of News: Virtual Reality- TED Talks
Virtual reality is journalism’s next frontier – Columbia Journalism Review
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Providing feedback QT59
Guideline:
Editors should conduct relationships with staff members in a fair and professional manner. By considering the program’s best interests above matters of personality, students will be able to work together in a positive and productive environment.
Social media post/question:
How can peer coaching may help staffers build positive relationships.
Stance:
Teaching students work together is paramount to building the teamwork aspect of student media. By implementing coaching, editors empower staffers by further owning their work.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Coaching asks journalists to use the skills they already know. In The Coaching Way, Chip Scanlon writes, “It’s valuable as well because it draws on two basic skills you as a journalist already possess: the ability to ask good questions and the ability to listen to the answers.”
By asking the editor to approach the story as a reader, Scanlon adds the editor must listen and have empathy. “The ability to identify with another person’s point of view and to communicate that understanding. It requires a range of other skills and qualities, too, such as flexibility, confidence, a willingness to experiment, a keen awareness of another’s situation, and a genuine desire to help someone else achieve his or her goals.” Using this in a student media also empowers the staffer and requires the editor not to take charge.
Scanlon addresses the benefits of coaching and shows the importance of learning:
“1. To make use of the knowledge and experience of the writer.
- To give the writer primary responsibility for the story.
- To provide an environment in which the writer can do the best possible job.
- To train the writer, so that editing will be unnecessary.”
By implementing this approach to editing, staffers should improve and editors can better question the content in the story.
Resources:
The Coaching Way, Chip Scanlon, Poynter (More resources at the bottom of the article)
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