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Impressed by the FAPFA winners? Show everyone your forum status, too

Posted by on Feb 21, 2013 in Blog, Hazelwood, Law and Ethics, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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Impressed by the First Amendment Press Freedom Award schools? We are.

We would bet, though, there are more student media out there that would qualify as forums. So, between now and next fall when the next FAPFA deadline comes around, let others know of your forum status by applying to be recognized  this Scholastic Journalism Week.hazelwoodcolor

Go to the Center for Scholastic Journalism website and learn more about that recognition, and then submit the online form to apply.

Establishing your student media as open forums for student expression – not closed or limited forums – can make a huge difference in developing a Hazelwood Cure. The best forum is like preventative medicine. The worst is like being exposed to active disease cultures. The information and resources below can help you on the road to wellness.

CSJ recently added these schools as open forums, and their locations will be pinned on CSJ’s Google map:

•Lafayette High School, Wildwood, MO.
• Eureka High School, Eureka, MO.
• South Hadley High School, South Hadley, MA.

Links to map resources:

• Forum definitions,

• List of designated open forums,

• CSJ Forum PowerPoint in case you have further questions about your forum status

• CSJ Forum Application.

Need another eight reasons to work toward designated public forum status/?

Daniel Reimold wrote 8 ways a landmark Supreme Court ruling has changed student journalism on the Poynter website Feb. 21. His main source, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte, called the Hazelwood decision’s input of scholastic journalism “sheer devastation.”

If nothing else might convince those public forum schools out there to become recognized for their achievements this article and its key points, might.

Reimold ended the article with this quote from LoMonte: I’t disheartening to see anyone censored,” said LoMonte, “but it’s doubly disheartening when people are so frightened and intimidated that they won’t even speak up about it. You’re never going to change public policy until the decision makers perceive there is a widespread problem.”

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Tweet2: Choosing your forum status is like choosing the best medicine

Posted by on Jan 9, 2013 in Blog, Hazelwood, Law and Ethics, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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Which forum? Best prescription to cure Hazelwood is open forum for student expression.

http://jeasprc.org/choosing-forum…-best-medicine/ #25HZLWD

Establishing your student media as open forums for student expression – not closed or limited forums – can make a huge difference in developing a cure of Hazelwood. The best forum is like preventative medicine. The worst is like being exposed to active disease cultures. The information and resources below can help you on the road to wellness.hazelwoodcolor

The information below is broken into several categories:
• Deciding which forum best serves your students – and your community
• Importance of  designated forum status
• 
Questions to consider when setting up your forum status
• Questions to ask those who want to limit the forum
• Additional resources (Forum definitionsList of designated open forumsCSJ Forum PowerPointCSJ Forum Application)

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Tweet2: Choosing your forum status is like choosing the best medicine

Posted by on Dec 24, 2012 in Blog, Hazelwood, Law and Ethics, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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Which forum? Best prescription to cure Hazelwood is open forum for student expression.

http://jeasprc.org/choosing-forum…-best-medicine/ #25HZLWD

Establishing your student media as open forums for student expression – not closed or limited forums – can make a huge difference in developing a cure of Hazelwood. The best forum is like preventative medicine. The worst is like being exposed to active disease cultures. The information and resources below can help you on the road to wellness.

The information below is broken into severalhazelwoodcolor categories:
• Deciding which forum best serves your students – and your community
Importance of  designated forum status
• 
Questions to consider when setting up your forum status
• Questions to ask those who want to limit the forum
• Additional resources (Forum definitions, List of designated open forums, CSJ Forum PowerPoint, CSJ Forum Application)

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Rethinking your forum status – why the correct wording is essential

Posted by on Oct 20, 2011 in Blog, Law and Ethics, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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With the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear appeals on the 2nd Circuit’s Ithaca decision, student media advisers and their journalists should be aware of a potential conflict over how they use the word “forum.”

In short, if an editorial policy is going to say student media are forums, students and advisers must be able to explain what that means and why it is educationally important.

Instead of using wording like this student publication is a limited forum or limited public forum, the Press Rights Commission strongly recommends use of this wording: This student publication is a designated public forum.

In addition, the commission also strongly recommends editorial policies also include this statement: Student editors will make all decisions of content. That statement can show the purpose of the forum and how it is carried out. Additional explanation can share why students should make all final decisions of content.

The need for these changes comes because just stating, as many student media do, that they are forums in name is no longer enough because of the Ithaca decision.

SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte said, in that organization’s May 18 News Flash, Ithaca was a misapplication of the law.

“The court just fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be a limited public forum,” LoMonte said. “A forum where the government gets to pick and choose which cartoons it likes is meaningless.”

Mark Goodman, Knight Chair of Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University, said the court’s decision shows students and advisers can no longer rely on calling themselves a limited forum or just a forum for student expression.

He said the Ithaca court added a new definition of “limited” from what other courts had used, stating “limited” means (in the Ithaca decision) that student media content can be limited to certain subjects. Previous courts had consistently ruled “limited” meant schools could direct content to selected  audiences.

“All that this ruling really changes,” LoMonte said in the News Flash, “is that the term ‘limited public forum’ by itself apparently is going to be meaningless. And, as in Hazelwood itself, the court looked to the actual practice as well as what was on paper.”

LoMonte later said in a post to JEA’s listserv that Ithaca is such an outlandish overreach “it may become in New York, Vermont and Connecticut what Hosty v. Carter became for the college media in Illinois — the impetus for legislators to fix the law.”

“The Ithaca decision cannot be considered a legal precedent and has no real application beyond the 2nd Circuit (New York, Connecticut and Vermont),” Goodman said.

While changing your policy’s wording does not guarantee protection against censorship (what does?), it provides a clearer, more definitive what kind of forum guides your student media.

Background

“Drawings of stick figures in sexual positions clearly qualify as ‘lewd,’ that is, ‘inciting to sensual desire or imagination,’” Second Circuit Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote in the decision about why the school could censor an independent student publication and the school’s student paper, which had attempted unsuccessfully to run the drawing in the first place.

The decision also said even though the school’s paper, the Tattler, was a “limited public forum,” the cartoon could still be censored.

Speaking of word precision, let’s all start referring to publications run by and for students as “student media, not school media. Another suggestion would be yearbook “printing company” rather than yearbook publisher. The more precise we are in our references, the less confusion we may mistakenly create.

Resources: Model editorial policies

 

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Re-establishing our belief in the right forum

Posted by on May 23, 2011 in Blog, Law and Ethics, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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Just because the 2nd Circuit Federal Appeals Court recently handed down a decision in R.O. v. Ithaca City School District laden with shaky interpretations and references, it is not time to surrender or alter our beliefs.

“Drawings of stick figures in sexual positions clearly qualify as ‘lewd,’ that is, ‘inciting to sensual desire or imagination,'” Second Circuit Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote in the decision about why the school could censor an independent student publication and the school’s student paper, which had attempted unsuccessfully to run the drawing in the first place.

The decision also said even though school’s paper, the Tattler, was a “limited public forum,” the cartoon could still be censored.

The Student Press Law Center reported in a May 18 article, “The Second  Circuit, however, distinguished between a ‘limited’ public forum and a ‘designated’ public forum, holding that a ‘limited’ forum newspaper remains subject to Hazelwood.”

If not reversed, that decision could damage student media forum status, but other courts could also ignore it as an aberration.

The First Amendment Center’s President, Ken Paulson,  said May 20 in a commentary (which also provides access to the student artwork), “the cartoon was censored because the school found it embarrassing, not because it would unleash the sexual imaginations of ninth graders. They can pretty much do that on their own.”

Paulson said images on the Internet and sexting expose students to far worse.

“In this environment,”Paulson wrote, “it seems a stretch to call anatomically vague stick figures ‘sexually explicit.'”

SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte said the decision was a misapplication of the law. “The court just fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be a limited public forum,” LoMonte said. “A forum where the government gets to pick and choose which cartoons it likes is meaningless.”

“All that this ruling really changes,” LoMonte said, “is that the term ‘limited public forum’ by itself apparently is going to be meaningless. And, as in Hazelwood itself, the court looked to the actual practice as well as what was on paper.”

If the adviser starts acting like the assignment editor, he said, it’s going to be held against the students, and a court is not going to recognize the paper as a true forum paper.

“You, the adviser, are ‘the state,'” LoMonte said, “and the more actively the state is involved in editorial decisions, the less likely the paper will be a forum regardless of what appears in the masthead and even in the policy manual.”

Simply calling student media “limited public forums” may no longer be enough, LoMonte said. In an email to the JEA listserv, LoMonte said any decent publications policy will have to go further than the “forum” buzzword and will have to enumerate with precision the exclusive grounds on which censorship is permissible. LoMonte has added additional information in a new post May 22.

For those who have “limited public forums” policies, or others concerned about maintaining their forum status, here are a couple suggestions:

• Look at your policy. If it just states you are a limited public forum, add or clarify language that explains what that means and how students make that the framework of professional standards. Look at model and state law language.
• Add or clarify language that shows how students will avoid unprotected speech and report accurately, thoroughly and in context.
• Add or clarify language that students make all final decisions of content and why that is important.

Although he warned JEA members the Ithaca decision could be the “worst legal setback” since Hazelwood, LoMonte also said it is such an outlandish overreach “it may become in New York, Vermont and Connecticut what Hosty v. Carter became for the college media in Illinois — the impetus for legislators to fix the law.”

 

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