Hazelwood’s impact more than a memory
Just like any big event — you remember where you were or what you were doing. Those who were advising scholastic media when the Supreme Court announced Hazelwood v.Kuhlmeier 25 years ago probably can recall their reactions — and maybe those of their administrators as well.
My own recollection: The principal, a fairly supportive guy, motioned me into his office. “Have you heard the decision?” Of course I knew what he meant. “Yes.” I smiled and added, “But there’s no room for you to moved your desk up to the X-Ray office.”
Luckily the St. Charles High School student newspaper, the X-Ray, didn’t face prior review. There had been some sticky moments in the past, but I got along well with this principal and his successor a short time later.
Not everyone had such smooth sailing. One way to find out what happened then and what changes followed was to talk to advisers who were in the classroom and student media newsroom both before Jan. 13, 1988 and after. What impact did they see from that landmark Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision? What difference did it make to them and their students and others they observed?
That’s why the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State took advantage of the Fall 2012 JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in San Antonio to interview four such advisers who were attending. All taught at that time, and one is still in the classroom while the other three are retired but very much involved with high school media as mentors in the Journalism Education Association program and press association board members.
Gary Lindsay, JEA regional director recently retired from Kennedy High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was only in his second year of advising when Hazelwood came about.
Janet Levin, adviser in 1988 and today at John Hersey High School, Arlington Heights, Ill., remembers the local media reaching her when she didn’t yet know the decision.
At Homestead High School in Cupertino, Cal., Nick Ferentinos’ principal almost immediately took what he saw as an opportunity to remove an article in progress about an HIV-positive student.
Wayne Dunn, president of the Ohio Scholastic Media Association and JEA mentor, had been advising four years at Lebanon (Ohio) High School in 1988.
See what they had to say. Did Hazelwood have the kind of impact journalism educators feared in 1988? According to these four advisers who have seen the before and after, yes, the chilling effect on student journalists has indeed made a difference, and it hasn’t been a good one.
Read MoreExpressing student freedoms – and responsibility – through substantive reporting
In a survey taken at the San Antonio JEA and NSPA convention last November, students and advisers reported censorship was alive and well in America’s schools. Forty-two percent of students and 41 percent of advisers responding said school officials had told them not to publish or air something. Fifty-four percent of students indicated a school official reviewed student media content before publication or airing.
Both groups also incited self-censorship was an issue, prompting SPLC director Frank LoMonte to lay some of the blame for situations like these on the 1988 Hazelwood decision.
“Schools will continue to be disempowering places where no meaningful discussion of civic issues takes place so long as Hazelwood censorship is practiced,” he said.
Fortunately, some schools can and do tackle important issues and are not limited by misguided administrators. Others can learn from their efforts.
One example where students tackled substantive issues is the Verde at Palo Alto High School, in California, where they reported on a “rape culture” at their school. Another is the Triangle of Columbus North High School in Columbus, Indiana, which published on sexual assault. Both stories reinforce the importance of issues teens face as seen in events in Steubenville, Ohio, and Saratoga, California.
Below are links to these students’ reporting, and related stories. These stories are models of reporting student media is capable of when communities, school administrators and advisers support critical thinking and student decision making.
In the next several weeks, we will also report other efforts not only to limit Hazelwood’s impact but also to recognize schools around the country through our Make a Difference through substantive reporting project.
The SPLC developed its Cure Hazelwood website to help combat the effects of that 1988 Supreme Court decision, and JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Association prepared its Seeking a Cure for the Hazelwood Blues and Teacher’s Kit for Curing Hazelwood materials to educate all parties about the lack of education value in prior review and restrict by school officials. A myriad of essential curriculum materials and information about fighting Hazelwood exists on the Scholastic Press Rights Commission website.
For more information about the Verde and Triangle stories, see below:
* Palo Alto high students talk about ‘rape culture’
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201304151000
* Palo Alto high-school journalists expose ‘rape culture’
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/rape-culture/nXJct/
• High school students teach us how to talk about rape
http://www.alternet.org/high-school-students-teach-us-how-talk-about-rape
• High school students school us about rape culture
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/high_school_students_school_us_about_rape_culture/
• Steubenville Ohio articles over the last 30 days
http://interceder.net/latest_news/Steubenville-Ohio
Fitting the puzzle pieces together
This week’s blogpost is a puzzle of sorts.
What do the following have in common?
• 8 ways a landmark Supreme Court ruling has changed student journalism?
• Scholastic journalism: Skills for the 21st Century (and two related pieces in the magazine)
• Brennan students petition to reinstate lesbian couple’s yearbook photo
They should remind us that good people involved in all aspects of scholastic education, including administrators, still recognize and fight for what is right. The links should also remind us the fight continues no matter how long and hard we have fought it.
Lastly, we should take note of why the fight is not over and why we must continue to support those most affected as they strive to live out our democratic heritage.
Read More
Four Missouri Schools Earn Press Freedom Award
Perhaps it is fitting these four schools are this year’s recipients of the First Amendment Press Freedom Award.
After all, it is the 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier decision, and Hazelwood East, it can be argued, sits in their backyards. In Missouri.
Even without a state law to support them, four St. Louis-area schools showed they actively support and protect First Amendment rights of their students and teachers as they earned the FAPFA recognition.
The 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision gave administrators the right to censor student media and more, under certain conditions.
Francis Howell High School and Francis Howell North High School, St. Charles, Mo., Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo., and Lafayette High School, Wildwood, Mo., will be recognized at the opening keynote at the JEA/NSPA High School Journalism Convention in San Francisco April 25.
This award has been co-sponsored for 13 years by the Journalism Education Association, National Scholastic Press Association and the Quill and Scroll Society.
The award, which began with an emphasis on student publications, was originally titled Let Freedom Ring, and later expanded to include the other freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
As in previous years, schools competed for the title by first answering questionnaires submitted by an adviser and at least one editor; those who advanced to the next level were asked to provide responses from the principal and all publications advisers and student editors, indicating their support of the five freedoms. In addition, semifinalists submitted samples of their printed editorial policies.
First round applications are due annually by Dec. 1. Downloadable applications for 2014 will be available on the JEA website in the fall.
Way to show everyone the road to the First Amendment, Missouri.
Read MoreTweet25- Paying the cost of Hazelwood
Tweet-25 Information coherence and civic engagement cannot develop under Hazelwood. #25HZLWD
http://jeasprc.org/payingthecost/
by John Bowen
Information coherence is at the core of democracy.
Information coherence allows those in a democracy to compare, digest and use information. With it, communities can make informed and intelligent decisions.
Without it, communities falter.
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism also refer to this approach as one that allows audiences to make sense of information.
“Coherence,” the authors write, is “making sense of the facts. Coherence must be the ultimate test of journalistic truth.”
Accuracy, they write, is the foundation on which everything else – context, interpretation, debate, public communication and trust – is built.
Journalistic truth is a process, they say.
“If the foundation is faulty, everything else is flawed,” they say.
Neither the journalistic process nor information coherence works under an educational system guided by foggy and manipulative Hazelwood thinking, where prior review and prior restraint keep information from making sense, silence debate and undermine trust.
Information coherence is been a priority in schools and communities where 25 years of Hazelwood have limited – or should we say strangled – exchange of ideas and development of information coherence.
We could call it the cost of Hazelwood. Unless cured, this cost of Hazelwood has been, and will continue to be, high.
This cost includes:
• Citizens who do not trust authority figures because they never were involved with decision making in a learning environment
• Citizens who do not trust information authority presents because their background has shown them it has always been slanted or incomplete
• Citizens who do not participate in civic engagement because they have taught or have experienced education in which they had no voice
• Citizens who cannot respect the principles and actions of a free and responsible press because they have never seen one in their schools.
Given this heritage, these costs will only deepen in the future as schools reach out to control expression outside the school environment because untrained students misuse social media and the Internet to bully others.
We must, as the Student Press Law Center says, develop a cure for Hazelwood, one that empowers students to practice the essential freedoms and skills of a democracy, and become engaged with decision-making that creates an impact on their lives and on the lives of others.
We honor schools which have not paid Hazelwood’s price. We salute these schools and celebrate their leaders, whether administrators or community members, for actions leading to the path of learning and civic enrichment.
But, in the end, we have not done enough. It is not enough to note that Hazelwood has led to a decline in information coherence as well as in civic engagement. If we have not tried to intercede in this process in and outside schools, then we are, in many ways, responsible for it.
Others in this series have said it well: Hazelwood is, has been and will continue to be everyone’s problem.
Its effects will only continue unless we do all in our power to educate ourselves, our students and our communities about why we must have a Hazelwood Cure.
And then work to create one.
If we continue to ignore Hazelwood’s cost, if we do not seek a cure, then we bear the burden of responsibility for the lack of action that enables such cultural malaise to continue.
To do nothing to is chose.
What will be at the core of your plan of action? What will you do to empower a Hazelwood Cure?
Resources:
• Press Freedom in Practice
http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/docs/Foundation/Training/pressfreedom.pdf
• Cure Hazelwood
http://www.splc.org/cure.html
• Resources for school newspaper advisers
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/student-journalism-resources-for-school-newspaper-advisers/
• Media Adviser’s Forum
https://www.splc.org/classroomresources/mediaadvisers.asp
• Scholastic Journalism Resources
http://www.asjmc.org/resources/scholastic/index.php
• Statements
http://jea.org/home/about-jea/statements/
• Teaching and learning about journalism
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/teaching-and-learning-about-journalism/
• Scholastic journalism resources
http://www.hsj.org/teachers/index.cfm?requestAction=goMenuContent&menu_id=6&menu_page_item_id=16&CmsPagesID=181
• High school journalism
http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/archive/high-school-journalism/