Students forced to publish censored paper
Turkeys in the news tomorrow may not be just on people’s plates.
Lately, some have been dressed as administrators at Stevenson High in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
First, school officials’ objections held up the paper’s initial release. Then they forced journalism students to remove several stories and several pages from the latest issue.
Next, administrators demanded the issue run despite student objections. According to information in the Daily Herald and Chicago Tribune, administrators wouldn’t allow students to remove their bylines from the stories and threatened to fail the student journalists if they did not do as told.
Prior review, administrators said last year when a previous dispute occurred, would only last a short time.
They were right about one thing. Review is now prior restraint of the least educationally defensible kind.
Executive director of the Student Press Law center, Frank LoMonte, called administrative actions a confession that they had lied.
“Stevenson’s conduct today is a confession that its administrators lied when they claimed in a press release last week that they had problems with only one story in the Statesman,” he said. “We trust that the school board will immediately investigate the source of this intentionally false public statement and will remove any employee who played a role in distributing it.
LoMonte also praised student editors.
“Student editors have dealt with Stevenson in an honest, professional and restrained manner, attempting to work out a peaceful resolution. Their reward for it was a sucker-punch in the gut. To threaten the highest-achieving students in the school with flunking journalism, potentially endangering their college careers, simply confirms that Stevenson puts its image ahead of the well-being of its students. When a school tries this hard to silence student journalism, the public should start asking hard questions about what is going on at Stevenson High School that its administrators are so desperate to conceal.”
This Thanksgiving the communities that send their students to Stevenson definitely may want to be thinking of ways to deal with these leftover turkeys.
For related reporting and coverage, go here, here, here and here.
Read MoreFighting scholastic media censorship must start locally
They just keep on coming.
Stevenson High. Timberland High. Stow-Munroe Falls High. Boonville High and others too numerous to list.
And those are just some we know about.
But there are countless others — the smaller, lesser known stories you hear about at workshops like the recent JEA/NSAP convention in DC.
• Like the Virginia student journalist who needed suggestions on how to work with a principal about prior review because the principal offered no justification for censoring topics administrators considered negative to the school.
• Like the Michigan school who wanted guidelines on how to report controversial issues so they could remain review-free.
• Like the student who would not say what state she was from, just that she was from the Bible Belt. She sought help on how to report on her principal being “under persecution” because of discussion of Christian issues
• Like the South Carolina student journalist trying to understand why her conservative community was upset about the reporting on a pregnant teen.
Each of these instances deserves our attention as much as the larger, more publicized instances.
To help journalism teachers and advisers, we need to know when to offer our help and why. It is much harder to assist these students, advisers and parents if we don’t know the issues and the ways we can help.
If your student media face censorship or prior review, please let us know so we can act to support in ways you feel best for your situation.
Here are some ways:
• Report the issue to the Student Press Law Center .
• Complete a censorship report by going to The Center for Scholastic Journalism to report censorship or prior review, and fill out the forms.
• If the adviser is a member of JEA, activate the organization’s Adviser Assistance Program by contacting your state JEA representative, your regional director or JEA headquarters. You can get that information from the JEA Web site.
• Leave a comment on this blog. A member of JEA’s press rights commission or members of the other commissions (certification, curriculum, multi-cultural or middle school) will get back to you.
Help us know who needs assistance and attention from the most well-known to the smallest issue.
Read MoreLooking for your thoughts on what principals need to know about journalism
Suppose you were in the position to help administrators better understand journalism, its roles, its value and importance. What would you want to have available in the way of materials and information in the following areas:
• Certification and adviser training
• Curriculum
• Professional standards
• “Responsible journalism”
• Legal and ethical issues
• Newspaper/print journalism
• Yearbook journalism
• Broadcast journalism
• Online journalism
• Other
Help us put together packets for a major project to do just that. What worked with your administrators? What do you wish you had available?
Leave your comments here or open a discussion. We are looking for many points of view.
Read MoreWhat Values? We ask again, and point to ethics lesson plans that could lead to answers
We continue to raise the question, borrowed partially from a recent ethics workshop at Kent State University: What Values?
What value is there in prior review by anyone outside the student media staff? Even if administrators can claim some sort of legal allowance stating they can, what are the ethical and educational values indicating they should? Who gains? Who is harmed? What elements of the school mission are fulfilled? How does the action serve truth and accuracy?
Along this line is a relatively new upshot on prior review (maybe not new, but certainly new to this timeframe): The superintendent as publisher; the principal as editor and the adviser as assistant adviser.
The students: certainly not getting a journalism education.
We would again ask: What is the educational value? How does this address the greater good? Who benefits? Who is harmed? What are students learning about the values of a school system that removes them from the process of critical thinking and decision making – and also puts their teacher and principal in legal harm’s way?
What values – educational or otherwise – are at play?
Speaking of What Values, those teachers interested in lesson plans to address journalism ethics and discussions on online ethics have a free source.
The plans are available for high schools to supplement Kent State-Poynter What Values? workshop Sept. 17. Download materials at the workshop site by scrolling down to the lesson plan button. You can also follow the discussions on online journalism ethics from the workshop.
Read MoreIt’s a new year – spread your reporting wings against censorship
As school begins, I can’t help but be excited about the coming year for my students.
Our newspaper, The Smoky Hill Express, has great plans to abandon the usual scholastic soft coverage of clubs and newsletter events and tackle more important news this year. In our budget are plans for features on alcohol sales to minors, our special ed students, and eating disorders.
Our yearbook, The Smoky Hill Summit, is coming off a great content year that included same-sex couples, teen pregnancy, drug use, and overcoming obstacles like prior arrests and childhood illnesses.
Every year, my kids are geeked and ready to spread their reporting wings and see how they can tell the story better than they did the year before.
But, I know not every adviser and staff share our enthusiasm. Far too many scholastic publications face pressure to stay away from these “hard” topics. And, while many advisers and staffs don’t realize it, this pressure is thinly veiled censorship.
Whenever an agent of the government – any paid employee of the public school system – tries to control the content of a student publication, either by explicit rule or casual pressure, this control is censorship.
Far too often, I hear student reporters tell me, “We could never cover that in our book or paper.”
If your publication is truly a student-run publication, then the students alone control the content decisions for that publication. Anything less is censorship.
So, as your staffs begin their training, budgeting, and reporting, make sure they know their rights. Students do not have to cave to the pressure of their administrators to produce only soft, light coverage. There is no “off-limit” topic for your students, and every story can be reported responsibly and well.
Some resources for you in this endeavor can be found on the Scholastic Press Rights Commission home page at www.jeapressrights.org and the Student Press Law Center at www.splc.org.
Carrie Faust, MJE
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