“High School Journalists in Missouri Have a Voice” #1

On January 13th 1988, the Supreme Court of the United States, led by the late Justice Byron White, ruled on the court case Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier 5-3, in favor of the school district. While this case only started out as a dispute between the Hazelwood newspaper and the school principal over stories on divorce and teen pregnancy, its lasting impact on school publications nationwide holds much significance. The court had decided that the school’s administration had the opportunity to limit the content of a story a school paper wishes to produce and provide to the student body, nationwide. While this may seem reasonable to some, it harms the prime purpose of journalism conceptually.

Journalism is created to empower the public with knowledge, especially with knowledge that they previously wouldn’t have. With the information journalism provides the public can be better equipped to make decisions that directly influence their lives and their communities. While these principles have been vehemently protected in “the real world”, such as the cases of the NY Times v. Sullivan or Near v. Minnesota, they have only deteriorated in schools as time goes on. Cases like Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier only allow for school newspaper’s efforts to show the public issues to be hindered. Not only this, but by allowing a school’s administration to hold a firm grip on the content of newspapers, the newspaper’s ability to provide transparency for said school can be limited, and can keep students unaware of their school’s actions.

Because our school newspaper is against the limiting of our free press and the free press of schools across the nation, we the Eagles View staff feel that protections against administrative censorship nationwide isn’t just a nice benefit to have, but rather a fundamental necessity in order to preserve the value of school newspapers across the nation. While it would be difficult and too circumstantial for a case to both reach the supreme court and garner a different ruling, working these protections into local law is the future for a proper standard of school newspapers.

The best real world implications of this idea are seen in two different instances. The first instance would be in the state of Illinois, where a bill dedicated to “high school journalists’ right to free speech and of the press in school-sponsored media, regardless of whether the school pays for the media or it is produced as part of a class.”1. It passed unanimously throughout the house and senate and landed a signature from the Illinois mayor.2 This bill is one of the best arguments for a system of truly free student press, as it was virtually unopposed through its path of becoming a law. Another case for the law is closer to home, in the home state of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier itself, but has not yet become a full-fledged state law. The Walter Cronkite New Voices Act3 (named in honor of the late Missouri journalism Icon) has been produced by MO legislature, and has been sent to the Missouri senate. While this law has yet to go into effect as a law, it has shown that the freedoms of school based journalism is an issue everyone in state government stands for, and for the essential reason that it allows are students to not just be smarter in their local current events, but to be better equipped to help their communities.

 

1 http://www.splc.org/article/2016/04/illinois-student-press-freedom-bill-passes-committee

2 http://www.splc.org/article/2016/07/illinois-new-voices-bill-signed

3 http://newvoicesus.com/missouri/