Mike Hiestand is an invaluable resource for us in high school journalism (and in college journalism as well).Hiestand, an attorney and consultant with Zenger Consultants, speaking on behalf of the Student Press Law Center, gave an overview of rights journalism instructors have in the post-Tinker and -Hazelwood years.
He brought up the different rights available to private and public school instructors, focusing on private schools being the owners of and possessing the right to tightly control publications (not an agent of the government) and public schools operating under the rules imposed by Tinker (higher standards) and Hazelwood (lower standards), and levels of standards administrators should abide by, and functioning as agents of the government as tax money is involved.
(An aside: Standards in awarding damages vary. Private citizens are treated differently under libel laws than are public figures and politicians. Libel laws differ from state to state and frequently change as courts rule on litigation. Also, Times v. Sullivan applies when public figures or politicians bring libel suits against media outlets. Attorneys advise plaintiffs to seek out the deep pockets.)
Anyway, public school administrators and even public school journalism instructors are considered agents of the state (which Hiestand referred to "actors") and as such have limited rights under Hazelwood to censor.
On top of all this, unprotected speech does not include libel, invasion of privacy, copyright infrigement, "fighting words," obscenity, language that presents a clear and present danger and now (with the "Bong hits 4 Jesus" ruling) unlawful use of illegal drugs.
It's always good for students to have some understanding of the restrictions placed upon student expression by Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and its Tinker standard, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhnelmeir and Dean v. Uttica Community Schools. Also, here's a link to the "Bong hits 4 Jesus" case. (An English teacher and I used to make a presentation for Banned Books day, but state/fed testing has gotten in the way. I made a PowerPoint to illustrate court cases impacting student expression in public schools. )
However, there's hope yet. Seven states have passed anti-Hazelwood legislation, and Texas recently passed a shield law. That link explains it a lot; this link is to our Reynolds blog I posted in May, just after it 0pened.
(On a personal note, we've asked for help with several stories, which by Hiestand reviewed when he was a staff attorney with SPLC. We journalism instructors in a global sense are truly fortunate to have had his advice and that of his successors available when we have to battle the windmills. It's a powerful tool to show an e-mail from a First Amendment attorney.)
Mark Webber
Vidal M. Treviño School of Communications and Fine Arts
http://my.hsj.org/tx/laredo/vmt
Laredo, Texas
Posts
I find it rather appalling that New York is not one of the states that has passed legislation to prevent censorship as a result of the Hazelwood decision.
ReplyDeleteI met with a group of NYC teachers in May and there was talk of getting the ball rolling at the city level to start such legislation. Hopefully this will happen in the fall.
It's bad enough that Hazelwood allows censorship on the basis of the supposed best interests of the school's academic community. What's really disturbing to me is that administrators can use the accuse of an article being "poorly written" or "grammatically incorrect" to pull it. Essentially what that means is that if you don't have a professional-level story with iron-clad reporting, an administrator can censor your paper on the basis of very subjective considerations out of their realm of his expertise.
Yes, the best defense is good journalism, and we should strive for the best from our students. But it is unfair to hold students' fledgling self-expression captive to the critical examination of non-journalists.
Joanne Drapiewski
Frederick Douglass Academy II
New York, N.Y.