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PRESS RELEASE: SPLC responds to Seattle Times editorial on Washington student free press bill
February 1, 2007
But the other
reason is one that's especially galling to us, given our organization's mission:
time and again, young people see a commercial news media that believes the First
Amendment should only be big enough to cover its own behind and that press
freedom really isn't that important unless it is somehow the direct beneficiary
of its protection. (There are exceptions, especially among the
organizations of professional journalists and a growing group of individual
reporters and editors who understand that the future of a free press is in the
hands of the next generation. But on editorial pages around the country,
reading of support for student voices is the rare exception, not the
rule.)
Today, the Seattle Times published a mind-bogglingly naïve
editorial opposing a bill pending before the Washington legislature that would
provide basic (and minimal) free press protections to public high school and
college journalists. The bill proposed in Washington is similar to those
that have been enacted in six other states, none of which have experienced the
dire educational consequences the Times editorial suggests will result.
(Ask anyone involved in high school education in Iowa, has student
journalism suffered since their student free expression law was enacted in 1989?
Just the opposite, it's only grown stronger because students and school
administrators have a clear definition of their legal rights and
responsibilities.)
Yet the Times believes the bill would not allow
journalism teachers to teach "editorial judgment," implying that the only way to
do that is from censorship by a school official.
The Times' solution: make the
adviser the censor, the one who has the final say over the content of the
publication. It's a system reminiscent of the old Soviet Union; let the
government appoint the censors (who of course are paid by the government and
whose jobs depend on keeping their government employers happy) and suddenly the
censorship isn't a problem any more, it's "editing."
The irony, of
course, is that in Washington state (and everywhere else), high school
journalism teachers are the biggest proponents of these student free expression
laws. (Both the Washington Journalism Education Association and the
state's largest teachers union, the Washington Education Association, endorsed
the bill.) The educators on the front lines of teaching journalism in
American schools don't want to be determining the content of their students'
publications; they want to teach and advise. They know that the only way
they can instill the true meaning of the First Amendment in the hearts of young
Americans is to teach them by example what a free press and free expression
means.
And they also know that if they are the ones responsible for making
content decisions, their jobs will be on the line if they let anything that
reflects negatively on the school see the light of day, no matter how factually
accurate and journalistically sound it might be. The Seattle Times editorial
board could not be bothered with those facts.
So if I am one of
the more than 100 young people who packed a hearing room of the legislature last
week to show their support for the bill (or the thousands of their peers who
couldn't get out of school but were there in spirit), what do I make of this?
Once again, the commercial news media has betrayed us. They are
desperate for us as readers to stop the precipitous decline in circulation of
their publications, but they can't be bothered to consider our perspective on
the issues that matter to us most and that are directly related to the future of
their profession.
Our work at the Student Press Law Center got
harder today. But we aren't giving up. With the support of many allies in
the commercial media and education, we will continue our efforts to help high
school and college students understand that a free press is really as important
as the First Amendment suggests. Too bad the Seattle Times did the exact
opposite.
By Mark Goodman, SPLC executive director
© 2007 Student Press Law Center
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