New Jersey has a second shot at passing a New Voices bill, and New Jersey student journalists have been presenting their case in an impressive show of civic engagement. The Garden State Scholastic Press Association interviewed Frank LoMonte, the executive director of the Student Press Law Center, to get more information on the legislation.
In the video, LoMonte discusses what the New Voices law will, and will not, do was well as sharing some examples of student censorship in New Jersey. Like the 2014 incident at Northern Highlands Regional High School in Allendale where an editor at The Highland Fling student paper was threatened with punishment by her school principal for publish a story covering a school board meeting.
Watch the video for more:
“What it does not do, in any way, is place student publications on the same plane as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. It’s certainly not an ‘anything goes’ law. All it does is restore a sensible middle ground, the balance that existed for many years before the Supreme Court decided its Hazelwood case in 1988.” –Frank LoMonte