New Voices act pushes against censorship

Aimee Wilson closed the door to the student newspaper classroom as her three high school staff writers sat, conversing over a “revolutionary” story idea. Aimee, the

Dekalb High School newspaper advisor, took a deep breath and gained the students’ attention to start class.

As the students discussed what stories they wanted to write for the week, topic range from profiles of the oldest teachers at Dekalb to “students who had lost fingers in freak accidents.” Aimee grimaced at the thought, possibly pondering the art her students would want to use for such an investigation.

One common pattern was emerging from the discussions: the staff, including

Aimee, favored the more light-hearted stories. In fact, the staff steered completely clear of pieces that would require any serious investigation.

“My staffs have never really wanted to write anything controversial,” Aimee details, reviewing her eleven years of employment in the district. “I’ve never really had to say, ‘No,’ to any of my students; but, of course, I’ve been afraid… Most advisors are.”

Aimee is referring to the fear of job security that journalism teachers are often

plagued with, specifically at the high school level. The majority of states, including

Missouri, do not provide the First-Amendment style free speech protections that college

and professional journalists are typically afforded.

Instead, those states allow school administrators the ability to review stories

before they’re published and even throw them out if the administrators deem necessary.

However, without a bright line for such an action, administrators are given unlimited power in controlling the content at their high school. Some administrators go so far as to fire the advisor in charge of the paper if they don’t appear to promote the values of the district.

Together, these types of polices effectively diminish the kind of hard-hitting journalism that involves requesting a multitude of documents and drilling school officials, or discussions of topics that school districts disapprove of.

This precedent of high school censorship dates back to the 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, from a case that began in Hazelwood, Missouri. The Rehnquist court ruled that high school administrators could limit newspaper speech if publishing a story would hinder a school’s ability to teach.

However, the decision provided no standard for what could hinder such an ability to teach.

https://www.beaconreader.com/projects/help-student-reporters-explore-the-border-in-2016

Within the year, this could change for Missouri thanks to H.B. 2058. Known as the “Walter Cronkite New Voices Act,” the bill would effectively overturn the

Hazelwood standard for Missouri high schools and disallow district censorship of media.

Missouri Rep. Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield proposed the bill in an attempt to strengthen the reputation of journalism in Missouri.

“My hope is that we can reestablish Missouri as a place that supports the freedom of the press, and protects the rights of high school and college student journalists,” Haahr said in a statement.

Haahr says that the bill “draws a bright line for Missouri schools and universities for student free speech rights.”

Though ten witnesses testified in favor of the bill during its first committee hearing Feb. 1, there is one individual that advocates for the act with a different viewpoint. Cathy Kuhlmeier Frey, the defendant in Hazelwood, sees the bill as an intuitive response to school censorship.

“‘If you’re old enough to get pregnant, shouldn’t you be old enough to talk about it?’” Frey said, remembering what she had told her school principal after being censored multiple times by his administration for stories about pregnancy.

“I wasn’t a kid that got in trouble; I was in honor bowl and marching band,” Frey explained. But, after a newspaper spread with stories about pregnancy, divorce and runaways was deemed not fit for publication by her principal, she became a target.

“After that, he decided it was all right to follow me to all of my classes to make sure I was going to them,” Frey detailed.

One of the stories on the spread discussed the topic of running away from home, providing phone numbers of organizations to call if a student was considering running away. But, the censored material took on a different light, after the stories went unpublished.

“I think what hits home the most for me is that there was a kid that did run away; then killed himself inside of a bathroom in Target,” Frey explained. “Maybe had that story gotten out, maybe that kid would have read it and still be here now… maybe we could have changed the course of someone’s life.”

The sobering experience of the student’s suicide and her involvement with the court case eventually turned her away from journalism altogether. Frey says that this is the kind of experience she would like to protect future generations from.

Though the New Voices Act is gaining steam in Missouri, the “Show Me” state is not the only state with such proposals. Eighteen other states besides Missouri have some version of a New Voices Act bill going through their legislature. Spearheading the campaign is the Student Press Law Center, a national organization that acts as a guide for student speech issues.

SPLC Director, Frank LoMonte, explains that high school censorship isn’t just unethical, but also “just doesn’t make practical sense anymore.”

“People who run schools are much more scared of what’s going on in social media than they are the pages of a newspaper,” LoMonte tells. “There is not one kid who reaches the age of high school and has not been saturated with information about sex and drugs from online resources.”

LoMonte also believes that if students have newfound protections in bills like New Voices, the overall journalistic skills of America will rise.

“You see examples of it around the country of students using social media to act as watchdogs and whistleblowers already,” LoMonte explains, referring specifically to high schools in Michigan that went to Instagram to post pictures of buckling floors and cracked toilet sits. “Now, we as a country need to go further. If we tell students that it’s okay to write about these kinds of stories, they’ll feel more comfortable with watchdog writing. If that generation learns skills of journalism at a younger age, that will translate to a better society of journalists.”

This concept of feeling more comfortable with producing mature journalism is a necessity for students learning journalism, says Aimee Wilson. Without the power to really use their journalistic abilities, Aimee believes that it’s difficult to teach students the ethics and duties of the trade.

“It’s silly to think that students can learn how to be journalists if they don’t have the ability to be journalists,” says Aimee.

The Cronkite New Voices bill was voted unanimously through the two committees of the Missouri General Assembly that it was assigned to. After the bill passes through committee, the entire Missouri House must vote, and from there it will be sent to the Senate for a similar process.

Haahr tells that the process can take time, as it “just depends what else the legislature is discussing.” However, the Missouri General Assembly will end the 2016 session May 13, and adjourn May 30. If the New Voices bill is not voted on by that time, the legislation will have to wait until the 2017 session.

Until such a vote is heard, students and teachers such as Aimee will continue as they have for the last two decades, learning and teaching the concepts of journalism with

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state-mandated training wheels.