By Mike Hiestand
AN OPEN LETTER OF APOLOGY TO HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISTS OF THE LAST TWENTY YEARS
I’m sorry if I popped your bubble.
It was twenty years ago today that the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier.
If you were one of the thousands of high school student journalists during that time who called the Student Press Law Center for help with a censorship problem, chances are pretty good you talked to me.
I was the SPLC’s staff attorney. And unfortunately, unless you happened to be calling from one of the relatively small number of states or school districts that had adopted protective student media laws or policies in the wake of Hazelwood or unless you were fortunate to come from a school with a strong journalism program (which generally meant a strong and courageous journalism adviser), chances are probably better than even that I popped the idealistic bubble you had formed about the promise of America’s free press. Or at least I sucked some air out of it.
For example, when you called to tell me your principal had just killed your carefully written, accurate news story, saying only that she found the topic “inappropriate,†you – having heard about the wonders of the First Amendment – assumed that something wasn’t right, that a public school official couldn’t legally get away with such blatant censorship using such a flimsy excuse. Too often – far too often – I had to tell you that wasn’t necessarily the case. There were effective ways to fight such censorship, I probably told you, but most involved making your case in the court of public opinion since a post-Hazelwood court of law might not offer much help. I’m sorry.
And when you called to tell me that the superintendent had yanked your latest issue from newsracks because of an editorial critical of district policy that he claimed was “poorly written,†(and yes, I know your journalism adviser with years of journalism experience and training told you she thought you did a good job) you figured that a lawyer at the Student Press Law Center, who spent all of his time on this free press stuff, would be able to set school officials right. Insofar as the law was concerned, that was sometimes not the case. I’m sorry.
And then there were the times school officials ordered you to remove a story from the paper before sending it to the printer because it contained ideas or addressed topics they claimed were “potentially sensitive†or “inconsistent with the shared values of a civilized social order.†I’m sorry I couldn’t more clearly define those standards for you, which after all, like all of the administrative excuses given here, come straight out of the Court’s Hazelwood ruling. But in my defense I’ve never heard anyone else provide clear definitions of these so-called “legal standards,†either. Again, I’m sorry if I let you down.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision really stacked the deck against us. It didn’t give school officials an unlimited license to censor, as many seem to think, but it certainly tipped the scale strongly in their favor. Let’s be honest, it’s hard to fight censorship with a First Amendment standard that most clearly resembles the protection courts have given to prisoner speech.
Hazelwood was a lousy decision for a number of reasons. Of course, the 350 percent jump in the number of people calling the SPLC for legal help since 1988 is the most obvious. The confusion and frustration on the part of both students and school officials struggling to make sense of the decision is another. Much of the law in this area is, frankly, a mess that leaves all sides guessing – and fighting – over where the boundaries lie (I mean, c’mon: “inappropriate?†“potentially sensitive?†“inconsistent with the shared values of a civilized social order?†You’ve gotta be kidding me.) But in many ways, the most disturbing and harmful result was the lost opportunity to show you that the uniquely American promise of our First Amendment was real.
When Hazlewood was handed down, Justice Brennan, in his strongly worded dissent, warned of the long-term, dangerous impact the majority’s expansive, new censorship standard would have on you and your classmates:
“Such unthinking contempt for individual rights is intolerable from any state official. It is particularly insidious from one to whom the public entrusts the task of inculcating in its youth an appreciation for the cherished democratic liberties that our Constitution guarantees.â€
If you look at some of the recent national surveys tracking your generation’s attitude toward the First Amendment and a free press, it’s hard not to conclude Justice Brennan was dead-on. When just barely half of your classmates, for example, think that newspapers should be able to publish content without government approval, as a 2006 Knight Foundation study found, you’ve got to believe that something has gone seriously awry with the civics lesson your school is providing about what it is to be an American.
In this day of metal detectors at the front door, police in the hallways and surveillance cameras everywhere else, some of our schools – at least on first glance – do indeed seem to have more in common with the local jail than the place of learning your parents attended.
Had Hazelwood come out differently, however, the student newspaper could have been at least one place where you and your classmates would have known there was a difference. While government officials may have exercised substantial authority over much of your daily life, the student newspaper would have been the one place you would have known that you still had the right – provided you exercised it responsibly – to speak out, to compliment or to criticize, to talk about issues that mattered – to have your voice heard even where those same school officials didn’t like what you were saying. That, of course, is the essence of a free press.
A student newspaper could have been the place where the First Amendment you memorized for a history test actually came alive and was shown to be more than just 45 words written by a bunch of dead guys 217 years ago. Alas….
Even though I might have let you down, I beg you not to give up. You might have hung up the telephone after our conversation questioning the truth of the glowing stories about America’s grand experiment in democracy and its promise of individual liberty and freedom, but I hope at least some of your passion for the cause survived. It is essential that you look beyond the hypocrisy of your Court-approved civics lesson to the bigger picture. Twenty years after Hazelwood, the First Amendment is still alive, but it needs your help. The First Amendment – like democracy itself – is, you see, just an idea. And like all ideas, if you and your peers – our next generation – don’t believe in it, it will cease to exist. Just like a popped bubble.