By Mike Hiestand
As an increasing number of high school publications go online, it’s unfortunate that an increasing number of school officials are simultaneously bent on dreaming up new reasons to regulate them. Perhaps the most pervasive-and wacky-of the new “cyber-regs” now coming out of administrative quarters is the ban on publication of student names or photos on the Internet. Such a rule-often accompanied by veiled references to an always uncited law-takes various forms. Some simply prohibit the publication of all student names and photos. Some allow only a student’s first name; others allow names only after parental consent has been obtained. One policy prohibited the posting of student photos-unless there were more than four students shown, which, for some reason, made posting online okay.
Just as the rules vary so, too, do the justifications given for their enactment. Fear seems to play the largest role. Fear of kidnapping, stalking, sexual assault or other enumerated horror. As a Minnesota student editor recently told us after he was ordered not to post a photo of cheerleaders taken from the print version of his paper, “The principal said he was afraid that somebody Net-surfing in Florida would see the photo, drive up and rape one of the girls.”
Of course, there is no evidence to suggest that online publications pose any more of a danger than their print-based counterparts. But no matter, a fear of the unknown has always accompanied the introduction of new technology and media and, until the dust settles, such battles are regrettable, but probably inevitable.
On the other hand, some school officials have tried to justify their new “cyber-regs” by saying that the law requires it.
They are wrong.
Nothing in the law requires that schools flatly prohibit the publication of student names or photos in an online student publication. In short, if something could lawfully be published in print it can be posted online. Where newsworthy information-including student names and photos-is lawfully obtained and accurately reported, it is not an invasion of privacy to post it on the Internet. Parental consent is irrelevant. Neither is it a violation of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), also known as the Buckley Amendment, as some have suggested. The Department of Education has made clear that news reported by students in a student newspaper is not equivalent to educational records being released by the school itself.
Newspapers report news. The very idea of a newspaper without names or other identifying information strikes at the core of journalistic integrity and a free, robust press.
Such a practice is also legally quite risky. Put aside the constitutional question of whether an outright ban on all names and photos is even permissible, a policy that requires that news subjects be incompletely identified is poised for trouble. Reporting, for example, that an unnamed tennis player was kicked off the team for illegal drinking could subject the student newspaper to a libel lawsuit by the team’s nine other players who weren’t drinking.
To be sure, the battle over online speech is only beginning. Despite the fact that the Internet was created as a sort of “government-free” zone, it is against the nature of government officials-and school administrators-simply to butt out. Still, we should at least insist that they think before acting-and stick to the facts.