Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Teaches Wrong Lesson On Freedom Of The Press

from the except-for-when-it-comes-to-supreme-court-justices dept

You would think that a Supreme Court Justice (and the people who work for one) would know better than to tell any sort of news publication -- even a high school newspaper -- that he needed to approve any articles written about a speech he gave, but that appears to be exactly what happened with Justice Anthony Kennedy and a recent speech to Dalton High School students in Manhattan. The people who work for Kennedy are now trying to claim that this was just to make sure the quotes were accurate, but those who work for the school paper say they were under the impression they needed full approval of the article first. It's amazing that whoever made the request (whether Kennedy himself or some staffer) didn't realize how bad that would look, especially from a Justice who has always been a strong proponent of strong First Amendment rights...

Filed Under: anthony kennedy, first amendment, freedom of the press, high school newspaper, journalism, supreme court

A Modest Proposal: Don't Try To Censor Students Who Have This Thing We Call The Internet

from the only-positive-stories-around-here... dept

Way back when I was in high school, I wrote for the school newspaper, and occasionally we had some problems with either the paper's "advisors" or the administration not liking something that went into the paper. While we were able to get plenty of stuff published, there were occasional arguments. The best we could do at the time was complain -- and eventually some of us started a non-school-sanctioned paper to allow us to be more free. That, of course, was in the days before the internet was widely available. These days, things work quite differently. Romenesko points us to the somewhat ridiculous story of a principal confiscating the school newspaper and demanding that the students write more "positive and uplifting stories" after he freaked out about a student's attempt to mimic one of the most famous pieces of satire: Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Apparently, the principal didn't get the satire of the piece, which proposed executing all of those who score in the bottom 25% on an IQ test. Of course, in censoring the paper, the immediate response is pretty much what should be expected these days. The editor of the paper resigned and posted the whole ordeal to Facebook, where it spread quickly, not only making the principal a laughingstock for not recognizing a clear homage to Swift, but it gave the actual column much more attention -- even to the point that the major newspaper in Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, republished the student's modest proposal within its own pages. Now that's a positive and uplifting story.

Filed Under: high school newspaper, modest proposal, streisand effect