Protecting College Student Press

Trish tipped me off to the following story, which is posted on the Student Press Law Center Web site:

CALIFORNIA - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed a bill into law that would explicitly prohibit prior restraint and other forms of censorship of the college press.

The bill's sponsor, assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said in a press release the legislation makes California the first state in the nation to specifically prohibit censorship of college student newspapers.

"College journalists deserve the same protections as any other journalist," Yee said. "Having true freedom of the press is essential on college campuses and it is a fundamental part of a young journalists training for the real world. Allowing a school administration to censor is contrary to the democratic process and the ability of a student newspaper to serve as the watchdog and bring sunshine to the actions of school administrators."

The bill passed the state Senate by a 31-2 vote on August 10 and was unanimously approved by the California Assembly in May.

The free-press bill was drafted in response to the Hosty v. Carter decision out of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, a supporter of the bill.

The appeals court decision held that the Supreme Court's 1988 Hazelwood decision limiting high school student free expression rights could extend to college and university campuses in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in February not to hear the Hosty case, letting stand the June 2005 decision out of the 7th Circuit.

Ten days after the 7th Circuit decision, the general counsel for the California State University system sent a memo to university presidents saying the Hosty decision could impact California.

"[T]he case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers, provided that there is an established practice of regularized content review and approval for pedagogical purposes," wrote CSU general counsel Christine Helwick at that time.

Although the 7th Circuit's ruling is only applicable in the three Midwestern states covered by the appeals court, Ewert said the memo raised some concerns amongst student press advocates.

Ewert said he is thrilled with the governor's decision to sign the legislation.

"This law sends a very strong message to administrators that the student press is just as deserving of strong free press protection as professional media," said Ewert.

-by Evan Mayor, SPLC staff writer

The questions for discussion are:

Is this a good thing? Should Colorado and other states enact similar legislation? What should be its provisions? Under such protection, who will be held legally responsible for libel and invasion of privacy, should such suits be filed? What, if any, supervisory role should the adviser and department play?

I certainly do not believe the administration of any college or university should engage in a priori censorship, just as I don't believe advisers should edit/censor student newspapers -- but if a student publication does end up in court (criminal or civil -- yes, Colorado still has its criminal libel statute on the books), who will end up in jail or paying out a libel judgment? If the publisher is considered to be the university/department, then that's who. In the professional world, publishers have absolute censorship rights over what their editors and reporters want to publish.

Are the Emmys getting political?

The Emmy Awards were held Sunday night, and this year it was a draw between the big winners in cable versus broadcast television. Last year, cable programs such as The Soprano's, et al, absolutely spanked the traditional broadcast networks in awards.
Sunday night, in the big categories, it was 13 awards both for cable versus broadcast.
Interesting...the voting changed this year. Rather than the traditional popular vote by Emmy members would determine the winners, the top 20 popular vote getters in each category were then "reviewed" by a panel of industry "judges", who then determined the winner in each category.
Is it possible that the powers of the NBC, CBS, and ABS broadcast networks want a bit more equity in the winners of Emmys?
Then some would say that cable primetime programming is actually better television and deserves more Emmys. Not this year.

A question of ethics

The year was 1981. USC Today Editor Erin Emery and the news editor at the time (whose name completely escapes me) decided on a lark to run for ASG president and vice president, more as a flip-of-the-finger to the ASG old guard (with whom we had been warring for years) than through any genuine political ambitions. Then something unexpected happened. Their campaign got legs. People started taking them seriously. It looked like they might actually win. They began aggressively campaigning and discussing in more specific terms what they might do if elected. They held a press conference in Sally Watkins' "News Beats and Features" class. I was in the audience. I asked three questions: 1) "Do you ascribe to the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics?" 2) "If you do, how can you justify having your names appear on bylines and in the masthead of the Today when this creates such an obvious appearance of conflict of interest?" 3) "Are you ready to resign your editorships in order to pursure your political ambitions without compromising the credibility of the USC Today?" By the end of the day, they dropped out of the election. Don' get me wrong. Erin would have made a spectacular ASG president. As it is, she has become an absolutely top-flight journalist. And I think she would agree that this firsthand education in journalism ethics was an important lesson. I'm told we now have the ASG president serving as an editor of the Today. Has our grasp of journalism ethics -- and its essential role in helping preserve the credibility, and thus the future, of our craft -- eroded to the point that this raises no red flags among the newspaper staff or department faculty? Or is this an exercise in situational ethics: "we don't have that many strong news/editorial students; they should be free to explore all the university has to offer, etc." I say students should be encouraged make the most of their experience here. But ethics is about making choices. And by not forcing a choice, you have deprived this student of a foundational piece of journalism education -- and have sent the wrong message to the rest of your students. Every day as a working journalist provides dozens of chances to make the wrong decision, to get mired in ambiguity and expedience, to bend the rules just this once. We need more ethics education, not less. The newspaper, the department, the industry, needs more credibility, not less. If the Today is, indeed, going to be a first step into the real world of journalism, then these real-world situations must be addressed in a real-world fashion. Richard, if you were still editing a daily paper, what would you say to a member of your editorial team who decided to campaign for mayor?