Center for Scholastic Journalism Blog

Just a few months ago, scholastic journalists and journalism educators in Iowa and around the nation celebrated an event: the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

At the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association national high school journalism convention in Phoenix in April, several thousand students and teachers wore their own black armbands like those worn by students in Des Moines, Iowa, back in 1969.  They voiced their support for student free expression and heard Mary Beth Tinker describe what she had learned from being part of the case that established strong First Amendment protections for public school students.

This week Iowa and the nation have another anniversary worth celebrating.  Twenty years ago, Iowa became the first state to pass a law drafted specifically in response to the Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision.  By large majorities, the Iowa legislature approved a bill that sent the message the Supreme Court got it wrong when it limited student First Amendment protections in school-sponsored publications.  After persuasive arguments by the Iowa High School Press Association and others, Iowa legislators concluded student free expression and quality education go hand in hand.  Gov. Terry Branstad signed the bill into law on May 11, 1989.

Iowa wasn’t the first state to legislate on this topic.  California enacted a student free expression law in 1977 and Massachusetts, only months after the Hazelwood ruling in 1988, amended an existing free expression law that had been optional for school districts to make it mandatory.

But Iowa was the first to draft a statute from scratch, specifically in response to the Hazelwood decision. Twenty years later, the law provides the best illustration of how unsupported the arguments of legislation opponents are.  Iowa consistently ranks at the top when states are rated for educational quality.  No one has been able to point to any negative side affects to giving students strong free expression protections.  Those who teach and learn in Iowa can point to the positive impact the law has had.

Although he says those who value the First Amendment and students’ rights need to be “ever diligent” in the face of restraints, Iowa High School Press Association President Timm Pilcher says he hopes that efforts to limit expression “will eventually inspire those states who have yet to ‘join’ to advocate for what is truly the fundamental right of all, not just adults.”

As other states consider student free expression bills, Iowa remains a compelling example.  Student press freedom is worth protecting and student free expression laws work.

The Journalism Education Association, as the nation’s largest association of scholastic journalism educators and secondary school media advisers, denounces the practice of administrative prior review as serving no legitimate educational purpose. Prior review leads only to censorship by school officials or to self-censorship by students with no improvement in journalistic quality or learning.

Better strategies exist that enhance student learning while protecting school safety and reducing school liability.

School administrators provide leadership for just about every dimension of schools. They set the tone and are crucial in a meaningful educational process. Undeniably, administrators want their schools’ graduates to be well-educated and effective citizens. Often, school or district missions statements state this goal explicitly. JEA supports them in that effort. 

So, when the Journalism Education Association challenges the judgment of administrators who prior review student media, it does so believing better strategies more closely align with enhanced civic engagement, critical thinking and decision-making.

Prior review by administrators undermines critical thinking, encourages students to dismiss the role of a free press in society and provides no greater likelihood of increased quality of student media. Prior review inevitably leads to censorship. Prior review inherently creates serious conflicts of interest and compromises administrator neutrality, putting the school in potential legal jeopardy.

Without prior review, administrators retain better strategies that support journalism programs. Such approaches include:

• Working with students cooperatively to be good sources for stories

• Hiring qualified advisers and journalism teachers

• Building trust in the learning and communication process in a way that also lessens liability concerns of the school system

• Offering feedback after each publication

• Increasing dialogue among school staff and students, thus encouraging outlets of expression that strengthens school safety

• Expanding school and community understanding and appreciation of the value of free – and journalistically responsible – student media

• Providing necessary resources to support and maintain publication programs, including financial support, master schedule preferences, development opportunities and time

These strategies, and others listed below can enhance the influence of administrators without intruding on student control of their media as outlined by court decisions and the First Amendment.

Administrators can and should:

• Foster appreciation for America’s democratic ideals by inspiring students and their advisers to practice democratic principles through free student media

• Hire the most qualified educator to teach and advise or help one without solid journalism background become more knowledgeable. This allows the educator to provide training so students can better become self-sufficient as they make decisions and practice journalism within the scope of the school’s educational mission and the First Amendment

• Trust and respect their advisers, their student media editors and staff as the students make decisions

• Maintain dialogue and feedback to protect and enhance student expression, to afford students real input in the process, and to broaden their opportunities to excel

Teachers and advisers can and should:

• Model standards of professional journalistic conduct to students, administrators and others

• Emphasize the importance of accuracy, balance and clarity in all aspects of news gathering and reporting

• Advise, not act as censors or decision makers

• Empower students to make decisions of style, structure and content by creating a learning atmosphere where students will actively practice critical thinking and decision-making

• Encourage students to seek other points of view and to explore a variety of information sources in their decision-making

• Ensure students have a free, robust and active forum for expression without prior review or restraint

• Show trust in students as they carry out their responsibilities by encouraging and supporting them in a caring learning environment

Student journalists can and should:

• Apply critical thinking and decision-making skills as they practice journalistic standards and civic responsibility

• Follow established policies and adopt new ones to aid in thorough, truthful and complete reporting using a range of diverse and credible sources

• Seek the advice of professionally educated journalism advisers, teachers and other media resources

• Maintain open lines of communication with other students, teachers, administrators and community members

• Operate media that report in verbal and visual context, enhancing comprehension and diverse points of view

• Develop trust with all stakeholders – sources, adviser, administration and fellow staffers

Asking pointed questions and making an eloquent statement about the purpose of a sound education, Stevenson High School Statesman managing editor Jamie Hausman chastised the school about the loss of his publication’s adviser in a Chicago Tribune letter.

“She has not taught me to challenge my administrators,” Hausman wrote, “but to challenge anyone and everyone who hinders my freedom and passion.”

The Statesman now faces prior review and two new advisers because of administrative reaction to content published earlier this year.

To read the letter, go here.

The Chicago Tribune’s April 6 editorial supported both student journalists and their adviser following a controversy over articles titled Hooking Up. The school involved, Stevenson High School, instituted prior review and the adviser has since resigned rather than work under prior review. 

The editorial is a great first step, but only a first step because Stevenson is not the only Illinois school actively facing misguided review and throttling of the educational process.

Educators and citizens in Illinois, and in other states where prior review and other forms of censorship exist, should work even more diligently now to prevent excellent journalism programs like this one, and others, from being decimated.

Other steps might include community meetings to publicly discuss the damage prior review can do to the educational process and even how to elect school boards supportive of student expression, critical thinking and the civic responsibility practicing freedom of expression enhances.

Unless journalism advisers – and organizations – work together to fight such educational practices as prior review and removal of trained advisers, schools will continue to review and restrain, weakening what our students learn – and practice – about life in a democracy.

In an editorial published yesterday, The Lexington Herald-Leader offered its support for House Bill 43, joining a growing chorus of working journalists who say protecting student press freedom is the right thing to do.

The bill, introduced earlier this year by state Rep. Brent Yonts (D-Greenville), would protect the right of high school journalists to determine the content of their student media and would protect school officials from liability for content decisions students make.  The bill is similar to laws in place in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts and Oregon.

In addition to the Herald-Leader, and its columnist Tom Eblen who wrote in support of the bill on Feb. 20,  the Bowling Green Daily News, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, the News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown and the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists have endorsed the legislation. Louisville Courier-Journal columnist David Hawpe wrote in support of the bill as well and the Kentucky Open Government Blog reports that the Kentucky Press Association and the Bluegrass Chapter of SPJ have also encouraged passage.

Much credit for both the bill and the support it is receiving goes to Western Kentucky University student Josh Moore, who asked Yonts to sponsor the bill and who has been coordinating information about the effort through a Web site he maintains.  We support his efforts, commend all those who are working to enact this bill into law and offer our hope that Kentucky will soon become the eighth state to recognize that protecting student free expression is sound educational policy.

Forty years ago today, the courage of three teenagers from Des Moines, Iowa, made history.

John and Mary Beth Tinker, 15 and 13 respectively, and their 16-year-old friend Chris Eckhardt wore black armbands to school way back in December 1965 to voice their concerns about United States involvement in the war in Vietnam.  They were suspended from school as a result, and soon began what many believe is the most important student free expression case in our nation’s history.

On Feb. 24, 1969, the Supreme Court decided their claim and uttered words that still resonate to this day.

“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” Justice Abe Fortas wrote for the Court majority.

For almost two decades, the Tinker decision set the standard for when school officials would be allowed to censor.  Only when administrators could reasonably forecast a material and substantial disruption of school activities or an invasion of the rights of others, would silencing student expression be allowed.  Student journalists were among the first beneficiaries of this protection.  Countless acts of arbitrary censorship (aimed primarily at protecting the school’s image, no matter how accurate or journalistically sound the stories might be) at schools around the country were prevented as a result.

Beginning in 1985, the Supreme Court began to whittle away at the strong protections of the Tinker ruling.  But the Court has never done away with them, and as recent as 2007 reaffirmed the fundamental role Tinker plays in determining student First Amendment protection.

Scholastic journalists and journalism educators around the country are today, in celebration of Scholastic Journalism Week, remembering the actions of those Iowa teenagers.  Many are wearing black armbands to voice their support for what the Tinker decision stands for. Several thousand more will do so at the spring Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association Convention in Phoenix in April.  I’m even wearing an armband today, which prompts only the occasional curious glance on this college campus accustomed to protest and activism.

But what we need today is more than the symbolism of Tinker-style armbands.  The future depends on all of us who care about the future of the First Amendment and the vital role student free expression plays in our nation’s strength getting off our behinds and doing something.  On this day, dozens (perhaps hundreds) of high school journalists and media advisers are being censored or threatened with punishment for expressing views or covering the topics that school officials don’t like.  (Read the News Flashes on the Student Press Law Center Web site for a sampling.) Call a school superintendent or a school board member and tell them the censorship must stop.  Urge your friends and family to make that same call.  Run for school board and work to change the mentality that censorship should be an accepted part of every American student’s high school experience.  Or call your state legislators and urge them to support student free expression.  Three states — Connecticut, Kentucky and Washington — have bills pending before them today that could help diminish the rampant censorship.  If you live in one of those states, ask your legislator to support it.  And if they refuse, work to see that legislator is not reelected.

If 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker could help change the world at great risk to her future, the least we can do is stand up for what we believe.  What better way to applaud the courage of three Iowa teenagers 40 years ago than to show a bit of courage ourselves.