Sex in the Student Paper
Justin Bathon on Friday, March 6, 2009 at 6:37PM What else are high-school kids going to write about, right?
So, no, student's as journalists don't have a right to, like, write about whatever they want. They are students ... not journalists (and, heads up Grady, journalists don't either because they work for companies like News Corp.).
The long standing rule here since Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (which had a pretty similar fact pattern with pregnant students) is that school's can regulate school sponsored speech on legitimate pedagogical grounds. Since the school publishes the paper, it gets to determine what's appropriate to put in it (in that way, I guess it sort of is like the Wall Street Journal). So, this time the school let it slide ... but since this story got on CNN ... I promise they won't next time.
h/t Scott McLeod - by the way, you should read his series of Des Moines Register posts ("does the Des Moines Register just print anything?" ... just kidding Scott).
Reader Comments (1)
As a parent I can understand where the parent in the video clip is coming from. Suprisingly, school officials allowed for the article to be published, so the author of the article is not at fault. I think the school officials agreed to the publishing of this article because it is an issue at their school, and maybe a way to let students know that school officials know what is going on. In my opinion, it is a topic that I would not have think that school officials would agree to be published, but its a high school and these are some things that are going on in the high schools. As long as school officials approve the publishing, there is no wrong done, and besides it did not create any comotion, so I see no harm in what was done.