Yonts bill seeks protections for high school newspapers

This from AP by way of KSBA:

Student journalists working for public high school newspapers would be entitled to free speech and freedom of the press protections similar to their professional counterparts under a proposal before the Kentucky House.

Students would be allowed to publish stories without interference from school administrators under Rep. Brent Yonts’ proposal. If the measure passes, Kentucky would join at least seven other states that have enacted some form of protections for high school journalists.

“It’s important for the future of journalism, that students are taught about the responsibilities of journalism,” said Josh Moore, a sophomore journalism student at Western Kentucky University, who’s pushing the legislation.

So far, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts and Oregon have passed laws giving various levels of protection to student journalists who operate school newspapers.

The Illinois law does not include protections for high school journalists, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.

The bill is aimed at offsetting a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier, which ruled administrators in a St. Louis, Mo., school district could censor school newspaper articles, said Yonts, a Democrat from Greenville.

Protections under the bill would extend to young journalists regardless of whether their publications were school-funded or produced as part of a class. Local school boards would be required to adopt written freedom of expression policies for students....

Predictably, the bill is not being warmly embraced by the Kentucky School Boards Association whose members may lose some authority under the bill, but it does have its supporters. They are not surprising either. The Bowling Green Daily News opines,

...This bill has a lot of merit and sends a strong message that the First Amendment should not be tampered with in any way.

It sends a bad message to young Americans who are writing for their school papers to have their work censored by school principals. That message is that our constitutional freedoms are not that important.

David Greer, administrator of the Kentucky High School Journalism Association, said allowing school officials’ final say in what gets published could deter serious investigative journalism that is sometimes controversial.

We agree.

Young students who are interested in pursuing a career in journalism should have the freedom to publish the facts, regardless of whether it makes a school look good or bad.

The knowledge they gain while working for a high school paper will help prepare them about the journalism profession and all that it entails...