A lawyer explains student journalists’ rights
Peter Eliasberg, the managing attorney of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), answered questions about the censorship of student newspapers. The ACLU is a nationwide organization dedicated to defending the liberties guaranteed by U.S. laws. L.A.Y.: Whenever they address controversial topics that may be potential articles, administrators often use the […]
Peter Eliasberg, the managing attorney of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), answered questions about the censorship of student newspapers. The ACLU is a nationwide organization dedicated to defending the liberties guaranteed by U.S. laws.
L.A.Y.: Whenever they address controversial topics that may be potential articles, administrators often use the words "it may disrupt the school, we can’t let that happen." I understand that the articles aren’t supposed to "disrupt the school," but where exactly do you draw the line between just being a hot topic and disrupting the school?
ACLU: In general, school districts read the law far too broadly in their favor … Generally, they can’t stop what they don’t like.
Well, I was reading through the California School administrators’ guidelines for speech and press and it said we can write anything as long as the material is not "obscene, libelous, or slanderous." But people have different views about everything and what can be obscene, libelous, or slanderous to one person can mean nothing to another. In such cases, how do you define what is obscene, libelous or slanderous?
ACLU: Your journalism advisor has every right [to stop an article from being published] on the basis of good teaching. For example, she can say the article won’t print until the sources are checked … [If you were writing about teen pregnancy,] you wouldn’t be able to go into graphic detail about sexual activity, although of course, you can’t get pregnant without having sex. It would be a sensitive issue.
Last year, our school’s journalism class printed an April Fool’s issue, where all the stories in it were fake. One of the articles was that our leadership class, which is basically the student body representatives, committed mass suicide. The article had a picture of the student body president’s toe with a name tag on it to illustrate her fake death. Another article was that our academic decathlon team was on steroids. … and so on. Our principal did not allow us to distribute these articles. Was it legal for him to do that?
ACLU: It is illegal. It is called prior restraint. It means that he was preventing people from seeing material.
Is criticizing your school or its faculty members OK as long as we can support our claims maturely?
ACLU: The administration needs to have a good basis for "defamation" in order to stop the article.
Well, if I wanted to attack our school’s science department and say that all except a couple teachers were incompetent, and if I can back up the fact that the department truly is weaker than the rest of the departments, would I be able to do that?
ACLU: If the presentation of the story is balanced, there is no reason for them to stop you. The line should be drawn by asking, "Is this a good story?"
Do the administrators have the right to keep an article from getting printed just because it degrades the school?
ACLU: Absolutely not. For example, if there is a maintenance problem, the students should be allowed to address those issues.
How can we correct this injustice? Do you have any advice?
ACLU: I think that students need to be courageous and do their homework and call organizations like the Student Press Law Center, familiarize themselves with the California law and confront the administration. But you have to make sure [the students] are well armed … Knowledge can be power. They [administrators] do it thinking they can get away with it. he journalism class.
