HS journalism teacher demoted over "grinding" story

Or, why do they teach freedom of the press, but not support it?

http://www2.az-independent.com/2011/05/27/special-report-lhhs-journalism-advisor-loses-gig-over-students-article/

 

Han: Thanks for the link!

You are approaching it as if there is freedom of the press in schools, and there is not always.

It depends on the administration.

 

High school principals are the de facto publishers of high school newspapers. So in effect, the principal is censoring his own product. There are no First Amendment issues at work here.

This isn't like the government shutting down a newspaper. It would be like the publisher firing an editor over allowing a libelous story to run.

 

Seems like kind of a pointless article to fire someone over.

 

I disagree. Libel is illegal. This is the equivalent of a publisher firing an editor over a story that made a few people in the community a little pissed off.

 

It's technically OK if you're looking at whether the school has the right to do it, but as HanSense said, it goes against the idea of teaching journalism in the first place.

 

Shouldn't teaching journalism include foreseeing the probable reactions to your work? Telling the students to go ahead and grind because the principal won't stop you brought the completely predictable response. The student who wrote the piece should have learned something about what publishers will be like.

 

It also begs the question, if the administration doesn't like "grinding," why hasn't it done anything to prevent it? I sense the school wants the paper goose-stepping along with them?

 

The question really stands is if the administration thought the article in question would have created a disruption, which without reading the whole thing I wouldn't know. That's the main thing a high school newspaper can censor things over, coming from experience in my high school days.

 

So a teacher got in trouble for a student encouraging other students to do something that has been deemed OK to do?