Students land a blow against prior review
On the first day of school the new principal of Woodrow Wilson High in Washington, D.C., instituted a policy of prior review for the school newspaper. The students pushed back, and the result was heartening for all who care about a free and responsible student press.
August 31, 2015
Look, at some point high school principals will realize that prior review — real prior review, based on reading every single word of every single article — is just too much work to be worth it. If we’re lucky, they’ll also see that censorship is inimical to educating free minds.
But until they do, we journalism educators will have to take heart in stories of student defiance like this one from Washington, D.C.
As the student journalists of Woodrow Wilson High tell it, on the first day of school their new principal, Kimberly Martin, instituted a policy of mandatory prior review for their student newspaper, The Wilson Beacon. This upended a longstanding de facto policy of Wilson administrators treating the paper as a public forum.
The students complied with the principal’s demand, but they also protested. They published an editorial criticizing prior review on five basic grounds:
(1) It’s inefficient.
(2) It removes a crucial step in the education of young journalists — namely, learning editorial responsibility by actually being entrusted with editorial responsibility.
(3) It makes the administration directly liable for any problems that result from a prior-reviewed story.
(4) It chills the free expression of legitimate criticism and comment.
(5) It chills the reporting of legitimate but controversial stories.
The students also set up a Change.org petition. As the students said in the introduction to their petition, the fundamental harm of prior review lies in the self-censorship it inevitably produces, something that should be repugnant to anyone charged with educating young people to think for themselves.
More than 500 people signed the petition.
And what do you know?
The principal has reconsidered her policy. As the invaluable Student Press Law Center reported this afternoon, the editors will revise their own policies to clarify their chain of responsibilities, and once the two parties agree, Martin will discontinue mandatory prior review.
At this point we can’t be sure what the final arrangement will look like. But let’s hope it resembles what happened in Michigan earlier this month, when the principal of East Lansing High School recommended that the school paper be treated as a pubic forum after a year of prior review. The school board approved his recommendation.
For now, let’s give The Beacon’s editors the last word:
“If Principal Martin wishes to publish her own newspaper representing the Wilson administration rather than the student body, she can. We won’t ask for prior review. But The Beacon is our paper and our responsibility, and while Martin is our principal, she is not our editor.”
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RELATED SOURCES WORTH CHECKING OUT AND SHARING:
The Wilson Beacon’s editorial protesting prior review
The Change.org petition in support of The Beacon’s editorial freedom
Student Press Law Center’s coverage of the controversy
The Washington Post’s coverage of the controversy
The Washingtonian’s coverage of the controversy
Washington Post reporter Erik Wemple’s commentary
Student Press Law Center’s coverage of the East Lansing High School policy change