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According to some hysteria I've read, the First Amendment was repealed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
It started with the Spectrum, produced by the journalism classes at Hazelwood (Mo.) East High School. In 1983, the principal refused to permit two articles to be published.
The student editors sued. On Jan. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school administrators have the right to control the content of newspapers produced during school time with school equipment.
Considerable outcry followed, with anguished wails that students were being deprived of their constitutional rights.
But is this is really a repeal of the First Amendment?
No. All the court said is that a school newspaper, like the
rest of the American press, follows the Golden Rule: He
who has the gold, makes the rules.
If the school district pays the bills, and it wants a boring newspaper with a sanitized view of adolescent life, then the school district should get what it wants. That's not censorship; that's economic reality.
Note that the Supreme Court did not forbid students from exercising the same First Amendment rights that we all enjoy. We're all free to start our own newspapers.
A few friends and I did precisely that, back in 1967 at Greeley West High school. The West Word, the official school paper, generally reflected the official line that beating Central at football was the most important thing in our lives.
Over at ACT, produced with an old Smith-Corona and a battered Ditto machine, we covered what we thought were the vital issues of the day, from the closed campus to drugs.
At a nickel a copy, our enterprise supported itself and we had fun. We never questioned the school district's right to print whatever drivel it wanted in West Word. And no one ever questioned our right to publish what we wanted in ACT.
If freedom of the press means anything, it means that. Students today enjoy off-campus access to sophisticated machinery -- desktop-publishing systems, laser printers, copy machines, etc. If students don't like the school paper, and lack the wit to produce their own, that's their problem. It isn't a problem with the First Amendment.
So the First Amendment isn't in trouble on that account, although there's still reason to worry. Consider that its vocal defenders -- small-town publishers -- will gather in Denver tomorrow morning for the annual convention of the Colorado Press Association.
In theory, they serve as the consciences for their
communities. Their duty, as Joseph Pulitzer put it, is to
afflict the comfortable and comfort the
afflicted.
But in fact, the current president of the association is
Bob Lombardi. As best I know, he invented the annual
salute to our hard-working chamber-of-commerce
edition. You can imagine the provocative journalism
therein. And he holds the highest office the Colorado Press
Association can bestow.
I could go on through the small-town newspapers, all winners of awards from the press association, that neglect real news, ignore controversies and fill their pages with praise of their advertisers.
I was moaning about that recently with a friend who's
still in the business. It was fun ten years ago,
he
agreed. You could run an honest paper then. But the
rural economy has gone to hell. Nobody dares to offend a
fellow Rotarian or chamber director now, because all the
little papers are running on such tight budgets.
But if people really want to know the culprit, they
should blame Safeway.
Safeway?
Sure. Back then, Safeway ran several full pages every
week. Safeway didn't care what else you printed, so you
could run an honest paper. Then Safeway switched to
preprinted inserts, which don't bring in nearly as much
money. Now every small-town publisher has to count his
pennies and run scared. That killed the spirit of the First
Amendment in Colorado. That's why our newspapers are so
spineless and boring these days.
Happily, there is a solution, the same one the high-school kids have. Start your own. Not only would it provide welcome diversity in the ever blander domain of small-town journalism, but it would do more to enhance the First Amendment than any dozen resolutions passed by the press association.
As A.J. Liebling once noted, Freedom of the Press is
guaranteed to those who own one.
The more owners, the
more freedom.
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