First off, let’s get the right in question correct. Everybody has the right to freedom of speech at all times and in all places – but that right is bounded by some very clear guidelines. Not “limited” – “bounded.” It’s an important difference. If I have the right to speak in any given circumstance, nobody has the right to limit the content of my speech, except by common consent. For example, if I am in the middle of a meeting called to deal with the problem of deer invading farmlands and eating crops, my opinion of the right to bear arms is not pertinent, and while I retain my freedom to speak of it, it’s bounded. Again, I have no right to walk into your bedroom at 2:00 AM and state my opinion of anything. And, while I have the freedom of speech to write a letter to the editor, compose a post to this board, or whatever, there are rules and regulations governing use of those media. My letter to the editor should not exceed 200 words, for example – not because he is trammeling on my freedom to speak at greater length, but because those are the common grounds under which he holds his letters-from-the-public column open to public use. My post here should refrain from being a jerk, and should conform to the uses and customs of this board.
However, having covered that, the question at hand is what freedom are we speaking of, and it is the freedom of the press. The difference is subtle but significant. And, as one cynic commented, “the freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns the press.” Just as Lib. pointed out. If you choose to exercise your freedom to speak in printed form, you are obliged to either find someone willing to publish your work, pay for its publication, or get the necessary equipment and staff to publish it yourself.
Now, if it’s the school newspaper, it is the school who is the publisher. Legally the Board of Education carries the responsibility for the publication. And for them to review the contents is not external censorship but the precise right and duty to assure that what one publishes is not actionable or raises no more controversy than one is willing to stand behind which is every publisher’s possession.
However, there is a way around this situation, which functions as effective censorship of the students even though it is not legally such, and that is to make the publishing of a school paper not an exercise in self-expression and the presentation of opinion, but in practical journalism, in which the content is governed by the readership, the publisher’s wishes, the editors’ stance, and so on. It may be a paper “for” the student body, but it is a paper “by” the school as a whole, including administration, and if the students take responsibility for assuring the content meets with an editorial philosophy jointly developed with the “publisher,” they have learned an important lesson about practical, real-life journalism (and life as a whole!). In addition, when the student editors, having “compromised” with the administration’s wishes in content on a number of issues, desire to speak out on something they feel strongly about, the administration, having worked with them and discovered their integrity, is much more likely to back them on that issue.
And pkbites…I think I may have addressed the point it appeared you were trying to make. But I cannot let your post stand. Those kids are citizens with exactly the same rights as you and I. To be sure, they are underage citizens, subject to age-specific usage of the police power, as in the mandate to attend school, to observe a curfew, and so on. But as regards their constitional rights, they are as free as you and I. (And for the record, while wisdom usually comes with age, I am quite well acquainted with a five-year-old who is wise in the strict sense well beyond his years, and I have had the dubious pleasure of dealing with some benighted and foolish young adults and middle-aged and elderly people.) That their rights may be differently bounded by parental or other supervision does not mean that they are not in full possession of their unlimited rights as citizens. For example, if Poster X has a fifteen-year-old daughter who feels strongly about this issue, and he/she lets her sign on this board and compose a controversial post in accord with board policies and usage, nobody on God’s green earth has any say over that girl’s opinion. She has her parent’s permission, and she is meeting with the requirements under which the Chicago Reader/Straight Dope authority structure holds this board open to the public. And those are the only two “people” (taking CR/SD as a corporate “person”) with a say.
