A trip to D.C. and an unsettling survey

Roommate Kim and I made our first venture into the city today. It only takes about 30 minutes via the Metro. We walked around from the White House to the Washington Monument and over to the Smithsonians before grabbing a quick bite at Union Station and heading home. Don arrives on Thursday.

Now, on to the real news of the day...

... in 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which gave public high school officials greater power to censor student newspapers. The idea was that a high school newspaper is for educational purposes and that the school district is effectively the newspaper's "publisher," therefore has the authority to exercise editorial control.

But here's the problem: In a recent survey, at least one in three high school students said the First Amendment goes to far, and about 25 percent feel student publications should be censored. Now, I understand that high school atmospheres are different, and that you have an educational community to preserve, and that you have to take into consideration the developmental age and maturity level of your readership. But censorship in high school teaches people that censorship in the real world is OK. It teaches them that newspapers should do their jobs just so long as nobody's offended. It teaches them that the First Amendment doesn't apply to things with which you disagree.

The freedom I have to do my job is what helps give you the freedom to live your life. It's what holds your public officials accountable for their actions, good or bad. It's how you know what's going on every day. There are countries where the press shuts up if the government tells it to. There are countries where public officials aren't held accountable. Cuba's a good example. So is China.

People are always going to think the press is useless or overly free. I know that, I'm not stupid. I blame careless members of my profession who choose to spend more time on "Michael Jackson shockers!" (as one story I saw today put it) than on what's really affecting our lives. I blame it on anyone who ever has used their journalistic freedoms for frivolous or self-serving purposes. I blame it on people who have blurred the lines between news and entertainment or worse, news and commerce. And I blame the Hazelwood decision for raising a generation of high school students (who will be come college students and then will become major world decision makers) in a world where censorship is OK and offensive but important messages are squashed.