If my boss didn't like this, you wouldn't be reading it. That's because I don't get to decide what goes into this newspaper; that's the publisher's and editor's jobs. No one passed a law that says I have the freedom to use someone else's press to make whatever point I want. Apparently, this reality has escaped the Illinois Legislature, which has just sent to Gov. Edgar a bill giving high school journalists rights that I - a practicing journalist for 35 years - don't enjoy, never expected to get and don't think I should have. The bill, passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate, gives high school students the right to put, with a few exceptions, just about anything they please into their student newspapers. No matter how inconsequential, unprofessional, or stupid. In that, some might say, the high school papers will be just like regular papers. But there is a difference. The Illinois law would overrule the judgment of the newspaper publisher (school authorities), and turn on its head the principle that students are in school to learn, and teachers to teach. It would also impose another unfunded mandate on local schools, based on the presumption that lawmakers, who have trouble doing their own jobs, are perfectly suited to micromanage someone else's. And finally, it is another blanket invitation for lawyers to butt in. All this is accomplished by a law that sounds high-minded enough: It would forbid that any student journalist working on a public high school paper (including papers put out as class projects) be subject to "prior restraint." Only if what a student writes is libelious, obscene, "harmful to minors," "unwarranted invasions of privacy" or incitements to "imminent lawless action" can it be kept out of the paper. The bill makes every school board adopt a "written student freedom of expression policy" that "shall include reasonable provisions for the time, place, and manner of student expression." That policy must recognize the essential roles of "truth, fairness, accuracy, research and responsibility," which sounds fine in principle. But if a student thinks his right to publish has been violated, his parents can sue. And you can bet that they will the first time Butthead doesn't get his rants published. This legislation confers upon high school students a right that even investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein didn't have. If Katherine Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post, had decided not to run Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate exposes, they would not have run. And no government in this country could have forced her to do [216 lines left ... full text available at <url:http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/go.py?choice=message&table=06_1997&mid=660309&hilit=CENSOR+CENSORS> ] -------------------------------- Article-ID: 06_1997&723610 Score: 81 Subject: Mini-FAQ: LAME POSTS - Follow-up from News.answers