Article by Jessi Rannochio

There is a “Liberal Concern” about student’s free-expression right in journalism. This is because students who want to write about an issue that has to do with sex and sexuality have to sensor what they say, and when doing that they can’t show their real opinion.

John Butterfield of California’s Rio Americano High School recently wrote an article criticizing the school’s sexuality. Butterfield wrote about the cheer team and their provocative dance. “This is a high school rally, not the latest music video, and when the song team spends most of the routine bent over, while it may [elicit] catcalls from the audience, it is simply not appropriate.”

The administrators decided to let this article run in the paper no matter how unflattering it may be. When doing this they hope for the team to realize they need to make a change.

Once this was printed it came to Billy O’Reilly’s producers at Fox News, attention. O’Reilly decided to air the footage of the dancers performing. In airing this footage it has caused an outcry for the team to revise their routine, so they did.

This is what uncensored journalism can do. If the administrators had thought that this article was too inappropriate to publish, then the team would have never seen how provocative their dances were. And because of this they changed their dance.

I think that uncensored journalism in high school is important because high school is the time in teenager’s lives where you really start to form your own opinions and we should be able to express them with out limits. When you put limits on people’s opinions they start to get warped and then eventually turn into more fact not opinion.

As a teenage journalist I am passionate about freedom of expression and I think that we need more of it in high school journalism.