Communication is Key

By Naama Levy

About two months ago, a student at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, Ohio committed suicide. The student newspaper, The Stowhion was planning on printing an obituary and a photo of the student, as well as a letter sent from the student’s mother to the other students. Doesn’t sound like a very complicated situation; after all it’s a simple routine that newspapers do all the time.
However, a few days before printing, it suddenly seemed necessary to the school principal (who had been okay with this at first) that the obituary and photo be removed from the newspaper. She did not oppose to the letter from the mother, but insisted that the other elements will not be published.
The Stowhion’s advisor then contacted staff members and students to ask if they had anything else they’d like to include in the paper about the victim. Less than 30 minutes later, Schure objected to this too, sending out a letter saying, “We are not doing this”. She said, “I understand that it’s censorship and I’m OK with that.”
This made no sense to the newspaper editor-in-chief, who said that in 2005, the newspaper ran two pages on student suicides with no pressure from the administration, and that The Stowhion has been a public forum for years.
This case is one of many where journalists have been censored and silenced without justified reasons. The principal might argue otherwise, but I think she simply didn’t know what to do and decided the safe way to go would be to forbid the paper to publish the obituary, the photo, and anything other people would send.
The principal was probably afraid because suicides are a touchy subject, so she disregarded the fact that it could bee seen as disrespectful not to run the obituary and the photo. Whatever her thought process was, this is not an acceptable explanation as to why she so blatantly restricted the newspaper from activating its freedom of press.
Even if the principal had reasons to justify the censorship, she lacked the decency to communicate with the newspaper staff and explain her position. Administrators and adults in general sometimes don’t show the right respect for young journalists. A newspaper is one of the few, if not the only place in a high school where teenagers cooperate in a work environment very similar to having a real job, which requires maturity and dedication and comprises of many responsibilities. The principal at Stow-Munroe Falls failed to recognize this and treated the students as kids instead of adults, causing anger and confusion. Although the students might have disagreed with the principal, providing an explanation was the least she could do. Communication is essential in any matter concerning Freedom of Press rights and can eliminate hostility that will only create more conflicts in the future.
Often conflicts associated with freedom of the press, especially at the high school level, are the result of fear of bad reputation and miscommunication. When a sensitive subject comes up, authorities sometimes panic because they don’t know how to deal with it. The most important thing in that situation is communication.