Would You Say That Around Your Grandmother?

In the English language, as well as all other languages, there are words that most can agree either shouldn't be said, or are classified as "inappropriate language."

Any person in the world, if asked, could give you a work that their culture deems inappropriate.

The same also goes for groups of people. Some groups have select phrases that spark controversy. For instance, in the GLBT community, the phrase, "That's so gay," in reference to something being dumb, is considered highly offensive.

What most people don't know is that journalists also have a "trigger" word, so to speak, and that word is "censorship."

Ask any journalist the dirtiest word in the English language, the first word out of their mouth should be censorship.

Dictionary.com defines the root word, censor, as, "an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds."

Imagine what would happen if everything in the world has to go through some form of censorship before being published or shown. Most, if not all, TV shows, books, and plays would be non-existent, because nothing produced by a human can satisfy everyone, no matter how great.

Censorship in media is much more relevant to the journalism. In student media, this form of censorship is called prior review. Those two words are the two most dreaded words to any faculty and staff involved in a student newspaper and Mounds View High School , in Minnesota heard those exact words.

Their newspaper was first considered for prior review when they printed a story that named two students who were disciplined for posting a "joke picture of their teacher on Facebook."

The principal of the school was interviewed for the story, but decided to ask the story to be pulled five days after the review, after the papers had been sent to the printer. When the paper was brought to school, Principal Julie Wikelius threw away the papers claiming it was, “due to concerns about releasing students' private disciplinary information without parental consent.”

Prior review was then granted by the administration over the student newspaper, The Viewer.

Editor-in-chief Christina Xai believes she knows why the administration is putting the paper on prior review. "I do not believe that prior review is the solution. I think that prior review will limit us from learning responsible journalism... If the school imposes prior review, I am very concerned that this will lead to the administration censoring what we write. I know that the administration said their goal is fact checking, but I feel this will become their excuse to control the content of our student newspaper."

-Whitney Taylor