Article Contributed on: 2/29/2008 8:51:19 PM
The Max Karson article in the CU
Campus Press entitled "If it's war the Asians want..." caused quite a stir on campus this week. As a student of CU's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, there have been tense class discussions among students about the article. My teachers have handled the issue by allowing students to share their opinions openly. I've noticed a great divide in student opinion. Some students believe that the article was completely offensive. Others find that it was a satirical piece and should not have been a big deal at all. Because of this split in opinion from students, the discussions about the article created a tense classroom atmosphere.
Some people are asking, "How did someone let this article be published in the first place?" Free speech issues are difficult to tackle, but it's very helpful that I am currently taking a media law class to begin to figure out the situation. Prior restraint, the prevention of publishing material based on its content, is unconstitutional in most situations. The cases when prior restraint is permissible involve obscenity, "fighting words," threat to national security, and an incitement to violence. These four exceptions to prior restraint were determined from the 1931 Supreme Court case of
Near v. Minnesota. The Karson article would not be subject to prior restraint because the offensive claims that he wrote about Asians do not fit into one of the four categories determined by the
Near case.
However, the Karson article may have been prevented from publication, without violating free speech law. The 1988 Supreme Court case of
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier encountered similar issues. Students had written articles in their high school newspaper about teen pregnancy in the school and how divorce had damaged some students' families. The high school administrators censored the paper and took out the articles. The students felt this had violated their right to free speech and press. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school's ability to censor. The reasoning behind this decision comes from the fact that the newspaper is funded and sponsored by the school. Because of this, the newspaper is then affiliated with the school. Therefore, any viewpoints written in the newspaper could be seen as representative of the school administrators' opinions.
The
Campus Press, like
Hazelwood, is affiliated with CU because it is sponsored and funded by the university. That is why the university could have edited the article, or prevented it from publication, while still respecting free speech law. There was simply a decision by the editors to go ahead and publish the article although it has offended many on campus. The
Campus Press and its faculty support are starting over this week by determining where restrictions should be made on student expression in the paper. It will be interesting to see where the
Campus Press will go from here, deal with the controversy, and what new rules will be put in place for their student reporters. It is vital for student reporting to retain as much free speech as possible, but in the interest of the public, offensive language could be watched more closely without truly restricting student reporting.