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Supreme Court Cases in Journalism

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In 1965, three students in an Iowa public high school wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The students were suspended by the principal, and then sued the school. The case of Tinker v. Des Moines eventually reached the Supreme Court in 1969, where the justices ruled in favor of the students, upholding their First Amendment rights. Many years later, in 1988, the tables were turned in favor of public high school administrators with the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court case. Students at Hazelwood East High School published several articles in an issue of their newspaper, one of which was about teen pregnancy. Students obtained consent from sources, and kept them anonymous, but administrators insisted that the stories be cut. The Supreme Court ruled that the paper was not a “public forum of student expression,” and that the students, as a result, were not entitled to First Amendment rights. In Hazelwood, it was concluded that the Tinker standard could only be applied to newspapers that were “public forums of student expression.” In schools K-12, administrators were given the right to censor student press if they could present a “reasonable educational justification for censorship.” While college officials have attempted to apply the Hazelwood standard to student publications, their attempts have never been successful, as Hazelwood only applies to K-12 school-sponsored publications. School-sponsored publications, by the Court, are defined as: (1) supervision by a faculty member, (2) targeted toward a student audience, and (3) use of the school’s name and/or resources. Extracurricular and underground publications, however, are excluded from Hazelwood. The Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court case was a massive blow to student journalism, severely limiting what can be published and, as a result, impacting journalism as a whole. In the real world, controversial stories exist. If students can never write

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