Washington's governor signs anti-censorship bill for student journalists into law (archive) (alt). Similar state legislation has been attempted several times in the past.
Gov. Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5064 Wednesday in front of a group of students, teachers and school administrators in Olympia. The new law, which goes into effect this June, makes Washington the last state on the West Coast to pass an "anti-Hazelwood law," a reference to a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it legal for school administrators to censor content in school newspapers and other student-run media.
[...] [Senator Joe Fain, R-Auburn], sponsored SB 5064 this year, although the legislation has been introduced in Olympia four different times, in various forms, by three different lawmakers since 2007.
So the new law gives a big boost to student newspapers by preventing school administrators from censoring content. Now the hair-splitting will begin regarding what defines illegal content or harassement.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 25 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)
Many communities have newspapers/newsletters. Why can't a school have one as well? This is *especially* useful in schools as you can have teachers who actually know something about journalism assist the students in learning about that profession.
In fact, every school should have a newspaper that is held as close to professional journalistic standards [wikipedia.org] as possible. Because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing properly.
And despite all the garbage blogs, infotainment, conspiracy sites and you tube videos out there which purport to be journalism but isn't, journalism is, in fact, a profession with methods, standards, ethics and strong policing from actual, professional journalists.
What's more given that an informed populace is critical to free society, you should go out and thank a *real* journalist.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @09:28AM
It's 2018, when you state that "journalism is" you clearly mean that "journalism was" although yellow journalism never was.