By Don Corrigan
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Adviser Update
Courts continue to chip away rights
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P01.V52.I4
SUMMER 2013
Page 14A
Don Corrigan
has served for more than
30 years as a professor of journalism
at Webster University in St. Louis.
In addition to his teaching, he
serves as editor and co-publisher
of three suburban weeklies in St.
Louis. The college paper, The
Webster University Journal, has
won “Best in State” several times
during his advising tenure as
well as Pacemaker recognition.
He can be reached at corrigan@
timesnewspapers.com..
“
If papers refuse
to cover these
topics, they are
being cowardly.
If administrators
remove stories like
these, they are being
irresponsible.
”
Claire Salzman,
Co-Editor-in-Chief
Kirkwood Call
Kirkwood HS
PRESS RIGHTS
erb Jones recalls when local and
actions are reasonably related to legitimate
national news media came to his
pedagogical concerns...”
Messenger Printing in suburban St.
In a harsh dissent, Justice William Brennan
Louis 25 years ago. They were covering the
wrote: “The case before us aptly illustrates
historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling on student
how readily school officials (and courts) can
press rights, the Hazelwood case.
camouflage viewpoint discrimination as the
“We were really in on that case from
‘mere’ protection of students from sensitive
the beginning to the end,” said Jones, the
topics.” Brennan accused the majority of
president of the company and a past mayor.
approving “brutal censorship.”
“We printed the Hazelwood East HS paper so,
An outspoken critic of the Hazelwood
of course, we knew when some pages were
decision, who also sees it as a lesson
removed and that there was a battle going on.”
in censorship, rather than in freedom, is
The pages that were held from the printing
Mary Beth Tinker. Tinker has St. Louis
presses contained stories about high
connections, as does her 1969 free speech
school students handling teen pregnancies
case decided in favor of student rights. The
and divorce in their families. In 1983, The
case originated in a Des Moines, Iowa,
Spectrum was one of many high school
school district.
papers that Messenger Printing set copy for to
The 1969 Tinker ruling by the U.S.
ready the newspapers for printing.
Supreme Court was a triumph for free
“When the Hazelwood case finally was
expression, in contrast to Hazelwood. It
decided in 1988, CBS News and local TV
began when 13-year-old Tinker and her
came to our press ro