News Article:
By Adalene Didier Editor in Chief 8/30/22 School newspapers provide a voice to those who might not have had one before, they allow students to voice their opinions, get the facts out there for specific issues, or just simply bring attention to topics that aren’t often talked about. This is what freedom of the press was always meant for: to allow people to have their voice heard. But what happens when this is taken away?
In Grand Island, Nebraska, just a little under a five hour drive away from Scottsbluff, Northwest High School has lost their entire journalism program, this means all the classes and the newspaper will be gone from this year on. But what are the possible reasons for a school to get rid of their journalism program? For many schools the most common reasons include: lack of funding, low student body interest, and not enough staff members. Though none of these seem to be the case for Northwest High School. After 54 years of publishing the Vikings Saga has come to an end after their June issue, where three stories were deemed too controversial. Two of them were opinion articles titled “The “Don’t Say Gay” Bill: Making students existing controversial” and “Science of Gender” like any other opinion article, they included a mix of facts and the writer’s own personal opinion on the topics. The third article was a news story called “Pride and prejudice: LGBTQIA+” all about the origin of pride month (June) and the history of homophobia. There has not been an official statement as to why this happened, but an email from a staff member to the The Independent stated they needed to cancel the printing of the last issue “because the school board and superintendent are unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.” Though, this isn’t the first time the Viking Saga has faced backlash from their school, a month prior to the ending of the journalism department, they were told they could only use their names given to them at birth, no preferred names could be used in the bylines of articles. One student in particular on the staff is trans, and for the last June issue, he had to use his dead name. |
Photo Credit: The Independent
Here at Scottsbluff High School in the Echoes, we have a system set up, called prior review, so our principal gets to review everything before we publish it to make sure it’s school appropriate. Schools were given this right of prior review in the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. This helps to prevent anything harmful or hurtful from being published, though our opinions have never been shut down.
We ourselves have published quite a few articles that could be viewed as controversial such as “Sexualizing Females” or “Finding Acceptance,” which are just two examples of many. The only suggestions we get back have been to reword a couple sentences or include reliable facts. Systems like this help save publications, without taking away their voice on any subjects. Vikings Saga, it is sad to see another publication suffer so much, everyone here at the Echoes sympathizes with you and your loss of your journalism department. This entire situation might even be turned into another one of many legal cases focused on how far freedom of speech or freedom of the press can go inside of schools. Hopefully a solution can be found so that all is not lost and maybe the Vikings Saga can come back. |