School Newspaper Censored, Volunteer Fired
By Caitlin Clinard

A respected journalism professor now has a little more time on his hands. That’s because he was fired as a volunteer advisor of a local, middle-school newspaper. It all started when administrators pulled a story about a fight between a bus driver and a student.

The first amendment clearly states that Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. So did Smith Middle School violate the first amendment by censoring its student newspaper? Spokeswoman for the school board, Stephanie Knott, says she doesn’t think so.

“School employees have a very important responsibility to preserve student privacy…there are a lot of pieces of information that they are entrusted with everyday, she said,” Knott said.

Administrators said the story contained legal information regarding the incident and they thought the article violated the student’s privacy. They also fired volunteer advisor and UNC-CH professor, Chris Roush. He thinks the whole thing has gotten blown out of proportion.

“We’re talking about a middle school newspaper. We’re talking here about a learning experience for the students. That’s why I was volunteering was to try and encourage them to be better writers and journalists and I think that now they have this real negative experience with the media,” he said.

He’s not the only one who feels bad for the kids. Ph. D. student, Derigan Silver, studies media law and ethics at UNC. He says officials had the legal right to do what they did but he thinks they made a poor decision.

“They’re in a situation where they had a great opportunity to teach their students about what it meant to be a free and responsible press and they just took the heavy-handed approach to censor the newspaper,” he said.