EDUCOMUNICAÇÃO

Dificuldades do jornalismo escolar nos EUA

Na sua habitual coluna no diário Los Angeles Times, o especialista de media David Shaw comenta mais um caso recente de penalização da responsável por um jornal escolar na escola secundária de Troy, Fullerton, por publicar um artigo que os responsáveis da instituição consideraram inaceitável. Segundo dados compilados por Shaw, a redução do leque de assuntos que é possível abordar nos jornais escolares tem vindo a estreitar-se nos últimos anos.
Alguns excertos:
"Censorship of high school papers and disciplining of their editors and reporters are at an all-time high, triggered by a growing disdain for the media in general and by increased pressure on school administrators to "present the right image to the community" in response to mounting budget cuts and federal- and state-mandated educational standards, says Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va. (...)
Goodman says attempts to limit the kinds of stories that school newspapers can publish have increased dramatically ever since a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that high school administrators in suburban St. Louis had the right to censor stories about pregnancy and the effects of divorce on children. He says many school administrators "misread the Hazelwood decision to say that students no longer had any 1st Amendment protection. That's absolutely not what the court said."
"Indeed, the court ruling said schools had to present a reasonable educational justification for censorship. Among those justifications could be stories that were "ungrammatical, poorly written, inadequately researched, biased or prejudiced, vulgar or profane, or unsuitable for immature audiences." Stories could also be censored if they could "associate the school with anything other than neutrality on matters of political controversy or if they "might reasonably be perceived to advocate drug or alcohol use, irresponsible sex or conduct otherwise inconsistent with the 'shared values of a civilized social order.' "