Freedom of the Press

As a student journalist I should be able to express my true feelings. I feel that if my work is censored I would not be telling the truth. There is something called freedom of the press and censorship limits that. For example, if a piece is written about something that is going on in a school the administration may censor it to protect their school’s reputation. Schools can censor their student journalists because of “a landmark 1988 Supreme Court decision - upholding a Missouri principal’s censorship of an article” (Love, Matt).

This decision was not a good one because students, and everyone in general, should be able to write about what they feel is important and if something is censored then it doesn’t give all the details because its basically protects people from hearing the truth. Censorship can come in many forms, even a title of an article can be rephrased to show a different point of view and mislead the audience.

By not censoring student journalists you are giving a voice to people who might otherwise not have one.The true job of a journalist is to tell the story of people who are to scared to speak on it.

Some might argue that student journalists should be censored because students like to talk about drama, so when they write an article, what they write may hurt someone’s feelings, or may be untrue.The reprocutions to not being censored maybe result in ruining your own reputation as a journalist.