Legal misgivings

Mark Goodman nails it, “It’s just plain wrong.”

Too often, in American jurisprudence, the legal dance that purposefully takes place has more to do with the passage of time, the death or eventual disinterest of the parties involved, and eventual placement of inordinate amounts of time between the event and the review and decision related to those events.

As such, the issue -be it First amendment Rights (this case) or sexual abuse of children (Maryland -indeed, the nation)- becomes secondary to some arcane and too-often rigid allegiance to a technicality.

Shame on the lawyers and judges that propagate such dances!

Michael, at 10:30 am EDT on July 30, 2007

what mistake in the law?

Michael, After reading the decision, I am unsure as to exactly how you figure it is “wrong.” First, the court did not reach the merits. Secondly, federal courts generally will not adjudicate moot or unripe point (with the exception of some thing that inherently evade review yet will repeat.)

While censorship is a very dangerous thing, it is unclear how the court disregarded the law on when courts can rule on these issues.

Larry, at 12:45 pm EDT on July 30, 2007

Jacob, The “staff advisor” issue ongoing controversy, which has no clear resolution at the moment. It is easy to call someone incompetent, but there is no consensus as to how to resolve the issue whether a dismissal of an advisor was pretexual or not. Whatever the case, documenting incompetence over time will allow schools to at least support any such decisions.

Finally, the constitution does allow for a bit of strongarming every now and then. (I.e. prisoners can strongarm prisons into providing them with religious materials (even if the religion isn’t Christianity) and medical care. So, that part of your argument does not fly.

Larry, at 1:30 pm EDT on July 30, 2007

Is there a way for the publication to be the plaintiff, rather than, or in addition to, the individual students? The editor may graduate but the paper continues, and remains subject to censorship by the defendants.

If it is necessary for the paper to incorporate as a nonprofit in order to have legal standing, an umbrella organization which makes it cheap and simple for student publications to file the required paperwork might be a way to help preserve a free press on campus.

Meredith, at 4:10 pm EDT on July 30, 2007

Loss for the Student Press

Note to students: Make sure at least one first-year journalism student is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. That way, he or she will be more likely to still be enrolled when these dimwitted judges hear their case — and the case would therefore not be “moot.”

This decision should be appealed and hopefully the judges will be strongly criticized for making such a boneheaded decision.

Allan, Newspaper adviser, at 9:15 pm EDT on July 30, 2007

Apparently no one wants to just come out and say what this case is really all about, so I’ll sum it up for you. I was a K-State journalism student at the time, but had no direct ties to the issue at hand (in other words, access without agenda).

Once upon a time, a multicultural group at K-State held an event on campus, didn’t issue a press release, and just expected the student newspaper to show up and give it front-page coverage. When that didn’t happen, they threw a fit and called the publication racially insensitive.

The paper apologized for not covering an event they weren’t told about (and even if they were, who said they had to give it coverage?), but I guess an apology wasn’t good enough. Eventually the group started calling for Ron Johnson to be fired.

The university’s administration, not wanting to be perceived as racially insensitive themselves, caved to the pressure, but they had no way to get rid of Johnson because he had NO prior negative job performance evaluations, but he instead had many awards given to the paper in the past year alone. So, with the help of the legal system-savvy director Todd Simon, they cooked up a bogus “content review” that could say whatever they wanted it to say because there were no objective criteria from which to base an unbiased conclusion.

With their new-found justification in hand, the university “reassigned” Ron Johnson and became heroes to their minority student recruits — or so they’d like to believe.

This action may not have been about the First Amendment necessarily, but it certainly was about politics, pure and simple, and a good journalism program’s reputation was all but destroyed as a result.

Remind me to throw a fit to the K-State administration the next time my on-campus underwater basket weaving club’s annual conference doesn’t receive any mention in the Collegian. Go Cats.

Anon, at 4:20 am EDT on July 31, 2007

Snide comments, incomplete info

Anon above provides incomplete and misleading information about the case at hand. To wit:

“Remind me to throw a fit to the K-State administration the next time my on-campus underwater basket weaving club’s annual conference doesn’t receive any mention in the Collegian. Go Cats.”

The conference at question drew approx. 1,000 students from across the Big 12 conference for a minority leadership summit. Hardly the “underwater basket weaving club” as Anon suggests.

This does not excuse what K-State’s administration did with Ron Johnson, but Anon’s comments make light of an event that apparently was more than just “another meeting.”

Anon2, at 3:55 pm EDT on August 1, 2007

@Anon2: I guess we have different opinions as to what is newsworthy and demands mandatory coverage. There are leadership summits, diversity forums, recruiting events, large conferences and even cheerleading camps that occur week-in and week-out on campus; few receive any news coverage from any area outlet. Objectively, the event in question is hardly more important or more newsworthy than any of those other events.

It was “just another meeting,” as you so aptly put it.

I realize you may consider a 1,000-attendee meeting a big thing, but you must understand, K-State regularly hosts gatherings of thousands of people.

And how do you know my underwater basket weaving club doesn’t have a membership 1,000 strong?

Anon, at 11:30 am EDT on August 7, 2007

Actually, the story is wrong in claiming that Johnson was “dismissed.” He was reassigned. Anyone who works at the University, according to contract, is subject to being assigned to new positions as the administration sees fit. I realize that this may be only a matter of semantics, but I think “dismissed” is an overly dramatic simplification of the situation.

Another point: It must be stated that there was a recurring pattern of people complaining about the content of the paper over the years, and each time, Johnson was belligerent to complaining readers, always using the First Amendment as an excuse for the paper not doing its job. The minority conference in question was the final straw in a pattern of incompetent advising, and the complaints that were filed about the minority conference were only part of a series of complaints that had surfaced over the years. Each time, stock answer was: WE HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO DO AS WE PLEASE. The reality of the situation is that while the Collegian’s rights are not in question, the First Amendment is a rather hollow document if we do not also include the fact that along with press freedom comes SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. Whether the Collegian failed to cover the minority conference, or other important stories, such as the search for a new University provost (another colossal oversight that occurred that semester), they had the right to do so, but if we teach that the First Amendment alone is the sole determinant of effective coverage, excluding other aspects of responsible journalism such as serving our audiences and the responsibilities that accompany the First Amendment, we have failed as educators.

Another point not raised in the story: The Collegian used to print a daily transcript of comments made to a “sound off” phone service, where people could anonymously post comments about any issue on campus. The Monday after the minority conference was held, the column carried a statement made about how the Student Union “smelled of fried chicken and watermelon” over the weekend (apparently a slur referring to the fact that most of the attendees of the conference were African American). Again, did the Collegian have a right to print that? Of course. Should they have printed it? Was printing those comments the socially responsible thing to do?

Another fact: There was a series of meetings following the initial concerns raised about the Collegian’s lack of coverage of the minority conference. Johnson refused to attend the initial meeting, and left his students to fend for themselves against angry campus minority groups. When another meeting was held later in the week, Johnson attended, but in his usual belligerent manner, he told the crowd that that the Collegian had a right to print or not to print whatever it wanted. Again, that is true. But if we teach students that they don’t have to be sensitive to the needs of their audiences, and if we teach that the First Amendment is the sole framework by which we make editorial decisions, then we have only half educated our students. He could have avoided all the controversy had he just said, “We are sorry for this oversight, and this will not happen again.” That is something we have all had to do in media management roles form time to time.

Yes, Johnson had had good evaluations preceding this incident, and the abrupt shift in reassigning his duties may seem inconsistent and heavy handed with previous evaluations. But there was no First Amendment abridgment here (as the District Court originally ruled) and in the final analysis, Johnson and his two editors have no one to blame but themselves (and their inflated egos) for the fallout.

FACTCHECK, at 11:15 am EDT on August 13, 2007