Aug

3

First Amendment News Update

Filed Under free speech, news | 2 Comments

A couple of First Amendment news stories for you:

Florida has now joined Missouri, Montana, Indiana and Pennsylvania in banning inmates from having pen-pals. State officials say it’s for the good of the public, but there are now lawsuits challenging the state for encroaching on the prisoners’ first amendment rights.

Student journalists at Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pa., are contesting a policy that will require their student-run newspaper to be approved by the principal before publication. “We have such a strong responsibility to serve the students, teachers, administrators and all the community members, and we feel that’s our charge,” said Henry Rome, who was the paper’s editor-in-chief until graduating in June. “That will be taken away if the policy is enacted.”

Also, charges have been dropped in a lawsuit against MySpace filed by an Alaskan high school principal to find out who created a fake page using her name. The two students who created the page ultimately confessed and were punished, although the details of their punishment have not been disclosed.

OK, that’s it for your Monday news roundup. I’m still recovering from the Portland Zine Symposium. The new issue of Zine World should be out soon, so if you have any news for the Word of Mouth section, send it our way! We’re interested in new distros, zine libraries, zine events, and any other zine news that you’d like to share! wordofmouth@undergroundpress.org


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2 Comments so far

  1. Jack Cheiky on August 19, 2009 4:53 pm

    none of the items listed above have anything to do with free speech. it does a disservice to the 1st amendment when real issues of free speech get upstaged by, and muddied up with this kind of stuff. these issues deserve their own forum, but not under the heading of free speech. having said that, the positive byproduct of this type discussion is it prompts the scrutinizing of just exactly where do we draw that line, which every generation needs to be involved in.

    j

  2. admin on September 6, 2009 6:00 pm

    I didn’t write this post, but I would argue that the second one is definitely a First Amendment issue, as it could directly lead to censorship of the student paper.