David vs. Goliath: the censor­ship of student news­pa­pers

Mobbing, depres­sion, teen pregnancy, cyber addic­tion – only some of many topics that nowa­days teen­agers are concerned with. Student news­pa­pers are supposed to thema­tize issues that affect young student’s daily lives. Hanna Vasy­l­ieva and Ole Wahls ask: What happens, if the school simply doesn’t want these topics?

2016 in Germany: The German sati­rist Jan Böhmer­mann criti­cized the Turkish presi­dent Erdogan who tried to exert an influence on foreign policy matters. Suddenly, the ​„Böhmer­mann affair“ is on everyone’s lips, inclu­ding those of young students. Peter (name changed) is one of them. He writes an article for his school news­paper in which he analyses the conflict. The only issue: it has never been published. Right before the news­paper was supposed to be released, the school asked Peter to cancel his article. The elusive expl­ana­tion: the topic would be far too sensi­tive to be discussed at school. The school plainly prohi­bited the release of his article. Peter was threa­tened: the news­paper itself and even his school marks would be at risk if the article wasn’t cancelled. A threat that is but one of many examples of how the press freedom of student news­pa­pers are violated, how young peop­le’s human rights are harmed.

Hanna Nyzhnyk, a youth jour­na­list who studies at the Dante Alighieri school in Kiev, explains that she went to the prin­cipal of her school asking for the budget for a student news­paper. But instead of support, the students got rejected without any clear expl­ana­tion: ​„Our school has 900 students and enough budge­ting from the govern­ment, inclu­ding the fees we pay to the school. But we didn’t get anything because nobody agreed to finance us.“ Hanna suspects that the school was afraid of critical reporting about social grie­vances on the campus.

Press freedom: a danger for minors‘ mental health?

In every school’s regu­la­tions in Germany, you can find an article guaran­te­eing the freedom of the students‘ press, which is supposed to iden­tify and discuss the students‘ worries, inte­rests, and expe­ri­ences, and even criti­cize the school’s precepts. This German school regu­la­tion is based on article 19 of the Decla­ra­tion of Human Rights, which both count­ries – Germany and Ukraine – have adopted into national law. That makes the situa­tion abso­lutely clear: every person has the right to express his or her opinion and share it, for example, in the media. The only excep­tion is that it must not harm any human’s safety.

The Ukrai­nian human rights specia­list Sasha Romantsova ties that to the diffe­rent states of a human’s life. Child­hood is gene­rally seen as a very special state, which may result in a diffe­rent appli­ca­tion of some rights. It doesn’t mean neces­s­a­rily that certain rights don’t apply but they may work differ­ently for minors: ​„From the moment when parents bring their kid to the school yard in the morning, they dele­gate respon­si­bi­lity for the child to the school and its teachers. School is then in charge of a child’s physical and mental safety, and they have to protect them from infor­ma­tion that could be dange­rous.“

However: there’s a thin line between infor­ma­tion that poten­ti­ally could hurt minors‘ mental health, and things that school admi­nis­tra­tion simply doesn’t want to be published for diffe­rent reasons. That means, that press freedom in student news­pa­pers should only be rest­ricted in excep­tional cases. ​„Argu­ments for limi­ta­tion should be well-explained, logical and righ­teous“, concludes Romantsova. She believes that there are very few things published by students that should be prohi­bited, only mate­rials that contain any sort of viola­tion of other people’s freedom can’t be published. Other than that, freedom of speech is the right of every human being and an unfounded rest­ric­tion of that is illicit censor­ship.

The way to inde­pen­dence

Some­times, however, limi­ta­tions and rest­ric­tions of how students create their news­paper are not viewed as actual censor­ship: for example, if there is a teacher constantly super­vi­sing the young jour­na­lists – which is mostly the case – it is probable that the students fear to contra­dict, because it might affect their rela­ti­onship with the super­vi­sing teacher. That makes it crucial for students to be inde­pen­dent in mana­ging as well as finan­cing their maga­zine.

The German asso­cia­tion Jugend­presse Deutsch­land e.V. (Youth Press Germany) supports students in these situa­tions with trying to make their news­paper more inde­pen­dent. Accor­ding to Johanna Heger­mann, CEO of the Youth Press State Asso­cia­tion in Hamburg, there are at least ten student editor­ships per year asking for help in beco­ming inde­pen­dent. A possible solu­tion might be the acqui­si­tion of adver­ti­sing partner – in order to gain a finan­cial inde­pen­dence – as well as trans­lo­ca­ting super­vi­sion (if needed) to the students‘ parents instead of teachers, so that the rela­ti­onship would not be based on grades. Heger­mann claims, that inde­pen­dent student news­pa­pers are cruci­ally important: ​„They are essen­tial for demo­cracy in schools: they inves­ti­gate, they inform, and they state opinions. They are streng­thening demo­cracy between young people, which is what we need in a liberal-minded society.“

The Ukrai­nian teacher and ex-editor of an inde­pen­dent school news­paper Khmel Galina says: ​„Students are writing on various topics. From posi­tive feed­back to the most nega­tive. Clash of opinions, criti­ci­zing articles – all this is an important part of a self-actua­liza­tion.“ Students express them­selves through school papers and are supposed to be encou­raged in this, rather than facing rest­ric­tions.