Free Speech has strings attached

[Swimmy]

Free speech has strings attached

Funny, there were comments for this section. Guess donna and company didn't agree with the sentiment and chose to delete it.

So much for their "whether we agree or disagree is immaterial" mantra, eh?

[dgriffin]

Swimmy, I agree

Other points, on one issue:

From the article: "It’s a thorny issue (censorship), especially in a public school setting..."

No, it's not a thorny issue. It is not an issue of freedom of the press when children are hopefully under the authority and direction of a parent-appointed and paid-for school system. Bottom line: Kids can't swear in the school newspaper. Period. That's true when an administrator is running the school, rather than the inmates.

The kids can be taught a bit of entrepreneurial spirit by suggesting they not use the taxpayer-provided facilities, but rather pool their own money to produce any kind of newspaper they would like ... just like free citizens in the real world. Any endeavor with less personal responsibility cheats the student out of a valuable lesson.

On the issue of comment sections: If liability is truly an issue, DD might give some thought to completely "off shoring" comments. She could encourage someone to begin a web site called, "Utica Comments" or some such that deals only with news reports from the various outlets in the Mohawk Valley. She could wash her hands of the whole mess and suggest at the end of each story, "Please feel free to comment at the following website, etc., etc." She would get the benefit of feedback, if that is valuable to her, plus be able to disassociate her newspaper from the comments.

That's what I'd do as an editor. As it stands today, I'd worry about what a sane person would think upon first coming across an online OD article with comments from some of the unfortunates who argue and insult each other on a daily basis. I'd worry about what a prospective advertiser would think of my audience and their capacity to hold a useful thought long enough to hold a job and buy the advertiser's product.

And before I leave the pulpit here, I'd like to repeat something I've said before. While a free press is basic to democracy, it is almost always owned by someone else.

[Swimmy]

I don't disagree, Dave. I just love to laugh at the hypocrisy and irony of the bs she spews and expects people to believe.

[dgriffin]

By the way, what do you think of the Press and the Sun, which I think merged since I lived in the area long ago.

[frankcor]

Did anyone read the guest opinion yesterday's paper about the case involving the high school coach in New Jersey? It never appeared on uticaod.com but it was in the print version. The US Supreme Court recently declined to hear an appeal by the coach who had been prevented from joining a prayer led by his student atheletes. The lower court ruled that the school district was correct in banning the coach's participation because doing so would be perceived as a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

Here is my response to that opinion. I submitted it to the editorial page:

I write in regards to the guest opinion by Mr. Policinski supporting the court decision that upheld a ban on teachers or coaches joining in a student-led prayer. Am I the only one who sees irony in an organization named the First Amendment Center supporting a restriction of a coach’s expression of free speech? I suppose we should be thankful that they have not yet expanded their scope to the remainder of our threatened Bill of Rights.

[dgriffin]

Cases like this make me shake my head. Swimmy could get rich on this kind of fare, if he chose to.

We don't need the courts for this kind of stuff. We need mature adults, a commodity that is increasingly disappearing from the schools. We need a principal who can take a mature teacher aside and explain the meaning of the word sensitivity and that he or she is a public figure and should be careful about what he APPEARS to favor or to not.

The people involved in this case are wasting a lot of other people's tax dollars.

This one is making the Internet rounds lately:

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of others people money."
- Margaret Thatcher