Spokane7
59°Quick links: 2012 graduating seniors • Summer camp guide • Jobs: The Road Ahead • Prep sports • News quiz
Item No. 1: Sex column causes stir at University of Montana/Missoulian A University of Montana law professor has taken her concerns about a weekly sex column in the student-run newspaper, the Montana Kaimin, to top school administrators. Professor Kristen Juras wrote a letter last week to UM President George Dennison and School of Journalism Dean Peggy Kuhr, requesting that they meet with the Kaimin editorial staff to “ask them to reconsider their publication of this column.”
Item No. 2: Student sues college after being barred from showing pro-life display/KHQ: The official complaint Sheeran filed in court states that when Sheeran and the Spokane Falls Christian Fellowship wanted to hold a pro-life event at the College on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the College refused to allow the event. Court documents say the College told Sheeran and SFCF “that their pro-life display was ‘offensive’ and ‘discriminatory.’”
Question: Should both of these situations be protected by the First Amendment? One of them? Neither of them?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
Main switchboard: (509) 459-5000 • (800) 338-8801
Newsroom: (509) 459-5400 • (800) 789-0029
Customer service: (800) 338-8801
© Copyright 2012, The Spokesman-Review
Terms of use • Privacy policy • Copyright policy
Find DFO on Facebook
DFO on Twitter
cantyoureadthesigns on March 12 at 1:45 p.m.
Both.
Charlie on March 12 at 1:49 p.m.
Both protected!
Sisyphus on March 12 at 1:56 p.m.
Time place and manner restrictions should and will apply. Certainly the law professor’s objections are curiously misplaced on the sex column. I very much doubt the risk of children picking up and reading a college newspaper are more than them picking up and reading a Cosmo in the store check out aisle.
Its not specified on what the pro-life display would depict, but I can guess. Those graphic photos are meant to be mightily disturbing and I can see where you may wanna restrict them from people of tender years. But the objections to it are pretty vague. I just don’t know enough to say yea or nay on that one but I’d certainly err on allowing it.
cantyoureadthesigns on March 12 at 2:10 p.m.
BTW, I think the graphic display of aborted fetuses and such is counterproductive to the stated goal of anti-abortion groups to get people to change their minds about abortion. Pictures of cute babies, and parents doting over them, smiling, would be more effective, IMHO.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=anne%20babies&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Liz on March 12 at 4:45 p.m.
Both are protected. I am not thrilled about the sex column..but we are talking adults here.
Remember the cornerstone of free speech: I may not agree with what you say, but I agree with your right to say it.
Liz on March 12 at 4:48 p.m.
I would add too, that so many conservatives want to clamp down on the freedom of speech of groups that they feel are a threat, never realizing that the same thing could be turned back on them.
‘Course the same thing goes for liberals: with that radio act that a lot of people I knew in Christian circles were freaking out about, I had to wonder how long it would last once the NPR crowd realized that it works both ways: they’d have to have folks on whose views make them want to throw up a little in their mouths. I wasn’t really too worried…