Beyond reporting, a mess at Emerald Ridge

TWO years ago, high-school journalism teachers were pushing for a bill sponsored by Rep. Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, to give control over high-school newspapers to the students.

We opposed the bill, which didn't pass, and we thought of it when reading Thursday about the mess at Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup.

Last February, the JagWire, the student newspaper there, published a story about student sexual experiences. Student reporters had written the story, which quoted interview subjects by name. Four of the subjects, three girls and a boy, said they had not given consent to use their names, and that they had been jeered and harassed. Parents of two of the girls have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tacoma in the name of all four students against the Puyallup School District.

According to press reports, the School District says the four students did give permission to use their names, so they have nothing to complain about.

We don't know whether they did or didn't. But we say again it is a risky thing to give legal control of a high-school newspaper to students. Upthegrove's bill would have allowed a principal to edit copy only to avoid libel and violations of a school district's policy, a loophole that might have allowed common sense to prevail here. The bill also would have made the student editors legally responsible in case of a lawsuit, whatever that means.

We said at the time that high-school papers are vehicles for teaching, and school districts should remain responsible for what is in them. The reporters and editors are students. Most high-school students are not legally adults.

The instructor in Puyallup — the adult here — should have known that a story of student sexual escapades was pregnant with liability, and that reporters' assurances that everything was fine were not to be relied on — not for that kind of story.

None of this is to deny that some high-school principals spike stories in school papers merely because they make the school, or its administrators, look bad.

A principal may still think like a principal even when wielding the power of a publisher. But somebody has to have that power, and the Puyallup story shows why it is hazardous to delegate it to high-school students.