For two semesters, six months now, I’ve been taking our school’s journalism class. In the class, our objective is to research things going on in our school, and our community, and record press about that, whether that be in the form of an article, a podcast, or a video. Although our main focus is our immediate community, we wish to inform about all things that affect not just our students, but our staff, our parents, and also just our overall community; things such as politics, presidential elections, wars, wildfires, and ice storms. Up until now, there were laws that prevented both our students, and our teacher from talking about such topics, let alone create press on it, but not anymore.
Since about 2017 there has been an ongoing movement called the “New Voices Act”. This was mainly composed of students coming to their respective states judiciary committee, and arguing for student journalists to have freedom of speech and press under the first amendment. Up until now there have actually been a few states that have adopted these changes, but about 4/5ths of the states have not, however just recently in Kentucky, it picked up a whole lot of traction.
On 1/7/25 a Bill was introduced to the Senate, which was officially instated two days later on the ninth. This clause was added as a new section to KRS Chapter 158, the section being instated as Senate Bill 40. So far the official title is, “AN ACT relating to student journalist freedom”. The bill essentially says that student journalists are to have full freedom of press, alongside their journalism instructor, and they can not be condemned, nor can they have any form of press that they have made be rejected by the schools administration or authorities, unless they have engaged in any illegal activities in pursuit of the press.
It was decided by the General Assembly of the CommonWealth of Kentucky that a freedom of expression through school sponsored media is a fundamental principle in our democratic granted by the first amendment of the constitution of the United states, and section 1 and 8 of the constitution of Kentucky. Student media advisors and other teachers who defend their students freedom of expression do so at a great professional risk, thus there were protection put in place for the advisors as well so that they shall not be dismissed, suspended disciplined, resigned, transferred or otherwise retailed for refusing to infringe on any content, undertaking any acts compliant with this section, or acting to protect a student journalist engaged in permissible conduct under this section, the first amendment of the United States constitution, or section 1 and 8 of the constitution of Kentucky.
With these new policies adopted, our school’s press is likely to pick up a lot more stories that hopefully our readers will find to their interest. We’re hoping to get more articles out about stuff such as the ongoing fires in Los Angeles and other areas, the extreme snow storm that happened in Lexington, and other areas in the more Eastern part of the United States. Other topics for our journalism team that may be on the table are, presidential policies that our new president has, or plans to instate, ongoing wars such as such as the Israeli-Palestinian war, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Sudanese civil war, and more important news as it arises.
