Founder of Black College Wire News Service

Pearl Stewart comments on the seizure of the Script and the dilemma faced by the journalism students attending private universities, where the universityís ability to censure the newspaper is greater than at public universities. Hampton Universityís journalism program is supported by an endowment from the Scripps Howard Foundation and is housed in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications.

by Dawn Withers

Pearl Stewart is the director of Career Development Services in the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication at Florida A&M; University. She also chairs the Black College Communication Association, an organization of communications programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. With the support of the Knight Foundation, Stewart founded Black College Wire, a student news service. She can be reached at pearl.stewart@famu.edu.

On Oct. 22, 2003 the president of Hampton University confiscated the homecoming issue of the Script, the universityís newspaper, after the student editors refused to run the presidentís letter addressing the universityís cafeteria health code violations. The paper is funded through the university and through money generating through advertising. The university allots a certain amount of the budget for the paper. One week later, Hamptonís acting president and provost, JoAnn Haysbert, told students that ìit is not within my purview to change the institutional model on which this outstanding paper was founded.î Haysbert also added three faculty to the task force. The institutional model of the paper is that itís not run under any department and students from any major may report and write for the paper. As part of the original agreement between the newspaper and administration, the editors of the Script agreed to run the presidentís letter if a task force was established to assess the role of the student newspaper on the campus.

Q: What do you think about the seizing of the Script at Hampton University after the student editors refused to print a front-page letter from the college president about cafeteria health code violations?
I am the founder of Black College Wire and weíve been carrying all this information first because the Hampton students contribute to this wire. I was informed about this by the editor of Black College Wire because he was in touch with [the students at Hampton] and they contacted him on Wednesday [Oct. 22] when they were waiting for the papers to be taken away and the message was forwarded to me. I was familiar with the students to begin with. I think itís an unfortunate situation that students who were really working hard doing a good job of reporting the news were placed in an unfortunate situation, where they had to run the letter on the front. The editors chose not to place it there and itís unfortunate that they were forced to place it there. Q: Would you consider this censorship?
Absolutely. I described this on Black College Wire about how I think this is censorship because the paper has to be approved by people representing the administration and obviously when the administration doesnít like something this is what happens. Itís a private school but these are students learning to be journalists and they canít be held to a different set of rules. This diminishes the credibility of the paper, many private institutions adhere to the First Amendment because they want to the students to learn to be good journalists. Even if they donít have to adhere to the First Amendment, they want the students to write freely. Itís a very clear example of censorship that needed to be highlighted because sometimes administrators at private school do this and get away with it. Q: Is there a tendency toward more journalistic censorship at black colleges than other colleges?
I surveyed a number of schools related to other newspaper issues and often the newspapers werenít being supported by administration because the administrators didnít wanted the papers to have an independent voice. To be fair, I didnít do a survey that compared the black schools to other institutions so I donít know. The Black College Communication Association had a First Amendment summit in 2000 and the findings were published in Chronicle of Higher Education in March 2000. Some of the campuses have administrators who are sensitive to what they see as negative publicity and are less interested in having student media on the campus because of a concern about negative press. For that reason someone in public relations or someone appointed by the president had to read the paper before it was published. This occurred at both private and public black schools. Sometimes the papers were being shut down; other times they just werenít being supported financially. There were some instances when administrators didnít want crime covered in the newspaper. To suppress that information doesnít help anyone and it doesnít help the students who attend the school. You can see it in the boomerang effect of what happened at Hampton ñ national and international attention not only to censorship but to the roach problem that the health inspectors found in the cafeteria. Q: This case doesnít seem to have any overt indication of this being a racial or diversity issue. Is there some implicit message here, maybe some sort of conflict between the administration and paper?
These are good journalism students that have a future in journalism. If they are prevented from practicing the craft in the way that it should be practiced and they are being told to write for a public relations publications instead of a newspaper, that will damage their prospects for working as a journalists. We certainly donít need students who have promising futures being misled about how newspapers should be written and edited. The other thing is sometimes these experiences are hard for students. It makes them not want to do journalism and what these students went through there was a lot of pressure so some of them may decide to take their skills elsewhere. I doní think so, I doní t think they will do this but we donít want to discourage our students. I think they need to know what the rights of journalists are. Q: What kind of message, if any, is this sending to young journalists of color?
There is a silver lining here: it has as led to some progress in figuring out some changes they need to make in the way the newspaper is published at Hampton and in other schools where students are wrestling with these problems. Q: There has been talk about the possible cessation of funding to Hampton from journalism organizations because donors feel this is a blatant attack against the First Amendment. Is this the gravest consequence to journalism at Hampton?
I do think that is a concern that many funders have. They certainly would be concerned about putting funds into a program for journalism and later finding out that everything the students are working on has to be approved by the administration. Why not have that program some place where there wonít be those problems? Q: What is the solution to this situation?
They ran a disclaimer saying they didnít want to run the letter but wanted to resolve this problem. That is unfortunate because it wasnít a strong journalistic decision. The placement of the letter on page one was a sad conclusion. I understand why they did it to bring an end to the situation. They had no choice other than not to have a newspaper [for that issue]. I think thereís progress in the settlement but it is not what I would have wanted to see.