The Hazelwood V. Kulmeier

The Internet has changed the way younger people communicate in a variety of ways. Children and young people use the Internet to learn, communicate, interact socially, innovate, and to keep them entertained by playing games. Children communicate through chat rooms, e-mails, messenger, and by posting comments on their friends’ walls. Some younger people also use the Internet when it comes to homework and doing research. With the entire social action-taking place behind the computer screen, many people are concerned with the lack of social skills among young people. The Internet is the main problem to not being able to converse with people when it comes to face-to-face interaction. Young people get so comfortable with communicating behind technology

The Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier case is about students who were apart of Journalist II class at Hazelwood East High School who were in charge of writing and editing the school’s paper The Spectrum. Two of the article that was submitted for publication contained stories on teenage pregnancy and divorce. The teenage pregnancy article was about actual pregnancy students who shared their experiences. To protect themselves, their names were changed. The divorce article was about a girl who blamed her father’s actions for her parent’s divorce. Unfortunately, the school principal felt that the topics were inappropriate for a school paper. He felt that the father in the divorce article should be informed of the article and how he should be given the opportunity to comment. He also stated how changing the names of the girls in the teenage pregnancy article will not protect their anonymity and how this topic is not suitable for young adults. He prohibited these article from being published in the newspaper. The student journalists then went to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri declaring that their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech had been disregarded. The United States District decided that their rights had not been violated in any way. The students then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which turned around, stating that the student’s won and their rights had been violated. This court case helps us understand how media law, in my opinion should not meddle with other’s journalism. People use journalism to express their opinions freely. If the principal was going pull those two articles then he should have pulled the entire newspaper because it was not fair to those who worked hard on the articles. This case not only sets an example for us, but for other school