Understanding Hosty v. Carter

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in the case of Hosty v. Carter that public universities enjoy the right to censor content in student newspapers via prior restraint. The decision, handed down June 20, has caused no small modicum of controversy and appears ripe for review by the Supreme Court.

While the case was brought to my attention shortly after it was decided, I must admit that I never came to fully ponder its issues until earlier this week when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interviewed me for an as-yet unpublished story on the case. And my reaction, despite my being very much entangled in the world of college journalism, seems to have surprised both the newspaper's reporter and a few of the people with whom I have spoken since.

First, I should take this opportunity to point out that The Badger Herald, the paper for which I have worked since my freshman year of college and for which I now serve as Editor in Chief, is somewhat of a rarity insofar as it is an independent student newspaper. This is to say that we receive no help whatsoever from the university in any fiscal sense - our advertising revenues cover printing costs, rent, payroll, the soda machine in the office and even our company car. We have only two relationships with the school: the entirety of the staff (with one exception) is enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, and UW allows us to distribute our daily paper on campus - a luxury also afforded to local professional newspapers.

And perhaps this is why I have no sympathy for those bemoaning the 7th circuit's decision. It merely seems hypocritical to rely on someone for your very livelihood but to then deny them all control over the product you create. Newspapers funded by public (or private) universities requesting independence from school censorship are essentially asking that their cash flow have no strings attached. But, alas, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The thing people so often fail to grasp about the First Amendment, I have oftentimes noted, is that while it provides an entitlement to speak, it does not provide any such entitlement to be heard. We are all free to become street corner prophets, but those requiring funding for their voice to get out are beholden to that very source of that funding. Such is the nature of a capitalist environment.

That said, I would seriously question the motives of any university that might seize upon this decision. While it legally makes plentiful sense, the practical application of such censorship is plainly abhorrent. It is one thing to have advisors perusing newspapers for libel, factual errors and poorly structured arguments - it is altogether another thing to have them in the business of strategic censorship. Schools ought to encourage a broad marketplace of ideas. And censoring a newspaper hardly seems a means to accomplishing such a goal.

***

Finally, on a personal note, this is my first blog entry in nearly a year. This is a blog I started in earnest last summer and gave up on when I returned to UW for my junior year. I am hoping to get back in the habit of blogging and would encourage any readers out there to check back every few days - I have plenty to say and this seems like a fine forum to express some of those views.