High school students don’t know much about the First Amendment, and that’s worrisome because of what it says about news and the next generation.
High school kids don’t seem to understand the role of the news media. Quite a few of them think that the press is “reporting against the government,” and consider that a bad thing.
Seventy-five percent think – incorrectly – that it’s against the law to burn the U.S. flag. Students (83 percent) are less likely than adults (95 percent) to think that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions or that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories (51 percent of students and 70 percent of adults agree).
But in an area more familiar to high school students, they’re more likely (70 percent) than adults (59 percent) or school authorities (43 percent) to think “musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics others may find offensive.”
These numbers come from a study called “Future of the First Amendment,” released early this year. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, it surveyed more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 principals and administrators at 544 high schools across the country.
Its findings, say principal investigators David Yalof and Kenneth Dautrick of the University of Connecticut, “are not encouraging.”
One of the things I do in semi-retirement is to wander from place to place participating in semi-learned discussions about the state of journalism. One of these was April 21 at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. The topic was “First Amendment First,” and it included students and journalists. All expenses paid. No honorariums.
One of the many participants raised the point about high school students thinking reporting is “against the government.” It sounds startling at first – a traitorous press. But on reflection, it may not be so out of place.
The press is always reporting what’s wrong. It considers that its highest calling.
Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief of staff, was quoted in the April 20 Washington Post saying something similar, something that might surprise his conservative acolytes. Of the press, he said, “I think it’s less liberal than it is oppositional.” Journalists are mostly interested, he said, in being a “constant thorn” to those in power, “whether they are Republican or Democrat.”
There is much truth in that.
By putting so much emphasis on problems, the news media may have lowered expectations so much that we have changed the definition of news. In press and public perception, it has become news (that is, unusual) when things work the way they should.
Journalists tend to measure their successes by how well they reveal the failures of others. They scoff at the criticism as “shooting the messenger” and say journalism just needs to be more aggressive.
Being tougher couldn’t hurt. But people also want reason to hope that things can improve. And looking for hopeful signs should be part of journalism’s search for the whole truth.
Another study, commissioned by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, found that just 19 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds read a newspaper daily; 12 percent said they “never” get their news from the printed page. Every day, though, 37 percent watch local television news, and 44 percent said they visit a news site on the Web.
Judging from the WKU crowd, though, they’re not big on blogs. When students were asked how many regularly read these online diaries, only a few hands went up.
That is surprising information about news and the next generation. As is this: When Yalof, the “Future of the First Amendment” researcher, remarked that people may not know what’s happening in the world’s trouble spots but they know that Britney Spears is pregnant, one of the students sitting in front of me seemed to jump. “What?!” he whispered to his pal. “Britney’s pregnant?!”
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
