2011년 3월 1일 화요일

The true meaning of student newspaper?

            As a member of Minjok Herald, KMLA's student newspaper, I was quite interested with Michael Moore's proposals: let's spread out our own opinions freely and go against adult's world! He says students and young people can join this by participating his 'Highschool Newspaper'. It seemed like a very attractive option for us at the first place. However, there are some problematic points in Moore's arguments. 
             The most fundamental question is as to whether student has a right and responsibility to freely criticize and go against government. Michael Moore says that children, teenagers, and students should freely stand up and make out their voices being heard by the government. He praises the students in Cairo, Wisconsin, or wherever, that made their own decisions and the decisions were significant enough to change bigger changes. However, he is neglecting that student's main role is 'to study', not 'to fight'. Of course, if there are some problems around this society, students can deliver their opinions and voices to adults, and it can make some changes in the status quo. I acknowledge that point. But if this goes way too far, and if the students start to neglect 'studying', it would be a serious problem. What happens if students are only concerned about the matters outside the school, and always talk about worldwide political, economic and diplomatic issues? What Moore's suggesting is to letting them join his own online newspaper, but this can lead students neglecting their major job - studying.  
            Another problem that Moore's proposal contains is that he does not teach how 'censorship' really works. You may argue that 'censorship' is bad and should be abandoned; however, censorship is indeed necessary in some cases. For example, some information that contains excessive violence, pornography or military secret are categorized into the area of 'censorship'. And student needs to know that censorship is sometimes necessary for the greater social good. But Moore doesn't seem to care about censorship: he just want students to freely make their opinions on whatever issues, and collect them, and post them on his online newspaper. In real world, for example, the articles of Minjok Herald are written by student writers and editorialists, and some of them are 'censored' by editors and teachers, because some articles can be somewhat controversial and harmful to the school and the students themselves. This proper censorship is always taking place behind the publication of newspapers. However, Moore's proposal is just to collect young people's idea freely and spread them without any kind of filtering process. This is very dangerous.
               Of course, I strongly agree that students, young teenagers should make their voices louder and try to make some changes. Young generation's feedbacks and criticism could be very beneficial for the society. However, if Moore really wants to implement his plan, then he should promise that students will not neglect their major role - 'studying' - and learn some necessary filtering and censorship process as well.

Motion:
1. THBT student newspaper must deal with political issues
2. THBT censorship does more harm than good to student journalism
3. THBT Michael Moore's Highschool Newspaper should be abolished

댓글 1개:

  1. Good writing - nice persuasive tone and balanced content. I'm interested in your opinions on censorship since you do have experience with the school paper. I think you guys have a fair amount of freedom, and you do take a middle road on the issue. Debate motions - number 1 is a bit vague. Number 2 is good. Number 3 - haha. A bit hard to debate but interesting.

    Good post.

    답글삭제