Taboo

For several years, I worked as the newspaper adviser in a Catholic high school in the south. It was an amazingly unique experience because although I didn't have many of the same legal rights as the public schools, I was given the trust of the administration (at least for a while) to ensure the responsible journalistic tactics of my students--so long as they wrote nothing in conflict with Catholic teaching. This actually proved to be less difficult than one might expect considering that there isn't much that's in conflict with Catholic teaching. Another huge bonus: we could write about religion!

There is a list as long as your arm about what administrators cringe at when you talk about publishing an article about something (i.e. sex, drugs, suicide, etc.) but religion has got to be one of the biggest brain busters. Religious discussion in public school has led to all sorts of controversy, lawsuits, hurt feelings, threats, fear of certain phrases and pieces of clothing...you name it. And in my school, it was all virtually moot. Granted, the school went at everything from a Catholic angle, but it was unashamedly willing to inquire about beliefs outside of its own. The benefit the students had was that without having to worry about giving preference to one religion over another (Catholic was obviously going to win out) and despite having that angle, students produced some pretty thought-provoking material that rivaled many professional papers.

Perhaps one of our biggest fears in scholastic journalism is being TOO open--or simply trying so hard to be "fair and balanced" that you lose any sense of the depth of a story. Having an angle that doesn't have to justify its bias simply because it's a cultural given is not always a bad thing. In fact, I think it's kinda cool. Maybe we need more bias sometimes--as long as that bias isn't shrouded in some idea that there isn't a bias to begin with. Know thyself...and then try to figure out everyone else.