Settlement Gives Student Editors More Autonomy

Student journalists at Cal State Northridge will gain increased editorial autonomy under the terms of settlement of a First Amendment lawsuit that had been filed by a former newspaper editor at the university, prominent legal figures said Tuesday.

The agreement, which arose from a 1987 suit by former Daily Sundial news editor James Taranto, includes more specific guidelines for circumstances under which students must consult with the Daily Sundial’s publisher, who is a faculty member.

Previously, student editors were required to consult on anything considered controversial, including questions of taste, ethics or news content. Under the new policy, students are required to seek approval only when material is potentially libelous, invades an individual’s privacy or includes obscenity.

‘Great Victory’

“The settlement is a great victory for free speech,” said Taranto, who was joined at a Washington news conference by an unlikely alliance of former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, a conservative, and liberal Morton Halperin, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which acted as co-counsel for Taranto.

“What we have goes beyond my case and is a general statement of the principle that students working on the paper are free to express their views and need not fear censorship from the faculty.”

University journalism instructors, who deny that Taranto or any other students have been censored, downplayed the significance of the changes in the policy of the Sundial, which serves as a laboratory and teaching tool as well as the campus newspaper.

“The newly incorporated language clarifying the decision-making responsibilities of the student editor is consistent with Sundial tradition,” Michael Emery, chairman of CSUN’s journalism department, said in a prepared statement. “The case can be considered one of those legal quirks because it stemmed from a classroom dispute and not the censorship of material.”

Nevertheless, Emery predicted that the settlement will prompt other college newspapers statewide “to take a look at their policies or create one.”

Taranto filed his lawsuit after he was suspended from his editing duties for two weeks in 1987. The suspension occurred after he wrote an opinion-page column defending publication of a cartoon in UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, that had triggered outrage by ridiculing the school’s affirmative action admission program.

Taranto also reprinted the cartoon, which depicted a college student speaking with a rooster. When the student asked how the rooster gained admission to UCLA, the bird replied: “Affirmative action.”

Cynthia Rawitch, the Sundial’s publisher and an assistant professor of journalism, said Taranto was suspended for two weeks because he had violated the paper’s policy of consulting with her about controversial materials. The cartoon, she said, clearly fell into this category because it had already proven inflammatory at UCLA.

Taranto, 23, who is now a public relations associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, claimed that he was punished for his conservative political views. He said his case is tied to controversies that conservative periodicals have precipitated at campuses nationwide, including Vassar College, Dartmouth College and Yale University.

Meese, who is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Tuesday, “I think this is an indication of why we have to maintain freedom of expression so it doesn’t just apply to the ‘in group’ of the university.”

Halperin, meanwhile, said the ACLU had agreed to take Taranto’s case when his appeal was rejected by CSUN because “we were outraged, as he was, at the attempts to censor the press.”

Claims Denied

CSUN’s Emery and Rawitch denied that Taranto was penalized for his political views. They said the university acted solely because the former student violated accepted policy.

The settlement, reached during negotiations between Emery, Rawitch and Taranto’s attorneys, calls for removal of any reference to disciplinary action against Taranto from university records and for payment to him of $93 in salary that he lost while suspended.

Taranto’s claims for renumeration for mental pain and suffering and punitive damages were dropped. The ACLU had also sought an editorial policy that required no consultation with the paper’s publisher, Emery said. University instructors, citing the paper’s status as a teaching tool and its lack of independent libel insurance, held out for guidelines that covered publication of materials that could result in lawsuits.

Despite the settlement, little is likely to change as far as the consultation process with the publisher is concerned, according to Dean Oesterle, editor-in-chief of the 10,000-circulation Sundial.

“I think Taranto’s allegations that this is a very censored paper or very restricted are completely out of line,” said Oesterle, a senior from Canoga Park. “I don’t see great gains with this new policy.”