Danger avoided
Connellsville board’s move welcomed
We’re certainly relieved that cooler heads have apparently prevailed and the Connellsville Area School Board will rescind its decision to stop advertising in HeraldStandard.com.
The board made the move at its June 8 meeting, but we’ve been assured the decision will be reversed at its next meeting on June 28.
?We appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in trying to get the board to reverse course because if it had been allowed to stand, the implications would have horrendous, not just for us but for all media outlets that cover any school board in the nation.
Basically, school board member Kevin Lape admitted to making the motion because he was upset over us not endorsing him in the spring primary.
Board member Jim Fabian also commented that he had been waiting to make the move since we didn’t endorse him either.
Due to a variety of factors, we endorsed only one incumbent, that being Fran Mongell, who was the only school board member to vote against the motion to ban advertising with us.
It’s a shame that our endorsement editorials stir such strong feelings.
We mean nothing personal with them. It’s not like we’re trying to curry favor with anyone or build some type of political party.
We’re only trying to get people to think about who they should vote for or against. Whether people agree with us or not is not important. We’re not trying to sway people as much as just trying to get them to take an interest in an election and make an informed decision when they head to the polls.
Sometimes we fear that people react so strongly against our endorsements that it hurts rather than helps the people who we think are the best candidates.
And while some folks think we shouldn’t make endorsements at all, especially in local elections, if we’re going to write local editorials and let people know what we think about major decisions affecting their lives, then how can we not let voters know who we think are the best-qualified candidates to make those decisions.
It’s certainly not easy making endorsements in local elections, but we feel it’s part of our job to inform our readers of what’s going on in their communities.
Unfortunately, Lape even took that a step further, commenting that not only were we wrong in making our endorsements, but we shouldn’t be commenting anything at all concerning school districts.
“The Herald-Standard should stick to selling newspapers, not be involved in what a school district should or shouldn’t be doing,” said Lape.
Well, that would be news to the founders of our country. They explicitly stressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution that the nation needed a free press to report on government at all levels.
And since the last time we looked, the Connellsville Area School District was supported by taxpayers’ money, we’re pretty sure that comes under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment.
That certainly was the opinion of Melissa B. Melewksy, the media law attorney for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
“Simply put, the school board can not single out the Herald-Standard for negative treatment because the board members don’t like what the newspaper publishes,” she said,
“The board members can disagree as individuals and can certainly make their opinion known, but when they use their collective power of elected office to punish the newspaper, it creates serious constitutional issues and potential liability for the school district,” she added.
While we weren’t looking forward to a courtroom showdown with the district, we certainly were exploring all of our legal options.
It wasn’t so much the financial cost to us, we were more concerned with the well-being of residents in the district and elsewhere.
Certainly, if the decision had been allowed to stand, the board could have felt it was above the law and demanded that other media outlets provide favorable coverage or risk losing revenues from the district’s advertising.
And you can bet that other school boards, both here and elsewhere, would have looked at the move as a precedent to do likewise.
All this has been avoided, we hope, with the announcement that the board will rescind the decision. While we’re happy with the news, we’re still waiting to hear what the board members who originally supported the motion have to say.
Was there some kind of misunderstanding and confusion about the motion or was it something just done in the heat of the moment?
We hope that whatever the reason, the board has given the matter some serious thought and realizes the serious danger the motion represented and never tries anything like it again.
Ever.