Censorship at Beverly Hills High School

      When we first started the site, we felt that Highlights was being censored. Does this mean that the previous principal Ben Bushman was getting an early edition and making his changes, no. Bushman, however, was in the Highlights room nearly every week expressing his displeasure with many articles, notably those pertaining to the oil well, saying that they can’t be printed and that he wanted 100 percent happy and pro-school stories. We feel this was censorship. The fact is that we have yet to see a truly controversial story done about the oil well. Although journalism at the school newspaper Highlights is top-notch, it seems to have a pro-school bias. Does this mean Bushman’s wrath had an impact on the Highlights staff or not, I do not know. What I do know from conversations with the administration, however, is that if Highlights were to print much of the material contained on beverlyunderground.org, the paper would in fact be censored.

      Our slogan is “More Than Just The Highlights”. We have severe respect for Highlights and the entire staff, and we think the staff does a great job finding so many stories and is still able to print a new issue twice a month. We feel Highlights has a staff comprised of some very talented reporters, editors, and leaders. It is therefore disappointing that Highlights refuses to report controversial facts. There are only a very small amount of instances that Highlights has ever reported something that portrayed the school in a bad light. On the other hand, there are countless times Highlights has reported on “happy things” or controversial issues with a conservative approach. It seems that Highlights either doesn’t look for controversy, or if it does report on a controversial topic, it is almost always conservative and biased towards the school.

      Highlights is not censored. But on second thought, what is there to censor in Highlights? There is currently no censorship because there is nothing to censor.

      On the other hand, Beverly Underground has had its share of censorship attempts due to the type of material we report on. It took pressure from the SPLC (Student Press Law Center) and the local media on current principal Dr. Stepenosky before we were allowed to distribute Beverly Underground. Dr. Stepenosky tried to ban our paper on campus, but in the end, Beverly Underground prevailed.