Republican Official Censors Student Newspaper Because It Covered A Democratic Senator’s Campaign

A Republican official in the county that includes Colorado State University reportedly threatened to confiscate copies of a student newspaper that were available in newspaper racks at the university’s student center because she claimed that they violate a state law prohibiting “electioneering . . . within one hundred feet of any building in which a polling location is located.” Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Angela Myers objected to the newspapers because of their front page coverage of Sen. Mark Udall’s (D-CO) visit to the university’s campus.

An image of the censored coverage is displayed at the top of this post. The campus paper’s coverage of Udall’s visit can also be read in full at this link.

Myers’ attempt to censor the Rocky Mountain Collegian occurred on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, after she received a cease an desist letter from an attorney representing the paper, she reversed her decision and permitted the papers to be displayed.

Myers claimed that the papers must be censored because “[w]hen you have a paper that has a candidate on the very front like it does, we will need that to be displayed outside the 100-foot limit,” but this claim is difficult to square with the law she cites to justify removing the paper. Although the law at issue does indeed ban electioneering close to a polling location, it defines the term “electioneering” as “campaigning for or against any candidate who is on the ballot or any ballot issue or ballot question that is on the ballot” or “soliciting signatures for a candidate petition, a recall petition, or a petition to place a ballot issue or ballot question on a subsequent ballot.”

The censored newspaper did neither of these things. It published reporting of a newsworthy event that happened to involve a candidate for public office. Though the paper’s coverage does quote statements Udall make while speaking on campus, it neither expresses a viewpoint for or against his campaign nor does it solicit signatures of any kind.

Like many papers, the Collegian also publishes opinion columns. In the past, some of its opinion pieces have supported Udall, while others supported his Republican opponent Rep. Cory Gardner. Myers’ objection, however, appears limited to the fact that the paper included a picture of Udall on the front page.

The Collegian‘s executive editor Kate Winkle described the censorship of her paper as “clearly a violation of the First Amendment and freedom of the press” (although the Supreme Court upheld a 100 foot ban on campaigning near polls in 1992, that case dealt with actual campaigning and not journalistic reporting). Winkle added that “we are not campaigning for Mark Udall and we would have had the same coverage had Cory Gardner or any politician affected by this election come to campus.”

Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: BY IAN MILLHISER