For a third year in a row, measures that would strengthen First Amendment protections for high school and college journalists are dead for the legislative session.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hawaii lawmakers are focusing on the economic recovery and health bills.

House Bill 781 and its companion Senate Bill 214 did not get a hearing, but would have bolstered protections allowing public high school and college journalists to exercise freedom of speech and freedom of the press without censorship or the risk of disciplinary action by school administrations. Libelous or obscene materials were excluded from the protections.

Last year a similar measure had just one committee to clear before it could go to the governor’s desk for consideration.

The measures also would have protected advisers from being dismissed, suspended, disciplined, reassigned, transferred or retaliated against for allowing their students to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Student journalists are responsible for determining what’s news, opinion, feature and advertising content of school-sponsored media, according to the language of the bill.

If the bill became law, it would have been dubbed the Hawaii Student Journalism Protection Act.

State Rep. Takashi Ohno (D, Nuuanu-Liliha-Alewa Heights), author of HB 781, said it’s unfortunate the bill didn’t get a hearing, but said it will be introduced again next year.

“I don’t think it’s a reflection that the Legislature doesn’t believe in the bill,” Ohno said. “I just think that the priorities that face our state as a whole have taken precedence.”

Cindy Reves, faculty adviser for McKinley High School’s newspaper, The Pinion, said it’s frustrating that the bills keep dying. Reves has pushed for this bill for three years.

When the high school journalism bill was first introduced in 2019, it never got a hearing, Reves said.

Last year the bill had one more committee to pass before being sent to the governor.

“It was almost to the finish line, and it had to go all the way back,” Reves said. “It was so frustrating. To see it die and sit in the exact same place it was two years ago was really hard.”

Reves said even though The Pinion hasn’t faced censorship, there’s the possibility that it could.

This year the student journalism bill also would cover college journalists.

Esther Kim, editor in chief at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s newspaper, Ka Leo o Hawai‘i, said all student journalists deserve freedom of speech protection.

“I think it’s extremely important,” Kim said in an interview. “Just because it’s dead doesn’t mean it won’t be introduced again next year. For the reasons I think students to be able to criticize their universities, they should be encouraged to think harder about certain things. When you’re a student journalist, you’re there to serve the students and faculty, not necessarily the administration.”

When News Editor Krista Rados first joined Ka Leo o Hawai‘i, she said, she didn’t know that journalists could write controversial articles. She cited an article the newspaper wrote last year about the student government being exempt from the Hawaii Sunshine Law and not posting its meeting minutes.

She added that the new writers would ask her to report on “only positive things about UH.”

“It was hard because I’m like, ‘No, you can write whatever you want as long as you have the facts to prove it,’ but they still have an issue with that,” Rados said. “I think they fear their work being controversial. They fear if they publish something against UH, they’re going to get all this backlash. It’s a common freshman feeling that they’re going to be in trouble.”