What is the purpose of the press? This is a question whose answer has evolved over time, but fundamentally throughout history, the press has served two key functions. First, and most obviously, is to inform the public, whether that be on a recent economic crisis or a school dance. This purpose is best exemplified through the traditional “news article,” a distillation of the facts into something that is easily comprehensible. The second purpose is more nuanced but is perhaps best summarized in Alexander de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In this, de Tocqueville says, “when many organs of the press adopt the same line of conduct, their influence in the long run becomes irresistible, and public opinion, perpetually assailed from the same side, eventually yields to the attack.” It can be hard to dissect what de Tocqueville is implying, but in essence, the second power and purpose of journalism is to sway public opinion. This purpose has only become contentious during the last century. For most of American history, newspapers were unashamedly partisan, often even funded by political parties. Today, newspapers still have strong links with certain political parties, but instead of bias being worked solely into news articles, a new format was created so that journalism could retain its power to influence the public while also maintaining a higher degree of objectivity: the opinion article.

Opinion articles come in all shapes and sizes. Somebody could write an opinion on why the Football War is an example of how the disgusting greed of the American capitalist system is outweighed in the public mind by the fact that the war was sparked over a sport, and another person could write an opinion article on Subway. However, the sheer scope of opinion articles is also a detriment. Many readers do not notice or care about the disclaimer that opinion articles do not represent the views of the journalistic institution and instead see the mere publication of the article as an outright endorsement. One often-cited example of this is when, in 2020, The New York Times published an opinion article by Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas, calling for a violent crackdown on protests. This article sparked outrage for even being printed, both on social media and in the real world. In this case, the blame was largely pinned on the newspaper instead of the author. In fact, this article would eventually force Times opinion editor James Bennet to resign.

The solution to this problem may seem simple: filter opinion articles. This works fine for big institutions which have strong partisan leanings in their opinion articles, like Fox News and CNN. However, this becomes trickier when looking at a school newspaper. School newspapers have a third crucial task even beyond informing and persuading - they have to give a voice to the students. Filtering out student voices in anything but the most extreme of cases would violate this purpose, and hurt the credibility of the newspaper. School newspapers also have to deal with the challenge that many students are not experts in a field and, therefore, do not fully research or understand their topic. This paper is not alone in that aspect. We, the authors of this article, are by no means experts either (just look at our barebones dissection of de Tocqueville’s work). This becomes problematic because it increases the chance of misinformation or a distortion of facts in opinion articles. This puts school newspapers in a Catch-22: don’t publish an opinion, and it weakens the legitimacy of the institution - publish it, and if it has any misinformation, it still risks weakening the credibility of the institution.

After careful deliberation, we, the authors, still couldn’t even come to a consensus among ourselves about how to resolve the conflicting obligations of student newspapers. However, we have thought of several potential solutions, each with its own benefits and detriments. First, opinion articles could be subjected to increased scrutiny to weed out misinformation, logical leaps, or problematic metaphors. This runs into the problem of not being that effective, given that it isn’t much of a leap from what school newspapers already do. Second, opinion articles could be curated, with school newspapers only publishing the highest quality articles. The issue that comes with this solution is that it does, at some level, make the school newspaper unrepresentative of the broad student voice, and it would be hard to make such a selection completely objective. For this reason, this power should only go to elected newspaper officials, and should only apply to general opinion articles (opinion articles on the school itself could always be printed). The final and most radical solution would be a complete division of the school newspaper. Henceforth, every issue of the school newspaper would be split into two, the “Features” Paper, containing any and all informative articles, and a “Student Voice” Paper, containing only opinions and potentially even other student works like poetry and games. This would have the benefit of clearly distinguishing the journalistic institution and its views from those of its opinion writers, along with opening up the newspaper to a more diverse set of creators. The detriment comes in how radically different this would be, potentially diluting what it means to be a school newspaper, or even leading to anything written in the “Student Voice” Paper being discredited.

On the other end, readers should also approach opinion articles with a grain of salt. Every person is entitled to an opinion, and everyone has one. Just because someone decides to vocalize their opinion on a publication does not warrant the reader adopting it. A critical skill today, especially with the rise of digital media, is being able to discern arguments and understand their merits.

Lastly, this article itself is an opinion piece, a situation ironic within itself. We recommend reading opinion pieces with scrutiny, and we do not reserve that recommendation for this article. It would be paradoxical to apply this advice of scrutiny to this passage and then decide that the advice should not be followed. Even if articles are not written in the manner we prescribe, well-trained readers can help mitigate that issue.

No solution is the perfect solution; they each have their own benefits and detriments. However, what is evident is that the current system of school newspaper opinions is broken, and should newspapers hope to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the people, it must be amended.