As a school that practices prior review everything that we publish is required to go through the English curriculum specialist. For the most part censorship wasn't a big issue for us but naturally we ran into a few issues.

A shooting occurred over winter break involving a few students from Omaha Bryan and Omaha South. Local media reported on the initial crime and released the name of the shooter and the victim. One of our reporters wanted to cover it by showing the experience the student had next to the victim. We tied it to a more recent trend of a general increase in gun violence within the City of Omaha over the last few years. All of the editors thought the idea was good and encouraged the reporter to run with the story.

During our stage of prior review, we were informed that litigation and an investigation were pending between the school and the victim's family. 

We felt the story was still important to tell because it directly affected the South Omaha community but to get the story out we removed all names from the story and left a footnote explaining to our readers our decision. 

The Orator prides itself on being a credible, student-run news and entertainment source for all its readers. The staff strives to uphold the principles of journalism in all its publications.

The Orator does not make any guarantees about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information you find on this website (BHS ORATOR) is strictly at your own risk. The Orator will not be liable for any losses and/or damages in connection with the use of our website.

Unsigned editorials are the opinions of The Orator Staff and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Bryan High School. Signed editorials are the opinions of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Bryan High School or The Orator Staff.

While an editorial disclaimer was printed in our newspaper on the opinions page, nothing on our website specifies the official descriptions of our opinion stories. 

This caused an issue earlier this year when one of my staffers wrote a review on Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story. Some of our readers were upset because in their eyes the school was advertising this show. The show itself was already surrounded by controversy because of the topic and how it was produced.

I met with my advisor and the writer to discuss a response. Based on the comments we saw it seemed like the readers only saw the headline and didn't read the review which was critical of the show. Knowing some of the people who did comment I knew any direct response that wasn't taking down the story would leave them upset but I also didn't want to set a precedence that a few negative comments could take down stories. 

My advisor left it up to me to decide how to respond. I decided that this at the end of the day was a review and that comments like these are bound to happen. A direct response wouldn't do any good but I did change something.

I added our editorial disclaimer on the About page of The Orator's website and a disclaimer at the end of each editorial, column and review published to make it clear whose opinion the story is whether it be the author or the staff as a whole. It also clearly separates the content produced for The Orator from Bryan High School.