Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Days after LevittownNow.com first reported on the Pennsbury School District editing some public comments from school board meeting recordings, the district quietly uploaded those videos.
On Wednesday, June 23, this news organization reported that the district had removed certain comments from recordings of public meetings. The public comments had to do with subjects that could be considered taboo, like race education and diversity programs.
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The edits impacted the March and May meetings and comments made by residents Tim Daly, Doug Marshall, and former school board member Simon Campbell. For some time, a recording of the June meeting was listed as being “under legal review.”
The district’s move to edit the videos gained local attention and also national spotlight with several right-wing commentators latching onto Pennsbury’s actions. Fox News Channel opinion host Laura Ingraham interviewed Campbell about the issue and called it an “outrage.”
The Pennsbury School District and its solicitor did not respond to a request for comment.
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The district’s editing of public comment has raised concerns over whether the school district violated the First Amendment, which allows for speech free of government censorship.
The newly uploaded videos include a disclaimer.
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“The posting of this unedited video by the Pennsbury School District does not mean the endorsement of, or the agreement with, any statement or action by any member of the public,” the notice states.
Pennsbury has cited a school board policy that notes “comments that become personally directed, abusive, obscene, or irrelevant will be ended immediately.”
Following the March meeting, School Board President Christine Toy-Dragoni said Marshall’s comments had “micro-aggressions as well as explicitly-racist ideas that connected the Black community to several commonly-held, stereotypical beliefs that are harmful.” She apologized for not stopping his comments at the meeting and that she “didn’t act in the best interest of our entire community.”
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While Toy-Dragoni said “freedom of speech and varying viewpoints are acceptable,” the she stated that comments made were not appropriate.
Melissa Melewsky, the media law counsel at the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said recently that the editing of public meeting recordings for content doesn’t violate the state’s Right To Know law, but it can create questions about whether government censorship was involved.
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Rumors have swirled that the three men whose comments were edited out of meetings might file a lawsuit relating to free speech, but all declined to state.
Daly’s May public comment, which was initially removed from public view, included him stating “we’ll see you in court” when solicitor Peter Amuso cut his comments off.
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Marshall said during his public comments in May that he would sue Pennsbury because they were ending his public comment.
“You can count on being sued,” Marshall said.
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Amuso sounded upset and yelled at those whose public comment was being ended by the school board when cutting them off.
Abrams told this news organization recently that he was most upset that the district discriminated against the comments by removing them.
“As you know, public pressure has resulted in the release of the unedited copies. Almost all social media public opinion has upheld our position that we were publicly censored commenting on a public government entity that is responsible to provide a service and is allowed to spend and waste our tax dollars,” Abrams said.
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Campbell declined to talk of a lawsuit, but he emphatically stated the district’s decision to edit public comment was “bullocks.”
“This whole thing has been a remarkable example of the Streisand Effect: if the [Pennsbury School Board] President had simply initially allowed the entire video to be uploaded, without censoring and the mass mailing, the Pennsbury community would be generally ignorant of Critical Race Theory being taught, or the free speech issue,” Marshall said.
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