"Autumn Fern" photographed in the Nordic Valley area of Eden, Utah by Rory Wallwork

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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law last week which will protect journalism teachers against retaliation when they defend their students’ rights to free speech.

"While this law makes the workplace safer for teachers, the real beneficiaries are California's students, who no longer must fear that honest reporting on school events will get their favorite teacher fired," Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank D. LoMonte said in a press release. "Governor Schwarzenegger and the California legislature should be commended for sending a message to school officials -- in California and across the nation -- that teachers are not to be used as pawns to intimidate kids into avoiding legitimate topics of discussion."

No longer will public school or college instructors face possible firing, suspension, discipline, reassignment, transfer or other forms of retaliation when they defend a student’s right to report the news as freely as any reporter under the First Amendment.

"Teachers losing their jobs for refusing to censor their students' news reporting is a real and pervasive problem, and it is going on all too commonly in America's schools," LoMonte said.

The phrasing of the sign struck me as imprecise and perhaps even a little sinister, kind of like the announcements we keep hearing from the federal government about the financial crisis. Either you are closed today, or you are closed until you can get your oven fixed, but ovens are complex devices and it could conceivably take more than a day to fix one. Likewise, either we need to spend $700 billion buying distressed mortgage securities, or we need to nationalize the banks, but maybe next time you could make up your mind before giving the first panicky press conferences?