Want to help me think through a First Amendment-related issue? IAALs and IANALs welcome. US-centric in its legal complications, probably.→[More:]Little bit of a flap. So I'm on the programming committee of the local community radio station, representing the news and public affairs programs and also responsible for helping generate editorial policy and keeping an eye on content w/r/t FCC and community standards and journalistic ethics. I've got a bit of a journalism background but am not an expert on journalism law.

There's an extremely liberal morning show on once a week, which gets angry and vitriolic sometimes. Usually they manage to keep discourse within the bounds of legality, though occasionally we've had to talk to them about not citing sources for some of their assertions, comments bordering on defamatory, and that sort of thing. The show is run by volunteers with not much journalism or broadcast background to speak of, since this is all-volunteer community radio.

They have a blog that is associated with their show. They post upcoming show content on it, and usually add an image. The blog (like many DJ websites) is linked on the main radio station page on the show schedule. Linking to the schedule is a privilege we basically have extended to all DJs without restriction. Our IT guy manages the links.

Well, this week the DJs in question plan to discuss the reaction to the VT shooting and compare the outrage over that with what they see as lack of sufficient outrage about Iraq deaths, both military and civilian. To illustrate this theme, they took one of the photos of the VT killer with two pistols held at arm's length, and replaced his face with that of George Bush.

So the station received an email of complaint about what a blog viewer saw as the insensitivity of the photo. The first person to get the email was our IT guy, and he removed their link from the station website and then asked what else we should do.

As the news person, I'm not sure we should remove the link. I try to err on the side of the 1st in these matters even when content is inflammatory. First of all, we have no standing policy on who can link and who can't. Second, it's not the station's web site, it's theirs, although the content is specifically and only related to their broadcast on the station. Third, they are within their rights to create this image; it may be in bad taste, but they are a provocative show, and I can't think of any legal restraints that would prohibit it. As Bush and the killer are both public figures, they are subject to fair comment and far less protected by defamation law.

The question is: How will the station officially respond? We'll be discussing it tomorrow but I'd like to get perspectives. What confuses me is the nature of the blog's relationship to the station's official site. I'm not sure we need to de-link the blog. We could wash our hands of the whole business and simply say "The opinions of individual broadcasters do not reflect those of the station or its organizers," which is our standard disclaimer and is true. We can also make clear the station has no editorial control over the blog, but that the privilege of linking to the site is something available to all our community broadcasters. But there are some at the station who will argue that we should disassociate ourselves from the blog. We could also choose to issue a formal request that the image be removed, but I really don't like the heavy-handedness of that.

Thoughts?