A contract dispute pitting Ka Leo O Hawai’i, the University of Hawai’i’s Manoa campus newspaper, against one of the world’s largest media corporations has ended with a victory for freedom of the press.

College Publisher, a division of media giant Viacom, announced late last week it would no longer require college and university newspapers to avoid stories critical of the company or its many corporate affiliates in order to get free access to its exclusive online publishing system for creating and manage its websites.

The College Publisher system has become the standard used by what the company describes as a growing network of more than 500 college and university newspapers.

Viacom also controls a long list of well-known brands, including MTV, Comedy Central, Nick at Nite, Country Music Television, Paramount Pictures and more than 120 networks around the world.

Jason Rzepka, communications manager for mtvU, MTV’s college television network and parent company of College Publisher, told Honolulu Weekly last Thursday that the company has revised its standard contract to remove the disputed provision effective immediately.

The decision was made by mtvU’s vice president of university relations and its business and legal contracts manager. ‘They both agreed that the clause in question could be misinterpreted and did not want other campus publications to have the misgivings Ka Leo had,’ Rzepka said. The move came just one day after Honolulu Weekly reported on the contract dispute in its March 14 issue.

The controversial contact detail came to light after Ka Leo O Hawai’i balked at signing a new contract warranting that none of its contents would be ‘damaging or injurious to [College Publisher], Content Partners or any of its respective affiliates, related entities, licensees or assignees.’

The provision was contained in the standardized ‘terms of use’ that all of the company’s college newspaper clients were required to follow.

Jay Hartwell, faculty adviser to Ka Leo, said he had advised against accepting any contractual limits on what is printed, but after several revisions in the proposed contract, it remained a sticking point.

Rzepka denied any intent to limit what its affiliated college newspapers can print or display on their websites. ‘There’s absolutely no way, we don’t tread on editorial coverage,’ Rzepka said. ‘We absolutely enforce a state-and-church separation.’

But Rzepka acknowledged the clause had been inserted by the company’s legal team when new contracts were developed following College Publisher’s takeover by Viacom and MTV.

Rzepka said the clause was intended to prevent student newspapers from gaining leverage during contract negotiations from their ability to write about unresolved issues.

‘If there were issues in contract negotiations, they would be in a position to use the newspaper as a platform that could damage our business,’ Rzeptka said.

Rzepka said the contract had not been challenged elsewhere and the company had never brought any legal action against a campus newspaper based on this contract provision.

‘We absolutely respect the right of campus newspapers to provide a completely open forum,’ Rzepka said. ‘We take this seriously, and we don’t want it to be an issue.’

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