How sad that a journalist would be so willing to deny First Amendment rights to other journalists just because they are students.

There is so much wrong with your argument that it's tough to figure out where to begin. But I'll start with a glaring omission: ECU is a governmental entity. Therefore, if the school chooses to fire the newspaper adviser for something published in the student newspaper, it is doing at least two things that are wrong.

One, it is firing someone over something that he or she has no control. The newspaper adviser is not the editor. Period. He does not control the content of the paper. He is legally prevented from doing so. As Isom has accurately pointed out, if he had tried to force the editors to not publish the photo, he and ECU could have been accused of attempting to violate the students free-speech rights. Isom would have put ECU at risk legally.

The second thing that ECU would be doing if it fired Isom because of something published in the student newspaper is attempting to punish the student editors. This is an old trick that schools have tried for years. Administrators know that student newspapers at public schools have First Amendment protection, so they try to control the newspaper content by threatening to punish the adviser. Yes, it sounds like blackmail, doesn't it? Student editors, typically, like their advisers, and they don't want to see them punished. How is this censorship? The message from the school to the students becomes clear: Don't publish something that will upset us or we might punish your adviser.

It is not censorship if the readers of the student newspaper had been so upset with the photo that they had protested and tried to get an editor or two to resign. But that's not what has happened. It is the University -- the government -- that has gotten involved. If Isom was indeed fired for what was published in the paper, ECU has violated the First Amendment. Remember, the newspaper here is a "student newspaper," not a newspaper controlled or published by ECU.

Here is a corollary for off campus. What if the spouse of the local newspaper had a state government job and the governor threatened to fire the spouse if the newspaper published anything the governor didn't like? Wouldn't the editor be screaming "censorship" in that case? Or is that the price for so-called freedom that you are willing to pay?

By the way, you ask if there is any newspaper in the country in which the publication of full frontal nudity is acceptable. Student newspapers have published much more graphic photos than those in this case, and no one was fired or punished as a result. The decision whether to publish the streaking photos was not nearly as cut-and-dry as you suggest.