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USA Today Network Mike Davis, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press Published 7:24 a.m. ET June 21, 2017 | Updated 2 hours ago

Grant Berardo, a Wall High School junior, saw his image digitally altered with a plain black T-shirt in his yearbook. Mike Davis

Grant Berardo's T-shirt was digitally altered in the Wall (N.J.) High School yearbook. He wore a Donald Trump campaign shirt for his portrait. On Thursday, June 15, 2017, the school district superintendent said the yearbooks will be reissued.(Photo: Provided by Joseph Berardo Jr. via Asbury Park (N.J.) Press)

WALL, N.J. The scandal over censorship of merchandise and quotes from President Trump in a New Jersey high school yearbook has reached the White House.

President Trump and the director of his campaign thanked Wall High School students Montana and Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, who reported a quote and logo featuring Trump's name removed from their class yearbooks.

The campaign also sent the teenagers a care package with shirts, hats, pins and patches.

More: Trump shirt censored, now school has to re-issue yearbook for everyone

"Thank you Wyatt and Montana two young Americans who arent afraid to stand up for what they believe in. Our movement to #MAGA is working because of great people like you!," Trump posted on Facebook.

In a letter, campaign executive director Michael Glassner commended the students for "voicing their support" for Trump.

"It is more important than ever that we, as Americans, stand up for our beliefs and hopes for a better country," Glassner wrote. "And, as you know, it takes courage to do so. But freedom of expression should never go out of style let's not forget that!"

Wyatt, a junior at the school, wore a sweater vest featuring a Trump campaign logo on the school's picture day. But in the yearbook, his photo was cropped and the logo was barely visible an act Superintendent Cheryl Dyer has ruled was not intentional.

More: N.J. teacher suspended over Trump yearbook censorship

His sister, Montana, picked a quote from Trump to run alongside her freshman class president photo: "I like thinking big. If you are going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big," Trump's quote read.

Traditionally, all Wall class presidents can pick a quote. Montana's was submitted before the deadline and it's not yet clear whether it was purposely excluded, Dyer said last week.

Another student, junior Grant Berardo, saw his picture digitally altered before being published in the yearbook. Instead of the navy blue Trump campaign shirt he wore during the photo shoot, his yearbook photo featured a nondescript black T-shirt an "intentional" alteration, Dyer ruled.

The school board Tuesday voted to formalize a suspension handed down to digital media teacher Susan Parsons, who Dyer suspended through the end of the school year last week.

The board is expected to continue discussing the case in executive session at future meetings, board attorney Michael Gross said.

Parsons, 62, was included on a list of re-hired teachers for the 2017-18 school year with a $92,000 salary, but that list was finalized before the yearbook censorship came to light.

More: Teen's Trump T-shirt censored in yearbook photo

She has not returned multiple calls to her home seeking comment.

In response to the censorship scandal, Dyer last week ordered new yearbooks to be printed and reissued. Private, anonymous donors have contributed "at least $10,000" to cover the cost, Dyer said after Tuesday's board meeting.

But some members of the Wall school community have said it's not enough. Dyer has come under fire for handling the investigation despite last year posting a New York Times opinion article about "bullying in the age of Trump" on the school website.

Wyatt also criticized Dyer for the "blatant anti-Trump stuff that's caused concern" for him.

"I feel like there's something else to the story. One person wouldn't just do this," Wyatt said. "There needs to be a proper investigation into this."

School Board President Allison Connolly disagreed, applauding Dyer and district administrators for "facing this situation head-on."

"We find the allegations of censorship disturbing and are taking the charges that students have had their rights compromised seriously," she said.

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Trump thanks teens for 'standing up' to yearbook censorship - USA TODAY

By: AP | Wall Township | Published:June 21, 2017 2:24 pm US President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he walks across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Donald Trump is weighing in on a New Jersey school district where yearbooks were altered to remove three students references to him. President Donald Trump is weighing in on a New Jersey school district where yearbooks were altered to remove three students references to him.

The Asbury Park Press reports Trump posted a letter to his Facebook page Monday, thanking Wall High School students Montana and Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, who previously reported their entries were altered to remove references to Trump.

The letter itself was written by Michael Glassner, the executive director of Trumps campaign. He sent it to the siblings along with a care package of campaign memorabilia. Superintendent Cheryl Dyer says the alteration of Wyatts photo was unintentional, and that its unclear if Montanas quotation of Trump was intentionally left out. Dyer says another student had his Trump T-shirt digitally painted a nondescript black in an intentional alteration.

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Donald Trump thanks school students for 'standing up' to yearbook censorship - The Indian Express

Alarmed by torrent of censorship imposed by administrators? Support student journalists

This week I saw a preview screening of a documentary about Syrian citizen journalists who chronicled the rise of ISIS before anyone in the West gave a damn about the propaganda-fueled jihadist group.

The heroes of City of Ghosts, which releases commercially next month,are ordinary internal people whose lives are threatened not words are violence threatened, but mortally threatened every time they secretly record the daily atrocities in Raqqa, the ISIS capital.

They feed it out to their still-endangered external compatriots who manage the news operation, known as Raqqa is Being SlaughteredSilently, from abroad.

The first leader of the group, Naji Jerf,who put these young journalists through a crash course in war reporting, was tracked down by ISIS in Turkey and executed during the documentarys filming. Thats how dangerous unfiltered information is to propagandists.

He looks like a college journalism adviser, I thought as I watched the screening, organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. (Two of the citizen journalists made a surprise visit. Our questions for them kind of sucked because we were stunned they made it here.)

Naji Jerf was basically working with people many of whom appear to be college age who had non-journalism livelihoods, but felt compelled to shine a light on their besieged city when no one else would.

For those of us safely reporting on absurd things in America, where the main victim is sanity and common sense, our work feels puny compared to the daily life-and-death struggle of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.

But there are faint shadows of the Syrian citizen journalists struggle in many towns in America, where youngsters operate under the constant threat of punishment and censorship for reporting on their communities.

The Washington Post profiles the important work of the Student Press Law Center, which we occasionally feature and consult for College Fix stories, and its outgoing executive director, Frank LoMonte, who is headed to the University of Florida to do journalism law.

I feel a certain kinship to SPLC because were both tiny shoestring-budget nonprofits working with journalism newbies who are vulnerable to pressure and intimidation from administrators, especially when students are covering their own schools.

As Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan notes, the problems cut across ideology and political lines when SPLC swoops in to defend student journalists:

LoMonte helped a reporter at the student newspaper at New Jerseys Kean University as she tried to pry loose a surveillance video that the universitys police department was wrongly withholding.

At an Omaha high school, the student newspaper wanted to publish a column suggesting that teachers keep their politics out of the classroom. (It observed that some of them were trash-talking Trump, using words such as Nazi and Hitler.)

The school administration found the column unacceptable. Then, when students tried to write about the censorship, that article was killed, too. With SPLCs intervention, both pieces were published and won a state high school journalism award.

Ive gotten people out of jail, Ive gotten cameras back from police this is an urgent-level service, said LoMonte

SPLC is also leading the charge at the state level for statutory protections for student journalists, and it sends out 200-odd lawyer-volunteers who run journalism workshops for students.

LoMonte makes a great argument when he faces off against administrators who want to suppress reporting:

That schools would be acting in their own self-interest to let students publish because, in the social-media era, theyll find a way to get their message out in some other (perhaps less accurate) form, anyway.

Its a little easier for High Schoolers Being Censored Silently to circumvent the powers-that-be than for the brave journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, thankfully.

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Alarmed by torrent of censorship imposed by administrators? Support student journalists - The College Fix

YouTube apologized after getting hit by allegations that it censors LGBTQ+ content and fixed the bug that apparently caused the issue. Now, the website has apologized yet again and updated its policies in an effort to reaffirm its "commitment that YouTube is a place where all voices can be heard." YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki said she and her team talked to lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer/questioning creators, employees and volunteers to get feedback on the platform's policies. As a result, the company has "broadened Restricted Mode guidelines to ensure that non-graphic, personal accounts of difficult events are available."

In a blog post, the CEO wrote:

"For example, personal accounts of individuals who suffered discrimination or were impacted by violence for being part of a protected group will now be included in Restricted Mode, provided they don't contain graphic language or content. Soon we'll have new content in Creator Academy to describe in detail how to make videos that will meet the criteria for Restricted Mode."

If you look at the website's guidelines, you'll now find this section:

"Some educational, straightforward content about sexual education, affection, or identity may be included in Restricted Mode, as well as kissing or affection that's not overly sexualized or the focal point of the video."

...

"We know there is a risk that some important content could be lost if we were to apply these rules without context. We value stories where individuals discuss their personal experiences and share their emotions. Sharing stories about facing discrimination, opening up about your sexuality, and confronting and overcoming discrimination is what makes YouTube great, and we will work to ensure those stories are included in Restricted Mode. "

The Google-owned website admits that the mode might still not work perfectly despite the tweaks that it made, but it promises that its systems will get better at identifying entries that should and shouldn't be filtered out over time. In addition to making guideline changes, YouTube is introducing a permanent spot on its US spotlight channel for LGBTQ+ videos to be refreshed weekly throughout the year. It's also teaming up with The Trevor Project to offer crisis intervention to members of the community and to prevent LGBTQ+ youth suicides.

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YouTube says LGBTQ+ video censorship won't happen again - Engadget

Was a raid on NDTVs offices earlier this month politically motivated?

In the two weeks since Indias Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched a raid on the offices and the homes of NDTV staffin India, an important conversation regarding government interference in the media has resurfaced. The atmosphere surrounding the issue remainsmurky and longstanding suspicions of the strong nexus between the investigation agency and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have once more been brought to the fore.

On June 5, the CBI conducted its raid, prompting a statement from NDTV declaring that it was based on unproven complaints from a disgruntled former employee. The complaint, on the basis of a loan default, was further dismissed as baseless by the organization, which furnished the proof of repayment along with its statement.

Furthermore, the implication that this raid was based on a year-old complaint that was private in nature sparked concerns that it was politically motivated. Days prior to the raid, as several members of the Indian media have been quick to point out, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Partys spokesperson Sambhit Patra was asked to leave an NDTV debate for his accusations against the channel in the face of criticism.

Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore responded to this by saying that while the government was committed to protecting freedom of expression, it was also responsible for preserving the law of the land. While voices within the media have indicated that there may well be a case for this raid and that it was premature to cast this as retaliation for government criticism, several prominent members have a different opinion.

The Editors Guild of India has since issued a statement implicatingthis move as a violation ofthe principle of the freedom of the press within a democracy, pegging it as a possible attempt to silence the media. The Press Club of India subsequently organized a meeting to protest the raid. The CBI, in turn, responded with the argument that NDTV was not singled out in this raid process. Explaining that this raid was not about loan default as much as a larger list of violations of banking sector guidelines, the organization placed this investigation along the spectrum of a long list of others on the issue of banking fraud.

However, the absence of a preliminary inquiry ahead of this raid has not silenced the criticism. The Press Club meeting for instance was the site of incensed conversation. Prominent media figures like Kuldip Nayyar and Arun Shourie even discussed parallels between the current governments attitude towards the media and the time of Emergency under former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The ensuing discussion expressed worry at the majoritarian tendencies of the government, a need to move beyond institutional affiliations in the interest of preserving shrinking spaces for dissent, and the absence of protocol in the investigation.

The space for dialogue regarding the actions of the army in Kashmir, the anti-beef agenda, moral policing to name just a few issues has been fast shrinking amid perceptions that the government will seek to retaliate. Comparisons to the Emergency, while perhaps hyperbolic, are nevertheless worrisome as they are indicative of the beginnings of a trend towards heightened censorship in India. The defensiveness of the ruling party in the face of criticism has been on the rise in the past few years, and the NDTV has faced unexpected consequences for the second time in a year, following its24-hour blackout in November 2016.

The recent raids, in keeping with this trend, inspire a feeling of unease and worry regarding what they might foretell.

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In India, Raids Targeting a Prominent News Agency Spark Censorship Fears - The Diplomat