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stand up for journalism

Posted by on Aug 26, 2018 in Blog, News, Scholastic Journalism, Teaching | 0 comments

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A graphic like the Boston Globe used  with a collection of newspaper editorials from across the country is simple, clean and very attention-grabbing.

by Candace Bowen, MJE
It’s not too late.

Even if you weren’t back in school by mid-August or hadn’t started publishing yet, it’s not too late to follow the Boston Globe’s campaign to get publications everywhere to write editorials arguing against President Trump’s frequent assertion that journalists are the “enemy of the people.”

“We propose to publish an editorial on Aug. 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” The Globe announced. And more than 300 professional news outlets and organizations followed suit.

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Face, fight and educate
those who would limit media

Posted by on Aug 16, 2018 in Blog, News, Scholastic Journalism | 0 comments

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by John Bowen, MJE
A Boston Globe article about its Aug. 16 campaign for media to speak out against President Donald Trump’s attacks on journalists called the president’s rhetoric ”alarming.”`

“Whatever happened to the free press?  Whatever happened to honest reporting,” the reporter quotes the president in an Aug. 2 political rally in Pennsylvania. “They don’t report it. They only make it up.”

The Globe seeks editorial comment from other media to stress potential damage to our democracy from the intimidation,  and the importance of an unfettered press.

In a way, the current round of attacks from the president and others have some roots in the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision. The court’s majority enabled public school officials to limit student expression – not just of student media but any expression in school – under certain conditions.

We now have a generation of teachers and administrators, let along their students, who have only seen media control in many  of our schools.[pullquote]In a way, the current round of attacks from the president and others have some roots in the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision. The court’s majority enabled public school officials to limit student expression – not just of student media but any expression in school – under certain conditions.[/pullquote]

Hazelwood and other decisions essentially created an expectation student media in public schools could and should be controlled.

If school officials frowned upon criticism, demanded a positive image and prior reviewed and restrained where information did not match their their view of what student media should be, that became the norm. Challenge it and students faced censorship, suspension, withdrawal of school recommendations.

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