Join the discussion over protocols for scholastic media
Join the discussion over Twitter and the Five Freedoms Network
On February 8-9, 2010, the McCormick Freedom Project and the Illinois Press Foundation will convene a group of crucial stakeholders from across the state and country with the goal of creating a protocol that will serve as a national model for scholastic journalism. The conference will bring together more than 50 representatives from local and national organizations specializing in the First Amendment, scholastic journalism, and school governance, including students, teachers and principals, who are the first to encounter these often tense situations inherent to scholastic journalism, along with superintendents, school board members, and other affected parties.
Session convener and the above groups invite those in scholastic media to join in the discussion through the Twitter hash tag #studentnewsmedia and through their Ning group on the Five Freedoms Network. We’ll be tweeting and posting some questions this week to get the discussion going and will live tweet periodically from the conference. Some of the discussion posts and tweets may become part of the final conference report.
Read MoreRTDNA posts online, social media guidelines
Building on its code of ethics, RTDNA released online and social media guidelines Feb. 3.
Those with online sites and who use social media might look at RTDNA’s for suggestions and comparison with their practices.
Read MoreReasonable Forecasts
According to Kelley R. Taylor, Esq., in the February issue of Principal Leadership, “Courts recognize that principals are the best judges of what will disrupt their schools, but they still must provide evidence that their decisions are based on fact.” The article discusses the A. M. v. Cash case (October 2009 – U. S. Court of Appeals for the 5th District) where the court did uphold a lower court ruling that the school did not violate student free speech when it prohibited any display of the Confederate flag, which the school named in its policies as an inappropriate symbol.
Taylor warns principals that they cannot just intuit a disruption, but they can make a ‘reasonable forecast’ only when that ‘certain proscribed speech’ would cause substantial disruption based on clear and substantial information gained from inquiry. It is interesting to note that the Superior Court used the Tinker standard as reference to support he administrator’s ‘reasonable forecast’ of disruption.
What does this mean to student journalists? Fortunately, Tinker is a strong standard to protect student expression. However, Tinker can be used in stop student expression. Without a doubt, Tinker still establishes the standard for administrators to follow when censoring student expression. Principals must be able to “reasonably forecast” disruption in school when deciding to censor student publications. This is a cautionary article admonishing administrators to gather strong evidence through extensive investigation or from past history within the individual school to claim “reasonable forecast” as a reason for censoring student expression.
Perhaps principals could take a lesson from student journalists across the country who do extensive research before they actually write their stories and publish them in student publications.
Read MoreWill online term papers survive a copyright challenge?
Is selling term papers online a violation of copyright laws?
In case you missed the story in today’s USA Today, a U.S. district judge in Illinois has ordered the owner of R2C2 Inc. a Web-based company in Carbondale, Illinois, to stop selling term papers unless he can prove he has permission from the papers’ authors. Getting that permission might be hard to do. This is sort of like administrators telling school publication advisers they must get permission from all students before they can use their names in a print or online medium.
USA Today said the judge based his ruling on an earlier case where the provider was found liable in 2006 of copyright infringement after co-authors of an undergraduate research paper saw their work posted on three of the company’s websites and sued.
The judge’s ruling did not address whether it’s legal or ethical to sell or buy term papers, but it is the first time a court has penalized a seller for how he/she acquires the term papers. The law firm representing the plaintiffs is seeking compensation for its clients, which could possibly number in the tens of thousands. USA Today R2C2 firm’s business includes at least nine websites that offer 200,000-300,000 term papers. The owner has until mid February to show he has complied with the court’s order.
This might make an excellent story for school publications to investigate. The story could also delve into instances of plagiarism and ethics. The USA Today article pointed out R2C2 is “a small player” in the term-paper business, an indication there are other companies who also might be violating copyright laws. What do you think? Is the company violating copyright guidelines?
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