Tips for training ethical reporters
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
What’s the best advice you can give your beginning reporters? What’s going to help them enjoy what they are doing because they’re doing it well?
Columbia Journalism Review had an outstanding article in mid-August by Adeshina Emmanuel and Justin Ray. “Top journalists reveal the best reporting advice they have received,” which covers a wide range of suggestions from keeping lists for future story ideas to starting at a small news outlet so you can make your mistakes there. (Maybe that applies to student media, too?)
But to me the best suggestions are those that warn young reporters not to have preconceived notions when they start to write an article. It’s hard to get at the truth that way.
An exchange with student reporters that always raises my hackles:
Me: How’s your story coming?
Cub reporter: I just need one more quote.
No! She may need a quote to show an expert view or make the article more lively, but the thing she really needs is more information – and not necessarily when she thinks she should go out and get.
In the CJR article, The Washington Post’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan says she’s not sure where she learned this – maybe “Reporting 101,” but she still finds it helpful. “Report against your own biases. That is, include the reporting that has a chance of proving you wrong, not just confirming what you already think or think that you know. At the very least, this will allow you to know in advance what the objections to a story might be. It tends to make reporting more fair—and more bulletproof.”
The underlining is mine because this may be the most important lesson to learn about ethical journalism. Any reporter who approaches a story convinced about what he or she will find is going to miss the real story out there. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds can be so sure what’s right and wrong, real and false, they make assumptions that destroy their reporting.
So, the most important thing they need to learn is probably not AP Style or where to put the commas – it’s starting out with an open mind that will allow them to find and write the truth.
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Note: Another CJR article full of good suggestions and a link in this same CJR piece is “Eight simple rules for accurate journalism,” by Craig Silverman, written in 2011 but very true still today.
Read MorePrincipals, presidents and getting along
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
The Washington Post headline asked, “Is media coverage of Trump too negative? You’re asking the wrong question.”
That’s when I realized this could much more than a political statement. What if you replace the president’s name with the name of your school? Does that sound like something you may have heard before?
Student media often receive the complaint: “Your stories are all negative. Good things happen at this school, so why don’t you report them?” But are your administrators maybe asking the wrong question, too?
Margaret Sullivan, media columnist at The Washington Post, said President Trump was like Judith Viorst’s “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” She cited a Harvard study that looked at news reports in print (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post), main newscasts (CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC) and three European news outlets (The UK’s Financial Times and BBC, and Germany’s ARD). From these, the researchers concluded in Trump’s first 100 days about 80 percent of mainstream press coverage reflected negatively on the new president.
But the president of the United States and the principal of any public high school should not be enemies of their respective media. Sullivan said what politicians should look for in coverage – and I maintain this is true for school administrators, too – is “fairness, focus and overkill.”
- Sullivan asks if news organizations “acknowledge and correct quickly” when they get something wrong. My question: Do student media? Admittedly sometimes things are wrong because someone didn’t answer a student journalist’s questions, but that might be a good starting point for discussion on the importance of communication. If student reporters have the facts, their stories are vastly better.
- She further asks if journalists allow the president and his administration to respond to criticism. My question: Do YOUR reporters ask for responses, especially when the administrators are upset? That’s hard sometimes, but it’s another important part of communication. A consistent, ongoing dialogue is much better than seeing each other only when some problem arises.
- Finally, Sullivan writes, “Do news sites give serious, sustained attention to policy issues as well as publishing innumerable hot takes about the personality-driven dust-up of the moment?” I’m not so sure student media have “hot takes” that are “personality driven,” but I’ll bet most staffs would admit they may not be digging into policy issues like they could. If students are complaining about cafeteria food, what have they explored and reported about current cost increases of everyday staples, lack of government foodstuffs that used to be available, higher salaries for kitchen personnel due to union issues? In other words, complaints usually have costs or explanations. That costly Astroturf may have come from a generous donor, not funds that could go for textbooks. The guidance counselor who took so long to send a letter of recommendation to colleges might have twice as many advisees as the American School Counselor Association says. Digging deeper would show that.
The president and commercial media will have to sort things out on their own. Making sure both administrators and student journalists know the questions to ask – and the answers to have – is up to us and could go a long way toward eliminating problems.
Want lesson plans about fake news, misinformation or sourcing challenges? Curriculum will be available from JEA by the time you start back to school.
Read MoreNew Voices: Learning the lessons
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
There’s good news . . . and then there’s news when it comes to New Voices bills to protect student journalists.
First, the exciting part. Chris Evans, from the University of Vermont and chairman of College Media Association’s First Amendment Advocacy, posted Friday, May 5 on the New Voices USA Facebook page: “Today, Vermont’s New Voices legislation passed BOTH the Senate and House of Representatives. Student free-speech activism FTW!”
And a win it is. As Frank LoMonte reported on the SPLC website, “After months of back-and-forth, student press protections are on their way to the governor’s desk in Vermont.”
The article explains that this was part of “an omnibus education bill” and will now move to Gov. Phil Scott, “who is expected to sign it into law,” SPLC.org reports.
The fourth New Voices bill to get this far since North Dakota started the momentum in 2015, Vermont’s law would give protection to student journalists in K-12 schools and public colleges plus protection to faculty advisers who refuse to censor the legally protected work of their students.
But the other news demonstrates some of the challenges for those attempting to pass similar legislation in their states. Nevada and Michigan both have active bills at the time, but for varied reasons, they are still in process.
Patrick File, a media law professor at University of Nevada, Reno and former SPLC intern, said the way Nevada’s legislature operates creates a couple of challenges. First, the Senate and Assembly meet only every other year. “It’s an absolute sprint for 120 days from February to June,” File said.
File worked with LoMonte, plus a UNLV associate professor, the executive director of the Nevada Press Association and an attorney from the SPLC attorney network to find Senator Nicole Cannizzaro, who was willing and able to sponsor the bill.
File found support from high school advisers in both Reno and Las Vegas. Casandra Workman, CJE, spoke at a Senate committee hearing in Las Vegas, where she teaches, to “address some of the concerns” that had come up. Liz Walsh, MJE from Reno, wrote testimony and Christy Briggs, MJE, also from Reno, took students to the Senate session..
Senate Bill 420 was drafted, as all Nevada’s bills are, by the Legislative Counsel Bureau, a group of lawyers working for the legislators. Although the original bill had been patterned after the successful one in Maryland, the LCB later added amendments its members thought would improve the bill.
Not so, said File and others. Included was language that essentially requires prior review and a disciplinary process for students and advisers (but not administrators) who would prohibit free press.
As of Monday, May 8, File indicated some confidence that LCB would remove the problematic amendments, and the bill could go to the Assembly.
“My takeaway,“ File said, “is the need to be the eyes and ears of the sponsor, who’s not always as knowledgeable about student media and has 20 or 30 bills to follow, but we only have one. We have to stay on top of the language.”
Jeremy Steele, Michigan Interscholastic Press Association executive director, said, “A lot things can happen during the legislative process, and every New Voices campaign will be thrown at least one curve ball. Expect a surprise. Plan for it as best you can.”
That state currently has a bill in the House, sponsored by a Democrat, Rep. Darrin Camilleri, a former high school social studies teacher, “so this bill speaks to issues that he’s passionate about,” Steele said.
The challenge here? Republicans far outnumber Democrats in the Michigan House, 100 to 63.
But Steele and those in Michigan working on New Voices say they appreciate Camilleri’s interest and “look forward to finding ways to work with him.”
Meanwhile, Steele said they have a good record from last year with bipartisan support in the Senate. The previous sponsor, Sen. Rick Jones, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and is now working with them on a new version of the bill to “address many of the concerns we heard from stakeholders last session,” Steele said.
Sharing lessons learned like these seems to be one thing that’s helping current legislation move forward. Steve Listopad, then from North Dakota and the driving force between the first New Voices legislation, maintains a website that also contains helpful content from the SPLC.
Other useful tips come in videos from a November 2016 symposium hosted by Kent State University’s Center for Scholastic Journalism. Student media advisers at both the high school and college levels, scholastic press association leaders, lobbyists and others concerned with student voices from 17 states and the District of Columbia, participated. Videos captured all the panels, including one sponsored in part by JEA: “Part 6: Getting Advisers/Students/Scholastic Press Associations Engaged.”
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What our tech-savvy kids don’t know
by Candace Bowen, MJE
They may be digital natives with instincts that allow them to use the latest app and easily share photos and video on social media platforms, but when it comes to evaluating information they access on the web, those from middle school through college aren’t nearly as knowledgeable as some might think.
In fact, they can’t tell an ad from a news story or hate group propaganda from factual material from a respected news outlet. In fact, the Stanford History Education Group described students’ reasoning ability when it comes to Internet information as “bleak.”
The group’s 18-month project, “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning,” looked at “the ability to judge the credibility of information that floods young people’s smartphones, tablets and computers.”
From January 2015 to June 2016, the researchers developed and administered assessments to 7,804 students in 12 states, from inner-city LA to suburban Minneapolis, and at six different universities from those with tough admission standards to state schools that accept most applicants.
As the group’s recently released report states, “For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off.”
As the group’s recently released report states, “For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off.”
To get an idea of just how much these students really know about the Internet, the researchers tested their understanding of a range of information that appears on social media and other Internet venues. For instance, they showed middle school students “sponsored content” and news articles to see if they could recognize an ad. They showed high school students studying about gun laws a chart from a gun owners’ political action committee to see if they would accept it at face value. And they showed college students a tweet to see if they might use it as an eventual source in an article.
Perhaps even more intriguing – especially for education nerds – are the sample questions the report contains, along with a rubric for each and sample responses that show mastery (the student answers correctly and provides coherent reasoning for the response), emerging (the student answers correctly but provides limited or incoherent reasoning) and beginning (the student answers incorrectly).
The results the group reports are indeed bleak, but this shows the kind of media literacy journalism teachers might be able to help promote. Much of it deals with concepts we teach all the time: “Question Authority.” And of course there’s “verify” and “be transparent.” At least we hope our students would do better on this group’s assessment.
Also, the report ends with “Next Steps,” which include a promise to pilot lesson plans to use with these assessments and an awareness of the problem that is far worse than the researchers originally thought.
“Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite,” the researchers say. They hope to produce web videos to show how digital literacy is vital for a country like ours that relies on an informed electorate.
Read MoreEthics workshop offers videos, lesson plans
by Candace Perkins Bowen, MJE
When Kent State University and The Poynter Institute team up for their annual ethics workshop, they don’t forget high school journalism teachers and students who can’t come to Ohio for a day of top speakers and plenty of exploration into some aspect of media ethics.
Again this year, with Social Justice Journalism as the theme, they have provided detailed lesson plans to go along with some of the day’s events.
Keynoter — and the subject of one set of plans — was Jose Antonio Vargas, the opening speaker at the National High School Journalism convention in Los Angeles in the spring. Archived videos of his very personal and passionate talk about being an undocumented immigrant plus videos of all the other panels of the day are now available online.
A lesson plan about Vargas’s situation and one of a panel focused on the Flint water crisis — and what those could mean as student media topics — are downloadable here.
Archives for previous workshops on topics such as Enduring Trauma, That’s Entertainment, Dirty Politics and Foul Play (sports issues) are also available along with lesson plans. (Archives in the top purple bar)
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