How should student media
handle academic dishonesty? QT56
Dishonesty compromises the integrity and credibility of the student publication. The editorial board and/or adviser should address any instance of academic misconduct immediately.
Student editors should develop a clear process for handling academic dishonesty. Both media staff and school policies may dictate consequences for academic dishonesty. In addition to school consequences, other approaches could include removal or suspension from the media staff and publishing an apology.
Guidelines
Students should be honest in all stages of their work. Dishonesty is a serious offense and should not be tolerated. Dishonesty compromises the integrity and credibility of the student publication. The editorial board and/or adviser should address any instance of academic misconduct immediately.
Stance
Student editors should develop a clear process for handling academic dishonesty. Both media staff and school policies may dictate consequences for academic dishonesty. In addition to school consequences, other approaches could include removal or suspension from the media staff and publishing an apology.
Suggestions
In journalism, academic dishonesty is not limited to cheating and plagiarism. Issues especially relevant to student media include:
- Fabrication — inventing quotes or other content
- Non-contextual content — taking quotes, facts or other content out of their intended context in a way that misleads the audience
- Manipulation of photos, video and text — editing or altering content in a way to change its meaning or misrepresent reality
- Inadequate verification — failing to assure the veracity of information, quotes or facts for your story.
Resources
The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity, The Center for Academic Integrity
Journalism Department Code of Ethics and Conduct, San Francisco State University
The Medill Justice Project Ethics Book, Northwestern University
Our cheating culture: Plagiarism and fabrication are unacceptable in journalism, The Buttry Diary
Audio: Plagiarism, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
National Press Photographers Code of Ethics Audio: Creative Commons Licensing, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
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The National Walkout
by Cyndy Hyatt
This generation of high school students has grown up in a world where school shootings are common and just another event in the news. Although gun violence in schools has lost its shock
value, students still hold in the back of their minds the fear that it can happen here.
Before the Parkland shootings Feb. 14, there had been a recorded 18 school shootings in 2018. And then came the tragedy at Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School where 17 people lost their lives at the hand of a young man with an AR-15 type assault rifle.
After the initial outrage, this story didn’t fade away like the other 18 this year. It was different. Students said ENOUGH and now we are witnessing an unprecedented student initiated movement to end gun violence, a movement that that led to the March 14 ENOUGH walk-out. That Wednesday at 10 a.m. students from coast to coast left their classrooms to join others in solidarity and protest.
Although some schools have threatened to punish students who participated, most seem to have supported this free-speech event. Open-minded administrations worked with student groups to support the walkout. They have recognized that student voices need to be heard and rightfully so.
The walkout appears to have been a successful exercise of First Amendment rights – to peacefully gather and protest, to speak out and to call others into action. And it was another opportunity for student journalists to cover a national event that most likely affected their own school as well.
This year may prove to be the year of the student-led protest and a new appreciation for the power of the First Amendment. And perhaps this will also be the year when students realize the value of uncensored student journalism, a way to hear voices and opinions without persecution or punishment.
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Stories students can best tell:
Reporting protests, walkouts and marches
Between March 14 and March 24, the SPRC shared legal and ethical guidelines as well as coverage suggestions for reporting walkouts, protests and marches.
Because the topics are still ongoing and current, we’re loading all of our advice under one banner, for your convenience.
If you have other questions or examples of coverage you would like to share here, please submit them through the comments section below.
We intend to add material as needed or available.
• Students, join movement to make change: Mary Beth Tinker
• Legal issues in covering protests
• Tips for reporting protests
• Tips of audio reporting of protests, walkouts
• Plan and pack for social media coverage of protests
• More than a march: a civics lesson and a wake-up call
• SPRC package offers insights for reporting protests, marches
• Reporting stories student journalists can best tell
Shared materials
• Eric Garner shared this collaborative documentary created by the students of WMSD-TV at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as well as students and alum from schools across the country. It covers the days after the incident as the school begins the rebuilding, and healing, process. youtu.be/8EB5Uk5l660
• Coverage by Harker School of San Jose and San Francisco student marches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JufhGhnFAbk
Read MoreAccepting ads from competing organizations QT55
Students who sell ads sometimes hesitate to solicit advertising from competing companies. They sometimes have a loyalty to one of their clients or they believe their clients will be frustrated if their competitor is also advertising in the same publication.
This is a good problem to have. Too many advertisers want to support your publication, and you should encourage a forum for advertising that is as robust as your editorial content. Sure, consider guidelines in terms of where ads from competing companies will be placed, but outside of that, create a guideline indicating that each of your advertisers will receive equal and fair treatment and have the same options for size and placement in your paper.
This is a standard practice in the commercial media industry. Competing stores, companies, politicians and organizations show up in the same newspaper, the same commercial block or in the same websites.
Guideline:
The publication will solicit and accept ads from competing organizations and offer the same pricing and placement options to all organizations.
Social media post/question: What to do when two competing organizations want to advertise in your publication?
Stance: Just because an advertiser (even a long-term one) is in your publication does not mean other companies or organizations shouldn’t also have access to your community.
Reasoning/suggestions: Frequently, two competing organizations will want to advertise in your publication. What do you do when you have two pizza franchises, two driving schools, two gas stations or Planned Parenthood and a right-to-life organization that want to advertise?
The best newspapers serve their community with an open exchange of ideas and information, and they should treat advertising the same way. Professional publications have always accepted ads from competing companies (department stores, grocery stores, car dealerships, and etc.) and your product should be no different.
Resources:
Student Media Guide to Advertising Law, SPLC
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More than a march;
a civics lesson and a wake-up call
Students lined up outside Buffalo Grove High School in Illinois re watched by security. Photo by Stan Zoeller, MJE, and SPRC committee member.
by Stan Zoller, MJE
The walk-outs by thousands of high school students on March 14 did more than call attention to a revamping of the nation’s gun laws, they also provided Americans with several other things.
A wake-up call.
A civics lesson.
And a realization that high school students today are doing what high school students did when I was in high school — speak up and demand to be heard.
When Baby Boomers were in high school, we dealt with Vietnam, equal rights for women and the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.
Vietnam was popular with very few people while the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the lowering of the voting age in Illinois via Project 18, sparked
divisive debates across generations.
The murders of students by gunfire appears to be no different as they seem to be awakening a generation that
discovered it has a voice that needs to be heard.
Parents, politicians and school administrators need to listen.
Two high schools in my hometown allowed students to participate in the March, although in different ways.
One allowed students to congregate only near the main entrance. The entire campus was off limits to anyone with one security office saying it was because the march was a “school event,” which make no sense. Neither does the comment by another security officer who said I wouldn’t be allowed to take pictures because many of the students were minors.
The district’s official position, said the district’s communications supervisor was “the District decided to restrict access to our campuses for a brief period this morning to ensure the safety and security of our students during this morning’s walkout. The decision to briefly restrict access is also in line with how most schools in the Chicagoland area handled the nationwide walkouts.”
She added that “These displays were student-led and peaceful, and our student leaders did a phenomenal job making sure everyone was back in the building when the 17 minutes were over.”
Spoken like a true flack.
It’s interesting that she said, “The decision to briefly restrict access” was “in line with how most schools in the Chicagoland area handled the nationwide walkouts.”
According a spokesman for the other school, “We had an estimated 2,000 students participate in the walkout (today). We reached agreement with the student organizers to have an organized march starting from the “circle drive” entrance and heading south along the building to the Garden of Peace, Hope and Remembrance. From there, students walked into the alley behind the school building to go back inside and return to class. The walkout went off without incident.”
While the school blocked its main entrance, access was available through a second secondary entrance without any problem.
The need for tight security is understandable. The display of local police officers at the first school was unprecedented for a “school event” – even the truck enforcement officer was there.
By limiting students — as many districts did – including one which allegedly told students they could march if they didn’t say anything political, are educators limiting the opportunity for students to become civically engaged?
One Chicago area district, Downers Grove District 99, reportedly issued nearly 1,000 detentions to students who were brazen enough to participate in marches at Downers Grove North and South high schools. The detentions, according to one media report, were in an auditorium where there were conversations about gun violence.
A nice gesture, but what is the result of these conversations? Student voices need to be continuously heard in public, by the public and by lawmakers – not just by school administrators who are bent on control issues. Gun violence is not the first issue to fire-up student voices.
A rash of shooting of African-American men in 2014 sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement and was fueled by demonstrations and outcries le by young people who wanted their voices heard and action taken.
Which raises the question – is squelching student voices the best practice if we want today’s high school students to become more civically engaged?
This is not the first generation of young people to push for change. All administrators need to do is crack open a history book and, as Mr. Peabody would say, “set the way-back machine, Sherman.”
They’ll find that what goes around comes around as it did in the Vietnam era of the 1960s. Students at the collegiate and scholastic levels were relentless in their actions and messages. Today’s students need to have that same relentlessness and resiliency, so their concerns become actions in the nation’s statehouses and in Washington, D.C.
People – whether students or not – need make sure their voices are continually heard and not silenced by overzealous school administrators or PAC-induced lawmakers.
People’s voices, not silence, will make a difference.
But only if people listen and act before it’s too late.
Again.
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