SPRC package offers insights
for reporting protests, marches
by Candace Bowen
Tomorrow will mark the beginning of a series of daily posts to help students cover upcoming protests.
#NeverAgain will represent many thousands of marchers Saturday, March 24 in Washington, D.C., and cities across the country, and JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Committee wants to help student journalists be effective and safe as they report on these and future events.
School walkouts March 14 proved student journalists want to let others know what their classmates are doing, and their impressive news articles, video, audio, tweets and other social media certainly did just that.
But what these journalists may encounter if they head to the nation’s capital or even a city nearby is likely to be very different from reporting on 17 minutes of speeches and balloons on the football field with their classmates.
For one thing, not everyone agrees on the ways to stop school shootings and violence. Counter protesters – possibly armed – are not unlikely. Police will be part of the mix.
These days, some people don’t like journalists anyway, which adds another layer of concern.
The Student Press Law Center has legal FAQs for you. We hope to offer useful logistical and ethical information that could make the difference between a frightening and poorly reported experience and something that tells perhaps the most important story of their generation.
Read MoreReporting stories student journalists
can best tell
by John Bowen, MJE
The above statement is a good reminder or our social responsibility to report all aspects of teen issues – those with good, bad and impact – because our audiences have a right to know.
These are stories student journalists can tell best.
As journalists we do not actively protest, lead walkouts or engage others We examine issues and events with diverse points of view, in context, accurate and complete that might as effectively create change.
We are mirrors to reflect events and candles to illuminate causes and issues that surround us, like the March 14 and March 24 planned protests, marches and discussions initiated by student reactions to the shooting deaths of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
Our journalistic leadership should not prevent expression of our personal feelings and views. Our first obligation is to the truth as Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write in The Elements of Journalism.
“A community that fails to reflect its community deeply will not succeed,” the authors write in Elements, third edition.”But a newspaper that does not challenge its community’s values and preconceptions will lose respect for failing to provide the honesty and leadership newspapers are expected to offer.”
In this case and others, student media can best tell that story.
We lead when we channel our insights into reporting so communities – or societies – can make intelligent and informed decisions affecting our democracy.
To assist students as they report events and issues surrounding walkouts and protests, local and national, the SPRC begins a series of blogposts focusing on protest in America, its relevance and why student media should make every effort to report on its deeper issues.
We start our discussion with the following links and will continue March 19.
- Covering controversy Controversy is often in the eye of the beholder. The best way to prevent a subject from becoming controversial is to use verifiable information, in context, from reliable sources – truthful, accurate, thorough and complete reporting. Students should be able to show why they used some information and not other. They should be transparent about why their coverage was important.
- Practice sensitivity in your reporting How do we, as today’s information consumers and creators, sift through the rumors, the gossip, the failed memories, the spin to capture something as accurately as possible? How can we overcome our own limits of perception, our biases, our experience and come to an account people will see as reliable. This essence of journalism is a discipline of verification. Controversy is in the eyes of the beholder. Our job is make sure anything controversial is reported thoroughly, accurately and coherently.
- Respecting privacy and public space important for photographers, too Student journalists should never invade the privacy of others while accessing information or photos for a story.However. it is their journalistic duty to know what constitutes invasion of privacy or what spaces they are legally allowed to access and what spaces they are not legally allowed to access. Student journalists should check the legal and ethical parameters of public space and the latest recommendations for journalistic activity from the Student Press Law Center.
- Student Press Law Center online guide and resources for student journalists The new resource page is just one of several major steps SPLC took to ensure student journalists can cover protests, walkouts and the growing gun control discussions freely and fairly. See its news release: http://bit.ly/2ozAW5o
- Covering walkouts and protests From the SPLC, this guide provides helpful information student journalists reporting protests and walk-outs.
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Political ads: Who can place an advertisement QT54
Social media post/question:
Should student media allow political ads?
Guideline
Students make all content decisions, including those related to advertising, and maintain the right to reject any ads.
Student media do not necessarily endorse the products or services offered in advertisements. Students should strive to retain as much control of funds or services obtained from the sale of advertising, subscriptions or other student fundraisers as possible. All businesses should have a street address.
Stance:
As with editorial content, students should decide whether they will accept political ads. If they do, they should add in their ethical guidelines, “Student media (will) or (will not) accept political ads.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Not only should students decide what ads they will accept because it’s a best practice, they also should also because of a possible advertiser First Amendment issue.
According to SPLC, “The First Amendment does protect commercial speech, so an advertiser can bring a First Amendment claim if he can prove that a government official (including a teacher or a professor at a public school) rejected the ad for impermissible reasons, such as disagreeing with its viewpoint.”
Students may opt to accept political ads. If they do accept political ads, then students should also consider whether to contact those opposing the candidate running an ad to see if they would also like to place an ad.
Resources:
SPLC Advertising FAQs
Yeo vs. Lexington
SPRC: Advertising
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Ad Placement QT53
Newspapers used to keep in-depth, front page and opinion pages completely separated from advertising.
The thinking was the advertising and promotion of products should not appear to influence a newspaper’s editorial choices. They wanted to keep their most important pages dedicated to the content they deemed most important.
These self-imposed guidelines have relaxed significantly in recent years. Newspapers include ads on front pages and on in-depth pages, often in prominent places on the outside edges.
Most newspapers do still keep the editorial pages free of advertising in order to keep their editorial content free from explicit or inferred influence.
When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of your newspaper.
They need to make sure their advertising is placed away from editorial pages and in-depth content, but consider carefully what compromises they might make on the front page.
If there is page page advertising, what premium price should get from advertiser(s).
Guideline:
Ads will touch student produced content on the inside pages of the publication with no ads on the editorial or in-depth pages.
Organizations directly competing with each other will be placed on different pages, when possible. Special pricing will be available for ads that run in color on the back page.
Question: Where do we put all of these ads we’re getting?
Stance: Advertising must not show up on editorial pages, in-depth pages or the front page.
Reasoning/suggestions: When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of the news medium. Ensure advertising is placed away from editorial pages, in-depth content and your front page.
If students opt to run ads on the front page, the ad shouldn’t overwhelm the content or appear to be actual news content. This is a longstanding principle with most publications and is meant to avoid the potential for conflicts of interest.
Advertising must be clearly recognizable and differentiated from the most import and highest profile content.
Resources:
Student media guide to advertising law, SPLC
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Celebration and grief: Parkland journalists embody importance of student voices during Scholastic Journalism Week
by Kristin Taylor
Normally, Scholastic Journalism Week is about celebrating the hard work of student journalists around the country. JEA spotlights great student coverage, publications staffs wear journalism t-shirts and sweatshirts and show off their mastery of the First Amendment. We make videos to share the inner workings of student newsrooms and get our communities engaged and excited about that work.
But this Scholastic Journalism Week, as our nation reeled from yet another horrific school shooting, the last thing on the minds of student journalists at Stoneman Douglas High School was celebration.
If you haven’t already read Alexandria Neason and Meg Dalton’s Columbia Journalism Review article “In Parkland, journalism students take on role of reporter and survivor,” start there. It describes how Parkland students began to think like journalists even before they had fully evacuated, getting footage and interviewing classmates.
The article describes how newspaper adviser Melissa Falkowski texted her students the next day and “gently nudged them to start thinking about how they might cover the events rapidly unfolding around them,” and how staffers Nikhita Nookala and Christy Ma volunteered to write that first, difficult story, using a Google doc to collaborate from home.
It’s a story about student voice and resilience in the face of unspeakable horror.
I sent this article to all my journalism students and asked them to reflect on its implications, and the conversation we had the next day was powerful. My students expressed their admiration for Nookala, Ma and the other student journalists at Stoneman Douglas. They wondered if they would have the presence of mind to think like journalists in a crisis like that and admired Nookala’s statement that she needed to “do something” to help her community in such a difficult time.
We also looked closely at this passage, which describes one reason why Parkland student journalists felt compelled to report: “This was their story. And telling it was as much about ownership as it was about beginning what will undoubtedly be a difficult reckoning with their own trauma and grief.”
Is there a more powerful statement about the importance of scholastic journalism than that? Seeking the truth while minimizing the harm done to an already traumatized community, being reporters who are also survivors and using journalism to own their community’s stories — these student journalists’ voices were and are important during this crisis.
As a complement to the CJR article, my class also talked about the op-ed in Teen Vogue called “Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years.”
The piece asks hard questions about the outpouring of support that the #neveragain movement has received in comparison to the nation’s response to black youth groups “organizing anti-violence rallies…meeting with presidential candidates, proposing policy ideas, participating in national debates, and organizing intensely to advocate for more equitable state and federal gun laws that impact black and brown people.”
Regardless of their personal opinions, this second piece was a great opportunity to talk about the concept of media framing. What role do news organizations have in framing one group as heroic and another as disruptive? Are student newsrooms also guilty of this? Do they have diverse voices in their newsrooms to ensure multiple perspectives? Why are these conversations so crucial to have when deciding how to cover teen activism and national tragedies?
For me, the answer to these questions comes down to this year’s Scholastic Journalism Week theme: “Student Voice, Student Choice.” When we support our student journalists, we support their efforts to grapple with these difficult questions and report as fairly and accurately as they can, making hard decisions about what to cover and how to cover it.
As I’ve listened to commentators marvel at the articulateness and poise of the Parkland students, I have to shake my head. They are amazing, no doubt, but anyone who thinks it’s shocking that teenagers can speak and write well, whether as journalists or activists, hasn’t spent much time around teenagers lately.
I hope no student has to report on a tragedy like Stoneman Douglas again, but I have every confidence they can if they have to. Our job as advisers is to teach our students journalistic skills and ethics, empower them to own their stories and then get out of the way.
There is no truer celebration of Scholastic Journalism Week than that.
Read MoreHandling sponsored content, native ads QT52
Although it is quite possible scholastic media will never face making a decision to run material known as sponsored content or native ads, students and advisers should prepare guidelines just in case.
Sponsored content and native advertising, two media terms for paid materials, are becoming a fact of life for media and consumers. That said, student media, when faced with publishing them, should act carefully and with the best interests of the audience/consumer first.
Scholastic media owe it to their audiences to expect clearly sourced and non-slanted information, particularly with so much concern with fake news.
Guideline
In the last several years, commercial media have faced a new kind of paid content — “native advertising” or “sponsored content.” The goal with this content is to provide advertising in a way that mimics the look and style of news/editorial content instead of appearing as traditional advertising. This style of advertising has raised serious ethical issues and discussion.
Given the influx of this type of advertising and its spread into scholastic media, students should remember their obligation to keep their communities aware of what kind of content they are publishing.
Communities need to know the type content they are exposed to so they can make informed and rational decisions.
Question: Should your student media accept sponsored content?
Key points/action: Sponsored content and native advertising, two media terms for paid materials, are becoming a fact of life for media and consumers. That said, student media, when faced with publishing them, should act carefully and with the best interests of the audience/consumer first.
Since it is financed ads or reporting, it can be fake news or at least deceptive information, and approached carefully.
Stance: We believe sponsored content can be accepted and published while still protecting the integrity and credibility of student media.
Reasoning/suggestions: Students must create clear guidelines for publishing sponsored content. Recommendation for inclusion in those guidelines should include:
- Prominent and clear identification of the piece as sponsored content.
- A clear statement, at least on the op-ed pages or their equivalent, of why your student media publish sponsored content and who paid for the piece or benefits from its publication.
- Verification, as much as is possible, of the credibility and factualness of information and sources in the piece.
- A concise statement, at least on the op-ed pages or their equivalent, that what your editorial board’s support of included material is Ex: this content does not necessarily represent the view of your media or school system).Resources:
Making Memories, One Lie at a Time (example of native ad), Slate Web magazine
New York Times Tones Down Labeling on Its Sponsored Posts, Advertising Age
Native Advertising Examples: 5 or the Best (and Worst), WordStream Online Advertising
The Native Advertising Playbook, Interactive Advertising Bureau
Audio: Sponsored Content, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
PR Giant Edelman Calls for Ethics in Sponsored Content, Forbes
FTC: Publishers Will Be Held Responsible for Misleading native Ads, Adexchanger.com
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
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