Quick Tips…because you asked
by John Bowen
Because of questions asked on JEA’s listserv this week, the Scholastic Press Rights Committee reposts information and guidelines from earlier content ownership and takedown guidelines.
To repost links to these materials, we will use a new format, Quick Tips, designed to respond to questions, offer suggestions and provide resources so advisers and students can make informed decisions.
Rather than term these approaches as policy suggestions, we like to refer to them as guidelines for ethical decision making and procedures to apply the ethical process.
Here are Quick Tips responses to concerns about ownership of student media content and takedown demands.
Quick Tips: Content ownership
Question: Who owns the content of student media and why should this be a concern?
Key points/action: Advisers asked several questions this week about who should own content of student media, what the possibilities were and what steps are involved in the decision-making process.
Stancec:Deciding who owns content of student media should be an important decisions for all platforms and programs. Contained within that decision are implications for the forum concept, how content can be used and by whom and on takedown demands.
Reasoning/suggestions: Students, with input from advisers, should pick a solution that best fits their situation. The choices are students own rights to content with granting access to student media for its use or student media owns the content with access rights to students.
For multiple reasons it is not a good idea to have the school own student media content.
Resource: Who owns student-produced content?
Quick Hits: Takedown demands
Question: When and why should student media take down content, in print or online?
Key points/action: Source’s remorse, writer’s second-thoughts or other rethinking of existing information accessible to employers, colleges or simply to friends sometimes causes uncomfortable questions for student staffs.
What guidelines should student media staffers adapt or create that fulfills the role of historical-record, forum and source of information.
Stance: We feel there are no quick and easy answers, but plenty of ethical room for discussion and implementation of workable guidelines (not policy) that can withstand the test of time.
Reasoning/suggestions: Policies are not meant to be easily changeable as are journalistic tools and process. Guidelines give flexibility for changing conditions and room for students to make ethical decisions.
Resources: Takedown demands? A roadmap of choices
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.
Read MoreFive ways we can help you
by Lori Keekley
May 1, Loyalty Day. Too-many-days-left-to-count-down-the-end-of-the-school-year day …
No matter what it is, here are five ways JEA’s SPRC can help you (and your students) now.
1. We’re here for you. Whether it’s to study for an upcoming CJE or MJE exam or to help research in a case of censorship, we work to help you and your students.
2. We’re here for your students. If they (or you) find you are in a situation of need, please hit the Panic Button. Someone will answer your request within 24 hours. (It’s usually as soon as we see the email.)
3. Planning for next year? The Foundations Package is a great place to start. This resource helps by providing some starting points for creating a staff manual that includes a media- or board-level policy, ethical guidelines and procedures.
4. It’s never too early to start thinking about Constitution Day. We will release new materials Aug. 20 to help you celebrate this federally mandated event.
5. We will continue to support the First Amendment and its application in schools through our support of New Voices campaigns, First Amendment Press Freedom Award and the passage for board statements.
Please let us know if you need something or think of another way we can help you. We are happy to help
Read MoreLoyalty Day is May 1.
Let’s reaffirm OUR principles
by John Bowen
Loyalty Day is Monday, May 1.
First observed in 1921 because of threats from subversive influence, it has been a legally designated holiday since 1958 and observed by every president since then, reports Esquire.
President Donald Trump said its purpose, according to Mic, was to protect against those who would do the United States harm, and according to Fox News, “to recognize and reaffirm our allegiance to the principles” that are America’s heritage..
For journalists, groups that do harm might include:
• Those who perpetuate fake news
• Those who lie to newsmedia and to the public
• Those who interfere with the news media’s quest for truthful, accurate and thorough reporting
• Those who would censor journalists, at any level, and thus misinform or disinform citizens’ rights to know
Journalists are not enemies of the state. Not May 1 or any of 364 other days.
Read More
JEA statement on student free expression
in a vibrant and flourishing democracy
The Journalism Education Association, at its board meeting in Seattle Washington April 6, unanimously passed the following statement:
To address current negativity toward news media in general and misunderstanding of its roles in a democracy, the Journalism Education Association reiterates its principles and practices that nourish a lifelong commitment for a vibrant and flourishing democracy.
We strongly believe free student expression as taught and practiced in journalism classes anchors successful scholastic media. So empowered, our programs showcase the importance of news and media literacy, civic engagement, critical thinking and decision-making as the core of lifelong involvement in a democracy.
To protect our democracy and its principles:
- JEA reaffirms its position that the practice of journalism is an important form of public service to prepare students as engaged, civic-minded citizens who are also discerning information creators and users.
- JEA will recognize, promote and support strong editorial policies with each media outlet as a designated public forum for student expression where students make all final content decisions without prior review or restraint.
- JEA will encourage all journalism teachers and advisers to strongly encourage diversity, accuracy and thoroughness in content so student media reflect and make sense to communities they serve.
- JEA will produce sample editorial policies and accompany them with model ethical guidelines and staff manual procedures that enhance and implement journalistically responsible decisions across media platforms.
- JEA will encourage journalism teachers and media advisers, even if they must teach and advise under prior review or restraint, to recognize how educationally unsound and democratically unstable these policies and rules are.
- JEA will insist student free expression not be limited by claims related to program funding or equipment use. Instead, journalism programs should showcase student civic engagement and practice democratic principles no matter what media platform is used.
- JEA will demonstrate, to communities in and out of school, through its actions, policies, programs and budgeting, its commitment to an informed, vibrant nation where free expression is expected and practiced as part of our diverse American heritage.
Additionally, we believe groups we partner with and endorse should faithfully support principles of free student expression for student media.
Read MoreInternational Fact-Checking Day is just the beginning
by Candace Perkins Bowen
It should be every day, but it hasn’t been. Do we always check that information we see and read is real? What are fake news, “alternative facts” or propaganda? How do we spot it?
Fake news has been around in many forms and for many years – from supermarket tabloids to “War of the Worlds,” H.G. Wells’ 1938 radio program that panicked thousands. But today the concern is growing, thanks, in part, to digital media that spreads information virally and often dramatically. How can we tell what to believe? Are “alternative truths” really possible? Or maybe we are victims of what author of “On Tryanny” Timothy Snyder says, “When we learn [information] from the screen, we tend to be drawn in by the logic of spectacle.”
Because of this, the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, partnering with fact-checking organizations worldwide, is promoting International Fact-Checking Day April 2, 2017.
As the website says, it’s “not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts — and fact-checking — in politics, journalism, and everyday life.”
The site includes a downloadable lesson plan and links to other sites with “how-to’s” such as spotting fake news, checking a politician’s claims and recognizing twitter handles who aren’t who they say they are. There’s also a trivia quiz noting popular political claims – but are they factual?
There’s a hoax-off and a map showing sites all over the world where others are celebrating International Fact-Checking Day.
This summer, JEA’s Press Rights Committee will create additional materials for teachers and students. Look for our lessons, activities, essays and resources and more by the start of school.
#FACTCHECKIT
Read More
Student reporting faces ‘fake news’ charges
as it tries to bring light to hiring process
Sunshine Week celebrates
use of public records
Reporting done by a repeat recipient of scholastic journalism’s First Amendment Press Freedom Award faces charges of “fake news”as it tries to gather information about the private hiring process of a new principal.
According to a New York Times article, “Students working on the school newspaper, The Classic, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request this week asking for the names of the 38 people who had applied to be their principal.”
The Times also reported the hiring process is all done in private with position interviewers required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
The “fake news” charge is from a school system official and aimed at how students “aggressively covered the tensions at the school” and the principal, The Times reported.
Student said in The Times article, and in another article, they were just doing their job.
This week, March 12-18, is Sunshine Week, highlighting the importance of using the Freedom of Information Act as an essential part of reporting.
Students, reported in dnainfo, a New York paper, wrote a letter to school officials, “”To label our reporting as ‘fake’ is to disparage all the hard work we do,” Hasan and The Classic’s Managing Editor, Mehrose Ahmad, 17, wrote in their Mar. 5 letter to the mayor and schools chancellor. “If we were fabricating our material, we would be able to leave school far earlier than we do.”
According to The Times, students also said of their reporting, “Fake news is not poorly ourced journalism: It is wholly fictitious. Ms. DeSanctis (the school official who made the fake news charge) is therefore not accusing us of being wrong; she is accusing us of purposefully making up lies and reporting them as news. If we were fabricating our material, we would be able to leave school far earlier than we do.”
The fake news accusation is ironic with Townsend Harris’ prior FAPFA recognition and the fact journalism students are using an important FOIA approach to gather and report important news to the public.
So your student media can make use of FOIA and Sunshine Week, find more information at:
• Sunshine Week, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• Sunshine Week Program, Open Government. Org
• Sunshine Week 2017 at the National Archives