Expressing student freedoms – and responsibility – through substantive reporting
In a survey taken at the San Antonio JEA and NSPA convention last November, students and advisers reported censorship was alive and well in America’s schools. Forty-two percent of students and 41 percent of advisers responding said school officials had told them not to publish or air something. Fifty-four percent of students indicated a school official reviewed student media content before publication or airing.
Both groups also incited self-censorship was an issue, prompting SPLC director Frank LoMonte to lay some of the blame for situations like these on the 1988 Hazelwood decision.
“Schools will continue to be disempowering places where no meaningful discussion of civic issues takes place so long as Hazelwood censorship is practiced,” he said.
Fortunately, some schools can and do tackle important issues and are not limited by misguided administrators. Others can learn from their efforts.
One example where students tackled substantive issues is the Verde at Palo Alto High School, in California, where they reported on a “rape culture” at their school. Another is the Triangle of Columbus North High School in Columbus, Indiana, which published on sexual assault. Both stories reinforce the importance of issues teens face as seen in events in Steubenville, Ohio, and Saratoga, California.
Below are links to these students’ reporting, and related stories. These stories are models of reporting student media is capable of when communities, school administrators and advisers support critical thinking and student decision making.
In the next several weeks, we will also report other efforts not only to limit Hazelwood’s impact but also to recognize schools around the country through our Make a Difference through substantive reporting project.
The SPLC developed its Cure Hazelwood website to help combat the effects of that 1988 Supreme Court decision, and JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Association prepared its Seeking a Cure for the Hazelwood Blues and Teacher’s Kit for Curing Hazelwood materials to educate all parties about the lack of education value in prior review and restrict by school officials. A myriad of essential curriculum materials and information about fighting Hazelwood exists on the Scholastic Press Rights Commission website.
For more information about the Verde and Triangle stories, see below:
* Palo Alto high students talk about ‘rape culture’
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201304151000
* Palo Alto high-school journalists expose ‘rape culture’
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/crime-law/rape-culture/nXJct/
• High school students teach us how to talk about rape
http://www.alternet.org/high-school-students-teach-us-how-talk-about-rape
• High school students school us about rape culture
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/high_school_students_school_us_about_rape_culture/
• Steubenville Ohio articles over the last 30 days
http://interceder.net/latest_news/Steubenville-Ohio
Student decision-making: Learning to act ethically
by Jeff Kocur
The student government at my school made a questionable attempt to spice up our March Madness spirit week, and the assistant principal let it happen.
He is new this year, and it was a refreshing presence of ethics from the assistant principal’s office, which has previously ruled with a pretty heavy hand.
I saw the whole thing happen as I waited to meet with the student government adviser.
The students wanted to designate a spirit day called “Bros versus Hipsters.”
Our school is quite diverse and the assistant principal, himself a black man, was sitting down with the student government students to discuss what kind of message might be portrayed when students dress up like a bro. In our school and in our community, a bro would be closely affiliated with inner city culture, and we had a history of other incidents with sports teams full of white boys dressing up with do rags and such in the name of spirit.
The assistant principal listened, presented his concerns, and then allowed the students to make the decision about changing the spirit day.
The decision was unanimous to keep the spirit day, and they hung signs up within a day to advertise for the next week’s spirit.
It didn’t take more than a day for the student government members to remove the bro designation after they received some negative feedback including a homemade sign taped to their spirit day signs that read “just because we are black does not make us bros” or something to that extent
I spoke with the assistant principal, a man I am still getting to know. I told him how much I appreciated his process with the students, and his response was encouraging.
He explained his principle is that he can’t come into an environment and tell kids how to act ethically because then they aren’t practicing ethics; they are just following orders. They aren’t growing as people if they aren’t allowed to do some questionable things and perhaps suffer the consequences of those actions.
Student leaders have not been so empowered before at my school, especially when it comes to the newspaper, so I am encouraged we have someone who is speaking these truths.
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Encouraging diversity in new staff selection
by Megan Fromm
For most publications staffs around the country, the post-spring-break season is officially new staff recruitment time—the chance to build the ideal team for next school year. Applications start rolling in, would-be editors wait anxiously for their new assignments and advisers endure the emotional rollercoaster of deciding who belongs where and why.
Typically, requirements such as editing skills, leadership potential, design ability and time commitments take precedence when selecting a new staff. But what about ideology? What about personal perspectives or cultural understandings? Building the right publications team demands a deep understanding not only of your students technical skills, but also of their personalities, dispositions and background.
Advocating for diversity among your staff members is not just the politically correct thing to do—it should be an ethical imperative. When your staffers’ family background, religious ideologies or cultural upbringing reflect a range of experiences, your publication is more likely to exhibit that same diversity.
If you haven’t yet considered how diversity plays a part in your staff-building process, consider taking a survey of your current students and potential staffers or making a diversity reflection part of your application requirement. The point is not to force students to answer questions about politics or religion or race, but rather to encourage them to open up about personal perspectives that demonstrate and celebrate their own uniqueness.
Ask questions like:
- What is most important to you outside school?
- What cliques or stereotypes do you feel you most relate to? Which ones least define you? Why?
- What are you doing (or where are you physically) when you feel most “yourself?”
- Where (or to whom) do you go for inspiration?
If all the responses sound eerily similar, you might want to rethink your recruitment strategies or the students you target for your publications programs. On the other hand, if the reflections show a range of distinct answers, consider how those students might help encourage the same diversity in coverage by being a part of your publication.
Be sure you give students a chance to authorize your “release” of this information to returning staff members who might be helping in the recruitment/selection process. And, when your staff is finally complete, encourage members to share these reflections during team-building.
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Building a credible brand: Stick to the facts
by Candace and John Bowen
April 1. April Fools.
JEA listservians have carried out a lively discussions on the merits and demerits of publishing April Fools editions. SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte even said to keep his center’s phone number and e-mail address handy if students published such an issue.
Tough decision. Some commercial media publish such pieces. Why not scholastic media?
We think there are two core reasons for not publishing an April Fools issue:
• The information is known to be false. We spend the rest of the school year developing our credibility over controversy and defending students’ rights and obligation to print the truth. Then in one day we throw caution to the wind and go with information that is not only untrue but even could be taken to be misleading.
• We give others the right to know what is coming. Prior review. Prior approval. We do this, in some cases, with the best of intentions, so sources will not be caught unaware, and to make sure information is not too far out of line. We might even mix the untrue with the true, hoping our audiences can tell the difference. This scares us. We, including those of us carrying out JEA’s official position, argue and rant daily about the educational dangers of prior review. So in this case we want to say, here, check it out ahead of time? What will we say to those, now used to prior review, when they ask for it on something of substance?
Various journalism experts stress that ethical journalists do not add what is not there.
That includes making up information that is not true, or real.
Think about what you want your brand, your reputation, to be. Stick to credible journalism.
Modified and reposted from an original piece March 2, 2010.
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Censorship by any other name
Students in Prague work on deadline for the publication. (photo by Candace Perkins Bowen)
by Candace Bowen
The good vibes that come from creating a publication that’s yours know no language barriers. And when someone in power tells students what they can and cannot publish, it’s demoralizing and sucks the life-blood out of what could otherwise be a great product. Even talented writers and designers can’t overcome that, no matter how good the teaching is.
Time: Summer 1998
The Place: Prague and Bratislava
Instructors: Candace Perkins Bowen and Merle Dieleman, hired by the Open Society (Soros Foundation) to teach “fact-based American journalism” to teens in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
In Prague, our Center for Independent Journalism contact set us up in a nice facility for teaching, made sure we had good interpreters, gave us a lab for the last two days when the students were to produce a newsmagazine and then she left us alone.
Typical 16-year-olds, the 25 we worked with were passionate about the interviewing and writing. Some took on more than they could handle, and, with four hours left until deadline, mild panic ensued. But the sensible editors made the rounds of their staff, encouraged, coached and told some just to focus on one story and not try to finish three. They also made sure everyone would have something in their publication.
Even when we faced challenges like a PageMaker menu bar in Czech (How do you say, “Drop cap?”) and missing cutlines and cables, it was a crazy wonderful time. As we broke from a giant group hug when we met our deadline, one of the Charles University interpreters said excitedly, “I think I want to be a student media adviser!”
When we distributed the paper the next day, students were all thrilled. Sure, some of the photos were fuzzy, and no one knows where the last line of the street car story went, but they were excited and pleased. It was theirs.
Fast forward to Bratislava for the next two and a half weeks. Different center, different director. Much different philosophy. She wanted a PR piece to make her Center look good. She hired a designer and only one of the 25 students had any hands-on opportunity with actually putting the pieces together. All stories went through her, as she edited, changed, eliminated articles without any input from the 25 students, who shyly complained to us at first. Then, when we could do nothing either, finally they just did some articles, but without enthusiasm.
Teens in Bratislava, who had no real say in the content of their publication, as less enthused. (photo by Merle Dieleman)
When their publication was distributed the last day of the workshop, the expressions on their faces told the story. The newsmagazine looked appealing and, I’m sure (though it was in Slovak and I couldn’t read it!) had articles with perfect spelling, punctuation and mechanics. But the students didn’t care. The publication had none of their voices, their passion. It wasn’t theirs.
What an opportunity she had denied them. They didn’t wrangle over what content to include like the kids in Prague. They didn’t have to decide what was most important or plan what got front page and what had to be buried inside. They didn’t spend time coaching each other or double checking source names. They didn’t try just one more time to reach that reluctant source. They didn’t learn to think. And they definitely didn’t meet their deadline with a group hug.
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The hits never stop coming
Scholastic journalism’s focus this year is and should be on the 25th anniversary of Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier and the issues it helped spawn, from outright censorship to elimination of programs and teachers.Next year brings two notable anniversaries, both of on the results of censorship and other issues that limited – and continue to limit – journalism programs around the country.
Next year brings two notable anniversaries, both on the results of censorship and other issues that limited – and continue to limit – journalism programs around the country.
“Captive Voices,” published in 1974, is out of print, but available on Amazon. It will be 40 years since this expose first helped the public become aware of censorship and attitudes that limited student expression, and pointed to the importance of journalism education in America’s schools.
This study also brought about the Student Press Law Center, journalism education’s foremost legal support for teachers, students and communities in their search for free expression and civic engagement.
“Death By Cheeseburger,” published in 1994, out of print but available online here, focused on the health of American’s scholastic journalism programs 20 years after “Captive Voices.” Created around censorship of a story on school cafeteria food, the book included examination of scholastic journalism in much the same approach as “Captive Voices.” It marked the real beginning of commercial media putting forth resources to study, as well as improve, scholastic journalism on many levels.
Careful reading – and we all should revisit these books – will reveal issues fought 40 and 20 years ago still exist and still demand our attention as journalism educators.
We note these studies today because we must remain vigilant about the issues they raised.
• Advisers continue to lose their jobs for a myriad of reasons. For example, in Illinois, an adviser was RIFed (reduction in force) because of finances, the board said. The adviser says differently. His situation is certainly not the only one. For more information, go here and here. For information about a California adviser fearing retaliation, go here.
• Complaints about journalistic coverage and content continue as well. At Mountain View, Calif., students published a section on teen sex issues and some members of the community raised intense objection. Pro-student speakers and opponents discussed the issue at a board meeting. To date, school officials support the students right to make content decisions.
For information, see:
—Mountain View High School student newspaper’s sex stories raise parent ire
—Debate over sex education column defines us
––High school paper’s sex and relationships article stirs up controversy
Because the hits like these keep coming, we cannot become complacent. We must celebrate and support those who contribute to our successes.
The Student Press Law Center received an Education Writer’s Association second place national award for “FERPA Fact” in the Best Blog category by a nonprofit or advocacy organization.
Frank LoMonte, in an email to the SPLC’s Advisory Council, said, “When we created FERPA Fact, we thought we were doing something pretty cool — leveraging the power of humor to get people talking about a serious problem that is in need of reform. We are pleased that others agree.”
We applaud the SPLC for being an unparalleled leader in scholastic journalism’s fight of this ongoing battle that shows no signs of ending.
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