Scholastic Journalism Week: A chance to showcase your voices. Updated daily
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Student voice, student choice.
JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Committee works to promote this theme of the 2018 Scholastic Journalism Week. We’ll take the week to highlight some SPRC materials daily.
Monday, teachers who are looking for some last-minute lesson plans to fit with the theme of embracing students’ First Amendment rights, should check out these lessons from Constitution Day:
Amendment School Dialogue, by Jeff Kocur: Guide your students through a class-sized (or whole-school) dialogue about the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Students will identify and evaluate the impact of the First Amendment in their own lives and the lives of others.
The Importance of an Independent and Active Press, by Matthew Smith: Expose students to the many possible benefits of independent media in a democracy through quotes and video excerpts of world leaders espousing the necessity of a free press. Students will evaluate and discuss their own reaction to these arguments.
Introduction to News Literacy, by Kristin Taylor: The freedom of speech and of the press come with responsibilities, too, and this lesson provides materials for recognizing different types of news media and coverage. Students will examine the credibility of news sources as well as examine their own media habits in order to beef up their news diets and avoid “fake” news.
What’s in Your State Press Law?, by John Bowen and Lori Keekley: As New Voices laws spread across the country to protect student journalists, help your students understand what their state does or does not cover when it comes to student press rights. Students will examine their own law and create a dialogue with stakeholders about the benefits of protecting student publications.
Sharing Your State Law with Others, by John Bowen and Lori Keekley: State laws protecting student press rights mean nothing if students, administrators, school boards and others don’t know what they mean or how they impact the community. For this lesson, students will create an action plan for the various groups in their community about the state legislation.
Student voice, student choice.
JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Committee works to promote this theme of the 2018 Scholastic Journalism Week. We’ll take the week to highlight some SPRC materials daily.
Tuesday, the Making a Difference project showcases the efforts of scholastic journalists around the country. The goal of the Making a Difference project is to highlight instances of scholastic journalism at its best.
The student editors of The Tower, student newspaper at Grosse Pointe South High School (MI) are MAD (Making a Difference.) In their Jan. 31 editorial, “The End to a Destructive Cycle,” they tackled the Larry Nassar public testimony and the #MeToo movement.
The student editors of Uncaged Student News/UncagedOnline at Stockbridge High School (GA) are MAD (Making a Difference.) Their Feb. 13 editorial, “Sexual harassment is your issue, too” points out that sexual harassment impacts everyone.
Please share your published work showing how your student media covers gun control and how this coverage inspires conversation and, perhaps, promotes change in your school community.
If interested, please use this submission form, which asks for the following:
PDF or URL link to your story or broadcast
- A short statement explaining why this topic was chosen and how it impacted your school community.
- Names of student authors and editors, with email contacts. Permission to post links or PDFs to the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee website
The Scholastic Press Rights Committee applauds all student media with the courage to tackle tough issues and to Make A Difference.
WEDNESDAY: Editorial leadership may be the most important aspect of a student media program. This recent Quick Tip explains why staff editorials are a much-needed aspect of any robust journalism program.
Check here tomorrow for material from the SPRC
Read MoreFake or Fact? seminar available
via live-streaming, archived video
Looking for additional materials for Constitution Day and lessons about fake news in addition to what’s available from JEA and the SPRC?
The 13th annual Poynter-Kent State University Media Ethics Workshop is Thursday, Sept. 21, and focuses on fake news. The theme is “Fake or Fact?”
Details about the workshop, including speaker bios and a tentative schedule, are here.
A lesson plan for scholastic students, created by Candace Bowen, is available on the site.
The event is on the record, live streamed and archived. Show your students panel discussions as the happen or return to them by accessing the archives.
The keynote speaker will be NPR’s David Folkenflik, NPR media correspondent who is now featured in Netflix’s documentary “Nobody Speak.”
Other sessions will address fake news and journalism credibility, fake news and the 2016 election, how to identify and combat fake news, and fake news and public relations. Kelly McBride, Poynter’s VP, will be present, along with Indira Lakshmanan, who is Poynter’s new ethics chair.
You may recognize Indira as the Boston Globe’s Washington columnist who is frequently on PBS’s Washington Week and other political news shows.
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When hatred speaks, we must speak back
Exploring the First Amendment on Constitution Day
by Kristin Taylor
In 2004, Senator Robert Byrd attached an amendment to a federal spending bill to create a new national observance: Constitution Day. This amendment required public schools and government offices “to provide educational programs to promote a better understanding of the Constitution.”
“I hope that kids understand that in this country, everything that we do in everyday life is touched upon by the Constitution of the United States,” he said in an interview. “It protects our liberties and it protects our freedom of speech. It protects our religion. It protects the freedom of speech so the newspapers can tell us the news every day.”
As a member of the Scholastic Press Rights Committee, it is especially important to me that students explore the First Amendment on Constitution Day, a critically important conversation to have in the face of today’s political climate and the rise of hate speech.
The 2017 Newseum’s State of the First Amendment survey showed an uptick in political speech this year — petition and assembly are two of the five freedoms, and almost half of those surveyed took advantage of them this year. It also showed overall agreement that a watchdog press is crucial, yet 22.5 percent of participants supported the claim that First Amendment freedom protection goes too far.
I suspect that number would be higher were the survey to happen today in the wake of Charlottesville and similar events.
Like many educators, I am troubled by the uptick in hate speech across the country and by white supremacists’ use of the term “free speech” to label rallies that are really about hatred. But as despicable as hate speech is, the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed, it is still protected by the First Amendment. It is not among the categories of unprotected speech defined by court cases over the years.
How can we face our students of color, our Jewish students or other students from marginalized groups and tell them that supporting the First Amendment means supporting the right of groups like the KKK or Nazis to spew this kind of hatred?
The American Bar Association has a good article to start the conversation. It outlines the difference between hateful speech and hateful acts using relevant court cases, and it defines libertarian and communitarian viewpoints on the issue. It also gives an example of how this played out on one college campus.
[pullquote]A more compelling question to ask our students is if they trust our government — and future governments — to decide what is offensive. Some European countries do, and this suggests that democratic societies can have reasonable, differing views on the matter. But others argue “the freer the speech, the stronger the democracy.”[/pullquote]
But I think a more compelling question to ask our students is if they trust our government — and future governments — to decide what is offensive. Some European countries do, and this suggests that democratic societies can have reasonable, differing views on the matter. But others argue “the freer the speech, the stronger the democracy.”
In my experience, my more liberal students are quick to say the government should ban offensive speech, and my more conservative students believe everyone is afraid to speak because of “political correctness.”
To even begin a meaningful conversation, students first need the facts, and Constitution Day is a great time to provide them.
I recommend starting by clarifying that the First Amendment is about how the government doesn’t have a right to censor or punish speech; it has no bearing on how private citizens, companies or employers choose to react. White supremacists’ constitutional right to speak will not shield them from counter-protests, public humiliation via social media or personal consequences, such as being fired by a private employer. Similarly, social media platforms owned by private companies such as Facebook or Twitter are not public forums set up by the government, so they have the right to censor any content they deem offensive.
This leads into the second point: the danger in giving the government the power to censor is that there isn’t a common understanding of “offensive.”
In a blog post explaining why the ACLU filed a lawsuit defending provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech, James Esseks, Director of the LGBT & HIV Project, expressed the deep divide between Yiannopoulos’ hateful speech and the ACLU’s core values: “Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all. We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones.”
However, he goes on to write, “Without free speech protections, all civil rights advocacy could be shut down by the people in power, precisely because government doesn’t agree with the ideas activists advance. That was true of the civil rights fights of the past, it’s true of the movements facing pitched battles today, and it will be true of the movements of the future that are still striving to be heard.”
Many people believe speech about such issues as abortion, gender identity or sexuality are offensive, Esseks argues, and “if First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it’s not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court.”
[pullquote]This is the heart of the First Amendment — the question of whether we trust the government to regulate our speech and define what is offensive and what is not, or if we want to retain that freedom ourselves.[/pullquote]
This is the heart of the First Amendment — the question of whether we trust the government to regulate our speech and define what is offensive and what is not, or if we want to retain that freedom ourselves.
That said, student editorial boards are not “the government.” They can and should make ethical decisions about what to publish, and they have a right to refuse to publish hateful speech, though I would caution them to differentiate between “hate speech” and student opinions they dislike. They also have the right and the responsibility to act as ethical leaders who take informed positions in unsigned editorials.
The editorial board of the nationally award-winning Harbinger Online provides a great example of ethical leadership in response to hateful speech in their most recent editorial, “Burn the Eastonian.” The Eastonian is an underground student newspaper known for its “diabolical” and “abusive” attacks on and lies about students, teachers and administrators, and this editorial makes a compelling case to convince students to end this “most shameful tradition.”
This editorial demonstrates how punishment and censorship are seldom as powerful as more speech can be. According to the piece, this tradition has been going on for decades, despite threats of suspension, being banned from school activities or legal consequences (I assume for the libel, which is a form of unprotected speech).
These deterrents didn’t end the Eastonian last year, but the Harbinger’s passionate editorial might. By naming the problem, humanizing the victims, explaining the consequences — not just to the perpetrators if they get caught, but also to those defamed and to the reputation of the school — and providing examples of prominent students in the community who have pledged to take no part in the Eastonian, the Harbinger editorial board has shown the power of more speech in the face of hate.
Schools across the nation will celebrate Constitution Day on Monday, Sept. 18, this year. I urge you to use this opportunity to bring to the surface difficult conversations about hate speech and the First Amendment.
In addition to the resources I’ve linked to in this blog, you should also check out the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee’s 2017 Constitution Day lessons.
Read MoreFirst Amendment school dialogue
by Jeff Kocur
Title:
First Amendment school dialogue
Description
Constitution Day, for journalists, may need to start simply with recognition of the First Amendment and the five freedoms of the First Amendment. This activity will allow your school or individual classes to have a quick discussion of the First Amendment and how your students see their lives impacted by it.
Objectives:
- Students will recognize the five freedoms of the First Amendment
- Students will see the impact of the First Amendment on others
- Students will show the First Amendment’s impact on their own life.
Common Core State Standards
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.9 | Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.1.C | Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives. |
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.8 | Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning (e.g., in U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents) and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy (e.g., The Federalist, presidential addresses). |
Length:
One lunch period (or extend the time over the course of a week during lunches)
Materials/Resources
Five Freedoms poster (make your own or print off the attached version and make it a poster)
Five Freedoms handout
Post-it Notes in five different colors (red, blue, green, yellow and purple)
Sharpie pens
Candy
Activity/lesson Step by Step
Step 1 — Preparation
Print off the Five Freedoms poster and blow it up so that you can hang it on a wall in your lunch or commons area.
Step 2 — Student input
Have your editors sit at a table during lunches with the poster, Post-it Notes, markers and a bowl of candy. Use the Google Presentation slideshow if you have a projector available or print off the five slides and laminate them for student reference.
Invite students to see the five different freedoms of the First Amendment and to choose the freedom they use the most often. Make sure they see the example sheets for the five different freedoms.
Have them choose the color of the Post-it Note that corresponds with their selection and write their name on the Post-it Note.
Post the note on the poster you’ve hung up and offer the students a piece of candy once they’ve completed the task.
Extension
Have an interview booth set up and offer the students the opportunity to share the impact one of the freedoms of the First Amendment has had on them. Here, they could go more in depth and discuss their own story and what the protections of the First Amendment mean to them.
Student media staffs also could put together a story or video that includes the results and some of the quotes from students who provided them.
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
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