Students making content decisions – 1 Administrative review – 0
by Candace Perkins Bowen
Even media staffs that have been the well-respected voice of a large, diverse student body sometimes run into problems with administrators. And sometimes a few tweaks of the editorial policy or staff manual could get them through the rough spots and apparently back on track to publish what they know their readers need and want to know.
Building journalistic foundations:
Adviser’s Institute session materials
Members of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission presented this material July 13 at the JEA Advisers Institute In Las Vegas.
No matter what platform you use, the choice of an editorial policy, ethical guidelines and staff manual can make or break your student media – and consistency is very important.
What you select, and why, does make a difference.
Along with the newest in digital tools and storyforms, training for a new year and new staff should include basics in law and ethics, especially development of editorial policies and staff manuals.
To ensure students understand these legal and ethical foundations before publication, especially with the new roles, we recommend advisers and student staffs do the following:
• Outline goals and mission for your student media
• Train your editors and staff in legal principles across platforms
• Ensure board- and/or publication-level policies are in place
• Train editors and staff in ethical principles across platforms
• Establish, for online or print, a content verification process
• Clarify who owns the content
• Develop guidelines for handling takedown demands.
Weaving editorial policy, ethical guidelines and staff manual into a complementary package develops a foundation of good journalistic practices, beginning with editorial policies.
As our journalistic process changes to include new roles as outlined by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in Blur, we need a strong foundation that binds them together.
New roles include: Authenticator, Sense Maker, Investigator, Witness bearer, Empowerer, Smart Aggregator, Forum Organizer, Role Model and increase the importance of having a strong legal and ethical foundation.
We think our policy-ethics-staff manual Foundation will help meet this change.
Resources for you
1. Explanation of the policy-ethics-staff manual idea
2. What’s at stake in policy development
3. Policy talking points
4. When your student media are public forums and when they are not
5. Building your policies
6. Definition of policy terms
7. Questions about forums
8. More questions about forums
9. Foundations-policy package
10. Possible alternative workding samples
11. SPRC model policies
12. JEA board-approved model editorial policy
13. Questions about prior review
Our PowerPoint from the Advisers Institute presentation is below
Link to lesson plan based on the presentation.
Link to model policies
Link to the complete Foundations package
The role of student media
Ethical guidelines
Journalists often are considered mirrors on society. As such, journalism should reflect the community in which it is produced. In order to also maintain their watchdog function, journalists must also be able to act as candles that illuminate and challenge a community’s values and preconceptions. Monitoring the status quo and the powers that be is one way journalists can both reflect and challenge their communities. This journalistic practice helps maintain the free and accurate flow of information.
Additionally, student media should be independent from their school’s public relations arm. The purpose of student media is to report school and community issues and events. Consequently, the purpose of student media is not to protect the image of the school or district.
These roles are premised on the idea that student media can operate in an independent manner.
JEA strongly rejects both prior review and restraint as tools in the education process and agrees with other national journalism education groups that no valid educational justification exists for prior review of scholastic media.
Prior review and prior restraint of student media content by school officials are weapons in the arsenal of censorship. Not only do they limit student learning and application, but they also restrict student critical thinking and analysis.
- Prior review occurs when school administrators – or anyone in a position of authority outside the editorial staff – demands to read, view or approve content prior to publication and/or distribution. JEA includes review, but not demanding change, as part of the adviser’s role.
- Prior restraint happens when anyone not on the student staff – often after they have read material (prior review) – requires pre-distribution changes to inhibit, ban or restrain content before release to the audience.
Free expression, supported by journalistic responsibility, empowers students to exercise their civic engagement and responsibility as they practice the principles of a free, open democracy.
Staff manual process
A media-level editorial policy/guideline should designate student media as public forums for student expression in which students make all final decisions of content without review from school officials.
Student journalists must be attuned to the institutions, people and issues that most affect their readers: students. By engaging with this community, actively looking for stories and becoming part of the institutional fabric of their schools, student journalists will be prepared to recognize which stories will reflect and challenge their community.
Students should define this distinct role in their school community and should highlight the difference between their role and that of the school’s public relations department.
Suggestions
• Persuade school officials to adopt or endorse a policy that designates student media as public forums for student expression in which students make all final decisions of content without prior review.
• Develop principles and procedures that uphold scholastic media as designated public forums practicing professional and ethical standards.
• Be the eyes and ears for readers. What information should they know but aren’t likely to seek on their own?
• Assign beats to represent the most important topics, institutions and people in the community. Keeping tabs on the same topic throughout the year will help students develop a keen nose for news and will help them understand the unique dynamics at play in their community.
• Include entrepreneurial assignments that allow students to explore key issues and events in the communities, expanding their eyes and ears for news.
• Address strategies that help reporters remain detached from stories they cover in their own communities. The staff manual should address strategies for situations when students are too entrenched in the community to cover it in an ethically sound manner.
• Elaborate the specific role of student media in the community and how this role differs from the school’s public relations functions.
• Encourage an open-door policy and open line of communication between editors and administrators, but don’t allow student media to serve as an extension of the district public relations department.
• Ensure coherent and complete coverage of events, issues and people provides evidence of the student media program’s commitment to professional standards.
How administrators can help
Strong strategies exist to help administrators support quality journalism programs. These include:
• Working with advisers and students to develop public forum policies
• Hiring qualified advisers and journalism teachers
• Working with students cooperatively to be good sources for stories
• Building trust in the learning and communication process in a way that also reduces liability concerns of the school system
• Offering constructive feedback after each publication or airing
• Increasing dialogue among school staff and students, thus encouraging outlets of expression that strengthen school safety( • Expanding school and community understanding and appreciation of the value of free, journalistically responsible, student media
• Providing necessary resources to support and maintain student media programs, including financial support, master schedule preferences, development opportunities and time.
JEA condemns prior review because it
• Contradicts the school’s responsibility to teach and maintain, through example, the principles of democracy
• Enables school administrators, who are government officials, to decide in advance what people will read or know. Such officials are potential newsmakers, and their involvement with the news-making process interferes with the public’s right to know
• Creates the possibility of viewpoint discrimination, undermining the marketplace of ideas and all pretext of responsible journalism
• Leads to self-censorship, the most chilling and pervasive form of censorship. Such fear eliminates any chance of critical thinking, decision-making or respect for the opinions of others
• Stifles growth so students do not mature into thinking, discerning, effective contributing citizens in the democracy
• Impairs the ability of a school’s communities to discern the truth about the school and the accuracy of information citizens need to make logical decisions and cast intelligent votes
• Negates the educational value of a trained, professionally active adviser and teacher working with students in a counseling, learning environment. Prior review simply makes the teacher an accessory, as if what is taught really doesn’t matter.
Instead, we believe
• Rights, not authority and discipline, prepare students for roles in a democracy as thinking, discerning, contributing citizens
• Student media best serves their communities when they are editorially independent and present truthful and accurate information
• Student media are safe and peaceful places a for dissemination of ideas, and with ideas there is no clear right or wrong
• Ultimate civic engagement and involvement only occur where students learn that they can practice constitutional guarantees
• Responsible journalism occurs when a qualified faculty adviser, clear publications policies and professionally oriented journalism curriculum exist
• Prior review interferes with the dynamic process of learning. Such review and censorship are the last resort of an educational system failing its present and future citizens.
Resources
Journalism Education Association Statement on Prior Review
Statements to Accompany JEA’s Definitions of Prior Review and Restraint, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Lesson: Crafting the Argument, Journalism Education Association
Questions for Those Who Prior Review, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Building a Climate of Trust Can Ease Prior Review, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Seeking a Cure for the Hazelwood Blues: A Call to Action, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Audio: Positive Administrator Relations, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
Audio: 10 Tips for Dealing With Censorship, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
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Read More
Prior review/restraint
Ethical guidelines
Students learn more when they make all publication choices. Prior review and restraint do not teach students to produce higher quality journalism.
The only way to teach students to take responsibility for their decisions is to give them the responsibility to make those decisions freely. No administrator has ever shown any educational value in prior review.
Continued democracy depends on students understanding all voices have a right to be heard and assuring all viewpoints have a say in their communities.
Staff manual process
The student editorial board should design an editorial policy that establishes student media as designated public forums for student expression where students make all final decisions of content.
The student editorial board should also study JEA and SPLC materials, statements and lessons to build educational arguments against prior review.
Resources
Prior review button on menu bar, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
JEA Board Statement on Prior Review, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Building a Climate of Trust Can Ease Prior Review, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Seeking a Cure for the Hazelwood Blues: A call to Action, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
Audio: Panic Button, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
Audio: Eliminating Prior Review, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee, Press Rights Minute
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Read MoreGoing online? Consider these points before you decide
by John Bowen
Scholastic journalism educators over the summer devoted a lot of time and discussion about whether print is dying and whether their programs should switch to digital first or digital only. Before advisers and students make a decision to move totally online, think about and discuss these points: