Celebrate roles student news media can bring to a democratic society; honor, envision and practice free speech
JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Committee hopes to help you and your students celebrate their free speech rights this year. Constitution Day, observed on Sept. 17 each year in commemoration of the signing of the United States Constitution, is an excellent time to do it.
This year we provide lesson materials ranging from exploring impactful, recent Supreme Court cases to applying the democratic political philosophy of John Dewey and how to use modern planning tools to improve coverage.
We have a quick Constitution-review crossword as well as an additional blog post to help you and your students audit if your coverage was as comprehensive as you’d like.
Read MoreUse a planning tool – Futures Wheel – to build better contextual, meaningful content
Futures Wheels were designed by futurists to see what the future might bring, positive or negative. If positive, the wheels could be used to show how to induce something to happen. If negative, how to prevent that. Can it be a part of journalistic story planning, source acquisition and other types of information processing to craft stories that meet audience needs?
Title
Futures Wheels: Developing and refining journalistic story planning to better identify context, background and meaningful events, empowering journalism’s social responsibilities
Description
A Memorial Day incident in northeastern Ohio this year raised the specter of potential First Amendment violations, opened wounds of racial tension and created ethical questions on issues of media social responsibility. How can students localize the event and issues? How could covering these issues lead to improved audience awareness and journalistic social responsibility?
News planning using futuristic tools can provide essential information and credible leadership empowering journalistic responsibility.
Read MoreA pillar of strength: the Tinker decision
Mary Beth Tinker takes pictures at Kent State University’s May 4 Visitor’s Center of exhibits from the sixties. The center documents the era as its protests and time of anti-war expressiion foreshadowed the deaths of four Kent State students.
We realized as we were creating content ( see Lori Keekley’s blog) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Tinker case, we have so much relevant material. Here are a few by category.
Read MoreStudents, join movement to make change:
Mary Beth Tinker
Mary Beth Tinker claps her hands while sining a song to high school students in the grand ball room on Tuesday October 1, 2013 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The engagement was part of the Mary Beth Tinker Bus Tour.(Photo by David Dermer)
by Mary Beth Tinker
The student uprising for safer gun laws is going to rock gun culture to its core. It already has.
As it does, student journalists will be on the front lines, proving again they are not only the future, but the present. In this, they also have an opportunity to join with student leaders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland who promote youth voices often left out of student journalism, those of low income students of color.
This week, Parkland students met with students from Chicago, where gun death is epidemic. Students discussed how gun tragedies affect their very different communities.
[pullquote]”Those who face gun violence on a level that we have only just glimpsed from our gated communities have never had their voices heard in their entire lives the way that we have in these few weeks alone.” –– Emma Gonzalez, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Parkland student leader[/pullquote]
Emma Gonzalez, a student leader at Parkland tweeted, “Those who face gun violence on a level that we have only just glimpsed from our gated communities have never had their voices heard in their entire lives the way that we have in these few weeks alone.”
Emma made a commitment to share the platform Parkland students have established with “every person, black or white, gay or straight, religious or not, who has experienced gun violence,” saying “hand in hand, side by side, We Will Make This Change Together.”
In Baltimore, hundreds of students from different racial and economic backgrounds joined in a walkout March 6 for a march to City Hall in protest of gun violence. They expressed solidarity with Excel Academy, where seven students have been killed by guns in the last two years.
David Hogg, a student leader at MSD who is also a leader in broadcast journalism there, tweeted words of support, saying “Yeah Baltimore!!!!!!!! Let’s do this !”
‘Tinker Tour’ finds common fears, causes among students
Last week, as part of my “Tinker Tour” to schools around the country, I visited with students at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Ward 8 of Washington DC. According to its website, “almost 100 percent” of the students in school are African American and 75 percent qualify for free lunches.
Students at Thurgood Marshall have lost two classmates this year from gun violence, Zaire and Paris. Zaire’s twin brother, Zion, told me his brother was killed by a person wearing a prison ankle bracelet, and there should be more limits on who can get guns. Washington DC has strict gun laws, but guns flow in from elsewhere.
Zion’s father testified at President Trump’s ‘listening tour’ on gun violence, saying his tragedy began on Sept. 20 and the family struggles to recover from their grief.
Students at Thurgood Marshall Academy won’t express any of this in their school newspaper or in broadcast journalism class. Like most Washington DC students, they don’t have a journalism program. In fact, only a handful of high schools in Washington DC do.
One is Wilson High, where students at the award winning Beacon decided to do s
omething about that. With The Paper Project, student journalists at Wilson meet with students at schools where there is no journalism program to share skills and help with publications. They raise money through student fundraisers and contributions.
Too often, young people must endure policies they have had absolutely no part in making. Funding for journalism is one. For some, cuts to journalism budgets are retaliation for articles. For others, journalism education was never an option to begin with. As I travel the country to schools and communities, that is most often the case, with a “sliding scale” for First Amendment rights, particularly student press.
Bringing these voices together as an issue in civics
Frank LoMonte, past director of the Student Press Law Center, advocates for an increased connection between civics and journalism, natural partners for an active citizenry. But, civics education shares the same gap that afflicts journalism education.
The Civic Mission of Schools, a coalition of civics organizations, cites this disparity and attributes it to an education system that a provides “far fewer and lower-quality civic learning opportunities to minority and low-income students.”
Despite all of this, young people find their voices and make them heard.
You can hear one of them, Jonothan Gray, in a powerful twitter video highlighting the coverage to gun violence in schools (mostly white students) compared to that out of school (mostly kids of color). Jonathan says in Baltimore, like so may places, gun violence “has become the norm.”
At a stop at Kent State University during her Tinker Tour in 2013, Mary Beth checks out the May 4 Visitors Center. Members of Ohio’s National Guard shot and killed four students in 1970 during a time of national protests against the Vietnam War. Photo by John Bowen.
Great movements begin from civic awareness, student voices
From great tragedy come great movements. The civil rights movement, also a story of the free press, was surely one. The current movement by students for safer gun laws, with walkouts and plans for rallies throughout the country Marcy 24 will be a story of the free press as well.
When I was 13 and in eighth grade in 1965, like the students, I was moved to action by great tragedy and great journalists. I watched the horrors of the Vietnam unfold on the evening news, with Walter Cronkite giving a daily “body count” to keep track.
A group of us in Des Moines, Iowa, including my brother, John, wore black armbands to mourn the dead and to promote a Christmas truce being proposed by Senator Robert Kennedy.
For doing that, we were suspended.
The American Civil Liberties Union took our case to the Supreme Court, and in 1969, the Court ruled that neither “students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
The ruling was chipped away by three later rulings, with “Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier” in 1988 targeting student journalists and being the most harmful.
Young people are on the move.
They are winning in the court of public opinion, and they are winning laws to affirm the rights of young journalists through the New Voices movement. Washington state is the latest, with the legislature voting for student journalists’ rights.
By coming together, young people will also win victories against gun violence. When they do, student journalists and advisers have a real opportunity to advance the First Amendment for all youth across the country.
Read MoreNever doubt the reality and power
of the First Amendment
by Stan Zoller, MJE
It’s a staple of any journalism curriculum.
It’s on T-shirts.
It’s on ties.
It’s on posters and protestor’s signs.
It’s on our minds.
But is it in our hearts?
It is the First Amendment.
Attention to the First Amendment has escalated lately with the number of walkouts and demonstrations by students in wake of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 
It is another case, tragic as it is, of people – not just students – rallying around the First Amendment when it becomes a necessary tool. Fact is, the First Amendment needs to be front and center all the time.
Far too often scholastic journalists use the First Amendment to celebrate various special events like Constitution Day or Scholastic Journalism Week, which make sense as the First Amendment is the foundation which enables journalists, scholastic, collegiate or professional, to practice their craft.
Unfortunately, fear sometimes creates a roadblock for the practice of the First Amendment. All too often journalism educators quiver over the possibility of running a “controversial story” because they may get in trouble with their administration.
[pullquote]As difficult as it may seem, more journalism educators – and student journalists – need to take that chance and tell their administrators that scholastic media’s job goes beyond reporting on Muffy and Chip who were selected Homecoming Queen and King.[/pullquote]
As difficult as it may seem, more journalism educators – and student journalists – need to take that chance and tell their administrators that scholastic media’s job goes beyond reporting on Muffy and Chip who were selected Homecoming Queen and King.
Here’s where the challenge comes in. Don’t just tell people you have First Amendment rights – practice them.
Fear is a great motivator by many school administrators. We should overcome that fear by using the First Amendment.
As journalism educators we need to teach students to emulate the work of leading reporters who don’t live in fear by practicing the First Amendment.
Like Jamie Kalven. That’s probably not a name many, or if I dare say, most scholastic journalism educators will recognize. Kalven is, a writer and human rights activist. His work has appeared in a variety of publications. In recent years, he has reported extensively on patterns of police abuse and impunity in Chicago. He is director of the Invisible Institute (invisible.institute.org), which, as noted on its website, “… is a journalistic production company on the South Side of Chicago. Our mission is to enhance the capacity of citizens to hold public institutions accountable …”
Kalven’s background (Kalven background) is beyond impressive, as is his work. He has gained notoriety for pursuing the release of the dash cam video of Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke who allegedly shot Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
Kalven’s work related to police actions has received national attention and earned him numerous awards.
But what recently propelled him into a First Amendment fight was a subpoena he received as part of Van Dyke’s trial which, in Kalven’s words, demanded that “I answer questions about the whistleblower whose tip prompted me to investigate the fatal 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.”
Kalven, in an article, “The First Amendment Transcends the Law. It Gives Us Strength In Dark Times” notes that a major thrust of the intent of the subpoena was that he had received documents about the dash cam video “… to seek to compel me to testify on the basis of their claim, for which they offered no evidence, that the source had given me documents protected under the Garrity rule, which protects public employees from being compelled to incriminate themselves during internal investigations conducted by their employers.”
Kalven writes that “From the outset, I made it clear that I had received no Garrity-protected documents and that I would refuse to answer any questions that might reveal the identity of the source. There was nothing heroic about this stance. It was not a choice. I was simply doing my job as a reporter.”
Read that last line again: “There was nothing heroic about this stance. It was not a choice. I was simply doing my job as a reporter.”
Which is what journalism teachers need to teach their students. Kalven’s piece, which can be found at Kalven article is an amazing tale of the court battle surrounding his subpoena. It is an outstanding teaching aid and journalism adviser and educators should incorporate it into their First Amendment curriculum.
How did Kalven’s subpoena battle work out?
As he describes it: “In the end, the hearing proved anticlimactic. Gaughan (Judge Vincent Gaughan) distributed a written order quashing the subpoena. He did not reach the issue of reporter’s privilege. “To uphold the subpoena of Jamie Kalven,” he wrote, “would be nothing more than a fishing expedition in search of information that the timeline of events, discovery documents, and testimony suggest simply does not exist.”
And, writes Kalven, “The ruling has been hailed as a victory for freedom of the press.”
Which, when all is said and done, is what we are all striving for.
[pullquote]“If civic courage is a social value, rather than an individual endowment, then we have the capacity to generate it — to give each other heart for the intensifying struggle to preserve First Amendment freedoms that lies ahead. Speaking as a grateful beneficiary of that dynamic, I have no doubt of its reality and its power.”–Jamie Kalven[/pullquote]
Kalven’s article doesn’t end there. He details the impact and importance of the First Amendment in his walk-off in which he notes:
“If civic courage is a social value, rather than an individual endowment, then we have the capacity to generate it — to give each other heart for the intensifying struggle to preserve First Amendment freedoms that lies ahead. Speaking as a grateful beneficiary of that dynamic, I have no doubt of its reality and its power.”
Its reality and its power – journalism educators need to factor that into their lessons on the First Amendment. Its importance goes beyond posters, t-shirts and merely memorizing the 45 words.
In the end, it comes down to two things: its reality and its power.
Additional resources:
About Jamie Kalven: Kalven background
About the Invisible Institute: invisible.institute.org
Kalven’s article: The First Amendment Transcends the Law. It Gives Us Strength in Dark Times
A guide to Freedom of Information and Sunshine Laws: FOI and Sunshine Law Info.
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