The foundations of journalism:
policies, ethics and staff manuals
Mouse over the visual and click on numbers 1-4 for content.
Read MoreNew policy, ethics and staff manual elements posted
Just to give everyone a heads-up, the SPRC just published its Foundations of Journalism package to offer a new look at how editorial policies interact with ethical guidelines and staff manual procedures.
Sitemap for developing
Policy and Ethics in Student Media
Policy and Ethics Sitemap
Links from the boldfaced main sections below are intended to be sequential in nature but can also be used menu style. Pick one model from policies and as many as you need from the ethics/staff manual sections and you are on your way to building your own Foundations package. We think the policy section should come first since it sets the stage for all other areas, but that choice remains yours.
Introductory articles to policies
This section will outline the importance of our two types of policies, board-level and media-level and provide you with recommended language as well as comments on each of the five recommended levels. Other articles outline public forums and prior review.
—Front page to the project —Introductory article —Public forum overview —Prior review and restraint —Quick access to policy models —Creating a mission statement –Model for ethical guidelines
Introductory article link to ethics
This section will introduce how we visualize our concept, why we created it this way and our thoughts on updating ethics guidelines and staff manual. Please note that we believe in user additions to all these sections.
Establishing program Structure
We designed the ethics and staff manual sections into four main segments, from establishing the principles and ethical guidelines to evaluating them. This group of guidelines and procedures strives to establish basic principles and structure that work for all student media.
—School board and media policy —Publication level policy
—The role of student media —The role of the adviser
—Editor-staff relationships —Staff conduct
—Balance and objectivity —Academic dishonesty
—Ownership of student content —jeamodeleditpolicy
— Creating “Put Up” guidelines —Recognizing public spaces
—Understanding “no publication” guidelines —Publishing satire
Planning and gathering information
This group of guidelines stresses basic principles and process of information gathering across platforms. These represent more detailed approaches to carrying out daily journalistic functions.
—News judgment and news values —Prior review/prior restraint
—Controversial coverage —Diversity of sources
—Recording sources during interviews —Verification
—Allowing sources to see content before publication
—Email, texting and digital information gathering
—Unnamed sources —Treatment of minors
—Public records and meetings —Treatment of sources
Producing content
This group of ethics statements and staff manual procedures focuses more on the production of journalistic content, from print to social media and from reporting to advertising.
—Handling links —Guides for breaking news
—Providing content —Writing process
—Social media –Use of profanity
—Obituaries —Sponsored content
—Advertising —Visual reporting
— Producing video dubs — Handling user-generated content
Assessing and responding
We envision this section focusing on how students and advisers evaluate their content. We would also include specialized issues.
—Evaluating and critiquing content —Correcting errors
—Takedown requests — Letters to the editor/online comments
Requests for specific ethical/manual statements
This version of Policy and Ethical guidelines is a living, breathing document to which we welcome comments and suggestions. If you have experience with something we did not include, please use the comment section here to let us know what you would like us to add, or just to comment.
Resources
We intend for these resource lists bring additional support and perspective to each of the more specialized and directly related resources attached to each of the files above.
If there are resources you find useful, please use the comment section here to share your knowledge.
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Building student media foundations
with policy and ethics
Help with crafting policies
and ethical guidelines for student media
This project is a two-fold effort to combine policy, ethics and staff manual procedure into an integrated process where policy sets the stage for ethical guidelines and ethical guidelines shape staff manual procedure.
Our interest in developing the project began when we found several instances when a school administrator in a potential censorship situation wanted to enforce — even punish — students for not following ethics statements because policy, ethics and staff manual points were all intermixed in a common document that the school administrator presumed he had the authority to enforce based on his interpretation.
Hence, our work ties the three elements together – principle, process and procedure – but as statements that separately outline the ideas behind what staffs do.
- This means “principle” is a student media policy.One approved at the board level is best and should be simple and straightforward, acknowledging the media are designated forums of student expression, where students make final content decisions. (See examples following)
Lacking that approval, a similar editorial policy at the publication level is useful, too, because, according to court decisions, operating as a designated public forum in practice is also a good way to protect student free speech rights.
- The “process” is the ethical guidelines. Unlike laws, ethical situations are right vs. right dilemmas and not right vs. wrong. Ethical guidelines are recommendations and thus cannot be broken as laws can. These guidelines help students decide how they operate on a daily basis, and their application is left in the hands of the students.
- The “procedure” is the staff manual, the specific actions and processes the staff uses regularly – how letters are handled, what happens when a source wants to be anonymous – all the things that ensure a staff operates in a professional and credible manner. These also are exclusively enforced by the student staff itself.
The idea is not to dictate policy, ethics guidelines or staff manual models but to provide a menu of items student staffs can choose.
For example, five editorial policy models are part of this project, four for board-level policies and one for a publication-level editorial policy.
All stress student media should be “designated public forums for student expression where students make all content decisions without prior review by school officials.”
[pullquote]Five editorial policy models are part of this project, four for board-level policies and one for a publication-level editorial policy.
All stress student media should be “designated public forums for student expression where students make all content decisions without prior review by school officials.”[/pullquote]
Students and advisers can then add from a separate menu of ethical guidelines and staff manual procedures. Each ethical principle offers staff manual suggestions that stem from its premise.
This separates what must be followed – the board-approved policy – from all the other guidelines, practices and procedures that may change some from year to year and staff to staff. By doing this, staffs can shape their media with roadmaps they have devised.
Resources
Ethics codes are invaluable in student journalism, but not as a guide for punishment, JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee
• For a sitemap of inclusive materials, go here.
• To go to How to Use the List of Ethics and Staff manuals, go here.
• Go here for a list of General Resources.