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Reporting stories student journalists
can best tell
by John Bowen, MJE
The above statement is a good reminder or our social responsibility to report all aspects of teen issues – those with good, bad and impact – because our audiences have a right to know.
These are stories student journalists can tell best.
As journalists we do not actively protest, lead walkouts or engage others We examine issues and events with diverse points of view, in context, accurate and complete that might as effectively create change.
We are mirrors to reflect events and candles to illuminate causes and issues that surround us, like the March 14 and March 24 planned protests, marches and discussions initiated by student reactions to the shooting deaths of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
Our journalistic leadership should not prevent expression of our personal feelings and views. Our first obligation is to the truth as Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write in The Elements of Journalism.
“A community that fails to reflect its community deeply will not succeed,” the authors write in Elements, third edition.”But a newspaper that does not challenge its community’s values and preconceptions will lose respect for failing to provide the honesty and leadership newspapers are expected to offer.”
In this case and others, student media can best tell that story.
We lead when we channel our insights into reporting so communities – or societies – can make intelligent and informed decisions affecting our democracy.
To assist students as they report events and issues surrounding walkouts and protests, local and national, the SPRC begins a series of blogposts focusing on protest in America, its relevance and why student media should make every effort to report on its deeper issues.
We start our discussion with the following links and will continue March 19.
- Covering controversy Controversy is often in the eye of the beholder. The best way to prevent a subject from becoming controversial is to use verifiable information, in context, from reliable sources – truthful, accurate, thorough and complete reporting. Students should be able to show why they used some information and not other. They should be transparent about why their coverage was important.
- Practice sensitivity in your reporting How do we, as today’s information consumers and creators, sift through the rumors, the gossip, the failed memories, the spin to capture something as accurately as possible? How can we overcome our own limits of perception, our biases, our experience and come to an account people will see as reliable. This essence of journalism is a discipline of verification. Controversy is in the eyes of the beholder. Our job is make sure anything controversial is reported thoroughly, accurately and coherently.
- Respecting privacy and public space important for photographers, too Student journalists should never invade the privacy of others while accessing information or photos for a story.However. it is their journalistic duty to know what constitutes invasion of privacy or what spaces they are legally allowed to access and what spaces they are not legally allowed to access. Student journalists should check the legal and ethical parameters of public space and the latest recommendations for journalistic activity from the Student Press Law Center.
- Student Press Law Center online guide and resources for student journalists The new resource page is just one of several major steps SPLC took to ensure student journalists can cover protests, walkouts and the growing gun control discussions freely and fairly. See its news release: http://bit.ly/2ozAW5o
- Covering walkouts and protests From the SPLC, this guide provides helpful information student journalists reporting protests and walk-outs.
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Political ads: Who can place an advertisement QT54
Social media post/question:
Should student media allow political ads?
Guideline
Students make all content decisions, including those related to advertising, and maintain the right to reject any ads.
Student media do not necessarily endorse the products or services offered in advertisements. Students should strive to retain as much control of funds or services obtained from the sale of advertising, subscriptions or other student fundraisers as possible. All businesses should have a street address.
Stance:
As with editorial content, students should decide whether they will accept political ads. If they do, they should add in their ethical guidelines, “Student media (will) or (will not) accept political ads.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Not only should students decide what ads they will accept because it’s a best practice, they also should also because of a possible advertiser First Amendment issue.
According to SPLC, “The First Amendment does protect commercial speech, so an advertiser can bring a First Amendment claim if he can prove that a government official (including a teacher or a professor at a public school) rejected the ad for impermissible reasons, such as disagreeing with its viewpoint.”
Students may opt to accept political ads. If they do accept political ads, then students should also consider whether to contact those opposing the candidate running an ad to see if they would also like to place an ad.
Resources:
SPLC Advertising FAQs
Yeo vs. Lexington
SPRC: Advertising
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Ad Placement QT53
Newspapers used to keep in-depth, front page and opinion pages completely separated from advertising.
The thinking was the advertising and promotion of products should not appear to influence a newspaper’s editorial choices. They wanted to keep their most important pages dedicated to the content they deemed most important.
These self-imposed guidelines have relaxed significantly in recent years. Newspapers include ads on front pages and on in-depth pages, often in prominent places on the outside edges.
Most newspapers do still keep the editorial pages free of advertising in order to keep their editorial content free from explicit or inferred influence.
When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of your newspaper.
They need to make sure their advertising is placed away from editorial pages and in-depth content, but consider carefully what compromises they might make on the front page.
If there is page page advertising, what premium price should get from advertiser(s).
Guideline:
Ads will touch student produced content on the inside pages of the publication with no ads on the editorial or in-depth pages.
Organizations directly competing with each other will be placed on different pages, when possible. Special pricing will be available for ads that run in color on the back page.
Question: Where do we put all of these ads we’re getting?
Stance: Advertising must not show up on editorial pages, in-depth pages or the front page.
Reasoning/suggestions: When students secure advertising for the newspaper, editors must decide where that content will go. In order to maintain the integrity of the most important aspects of the news medium. Ensure advertising is placed away from editorial pages, in-depth content and your front page.
If students opt to run ads on the front page, the ad shouldn’t overwhelm the content or appear to be actual news content. This is a longstanding principle with most publications and is meant to avoid the potential for conflicts of interest.
Advertising must be clearly recognizable and differentiated from the most import and highest profile content.
Resources:
Student media guide to advertising law, SPLC
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Never 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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Celebration and grief: Parkland journalists embody importance of student voices during Scholastic Journalism Week
by Kristin Taylor
Normally, Scholastic Journalism Week is about celebrating the hard work of student journalists around the country. JEA spotlights great student coverage, publications staffs wear journalism t-shirts and sweatshirts and show off their mastery of the First Amendment. We make videos to share the inner workings of student newsrooms and get our communities engaged and excited about that work.
But this Scholastic Journalism Week, as our nation reeled from yet another horrific school shooting, the last thing on the minds of student journalists at Stoneman Douglas High School was celebration.
If you haven’t already read Alexandria Neason and Meg Dalton’s Columbia Journalism Review article “In Parkland, journalism students take on role of reporter and survivor,” start there. It describes how Parkland students began to think like journalists even before they had fully evacuated, getting footage and interviewing classmates.
The article describes how newspaper adviser Melissa Falkowski texted her students the next day and “gently nudged them to start thinking about how they might cover the events rapidly unfolding around them,” and how staffers Nikhita Nookala and Christy Ma volunteered to write that first, difficult story, using a Google doc to collaborate from home.
It’s a story about student voice and resilience in the face of unspeakable horror.
I sent this article to all my journalism students and asked them to reflect on its implications, and the conversation we had the next day was powerful. My students expressed their admiration for Nookala, Ma and the other student journalists at Stoneman Douglas. They wondered if they would have the presence of mind to think like journalists in a crisis like that and admired Nookala’s statement that she needed to “do something” to help her community in such a difficult time.
We also looked closely at this passage, which describes one reason why Parkland student journalists felt compelled to report: “This was their story. And telling it was as much about ownership as it was about beginning what will undoubtedly be a difficult reckoning with their own trauma and grief.”
Is there a more powerful statement about the importance of scholastic journalism than that? Seeking the truth while minimizing the harm done to an already traumatized community, being reporters who are also survivors and using journalism to own their community’s stories — these student journalists’ voices were and are important during this crisis.
As a complement to the CJR article, my class also talked about the op-ed in Teen Vogue called “Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years.”
The piece asks hard questions about the outpouring of support that the #neveragain movement has received in comparison to the nation’s response to black youth groups “organizing anti-violence rallies…meeting with presidential candidates, proposing policy ideas, participating in national debates, and organizing intensely to advocate for more equitable state and federal gun laws that impact black and brown people.”
Regardless of their personal opinions, this second piece was a great opportunity to talk about the concept of media framing. What role do news organizations have in framing one group as heroic and another as disruptive? Are student newsrooms also guilty of this? Do they have diverse voices in their newsrooms to ensure multiple perspectives? Why are these conversations so crucial to have when deciding how to cover teen activism and national tragedies?
For me, the answer to these questions comes down to this year’s Scholastic Journalism Week theme: “Student Voice, Student Choice.” When we support our student journalists, we support their efforts to grapple with these difficult questions and report as fairly and accurately as they can, making hard decisions about what to cover and how to cover it.
As I’ve listened to commentators marvel at the articulateness and poise of the Parkland students, I have to shake my head. They are amazing, no doubt, but anyone who thinks it’s shocking that teenagers can speak and write well, whether as journalists or activists, hasn’t spent much time around teenagers lately.
I hope no student has to report on a tragedy like Stoneman Douglas again, but I have every confidence they can if they have to. Our job as advisers is to teach our students journalistic skills and ethics, empower them to own their stories and then get out of the way.
There is no truer celebration of Scholastic Journalism Week than that.
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