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Loyalty Day is May 1.
Let’s reaffirm OUR principles
by John Bowen
Loyalty Day is Monday, May 1.
First observed in 1921 because of threats from subversive influence, it has been a legally designated holiday since 1958 and observed by every president since then, reports Esquire.
President Donald Trump said its purpose, according to Mic, was to protect against those who would do the United States harm, and according to Fox News, “to recognize and reaffirm our allegiance to the principles” that are America’s heritage..
For journalists, groups that do harm might include:
• Those who perpetuate fake news
• Those who lie to newsmedia and to the public
• Those who interfere with the news media’s quest for truthful, accurate and thorough reporting
• Those who would censor journalists, at any level, and thus misinform or disinform citizens’ rights to know
Journalists are not enemies of the state. Not May 1 or any of 364 other days.
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JEA statement on student free expression
in a vibrant and flourishing democracy
The Journalism Education Association, at its board meeting in Seattle Washington April 6, unanimously passed the following statement:
To address current negativity toward news media in general and misunderstanding of its roles in a democracy, the Journalism Education Association reiterates its principles and practices that nourish a lifelong commitment for a vibrant and flourishing democracy.
We strongly believe free student expression as taught and practiced in journalism classes anchors successful scholastic media. So empowered, our programs showcase the importance of news and media literacy, civic engagement, critical thinking and decision-making as the core of lifelong involvement in a democracy.
To protect our democracy and its principles:
- JEA reaffirms its position that the practice of journalism is an important form of public service to prepare students as engaged, civic-minded citizens who are also discerning information creators and users.
- JEA will recognize, promote and support strong editorial policies with each media outlet as a designated public forum for student expression where students make all final content decisions without prior review or restraint.
- JEA will encourage all journalism teachers and advisers to strongly encourage diversity, accuracy and thoroughness in content so student media reflect and make sense to communities they serve.
- JEA will produce sample editorial policies and accompany them with model ethical guidelines and staff manual procedures that enhance and implement journalistically responsible decisions across media platforms.
- JEA will encourage journalism teachers and media advisers, even if they must teach and advise under prior review or restraint, to recognize how educationally unsound and democratically unstable these policies and rules are.
- JEA will insist student free expression not be limited by claims related to program funding or equipment use. Instead, journalism programs should showcase student civic engagement and practice democratic principles no matter what media platform is used.
- JEA will demonstrate, to communities in and out of school, through its actions, policies, programs and budgeting, its commitment to an informed, vibrant nation where free expression is expected and practiced as part of our diverse American heritage.
Additionally, we believe groups we partner with and endorse should faithfully support principles of free student expression for student media.
Read MoreInternational Fact-Checking Day is just the beginning
by Candace Perkins Bowen
It should be every day, but it hasn’t been. Do we always check that information we see and read is real? What are fake news, “alternative facts” or propaganda? How do we spot it?
Fake news has been around in many forms and for many years – from supermarket tabloids to “War of the Worlds,” H.G. Wells’ 1938 radio program that panicked thousands. But today the concern is growing, thanks, in part, to digital media that spreads information virally and often dramatically. How can we tell what to believe? Are “alternative truths” really possible? Or maybe we are victims of what author of “On Tryanny” Timothy Snyder says, “When we learn [information] from the screen, we tend to be drawn in by the logic of spectacle.”
Because of this, the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, partnering with fact-checking organizations worldwide, is promoting International Fact-Checking Day April 2, 2017.
As the website says, it’s “not a single event but a rallying cry for more facts — and fact-checking — in politics, journalism, and everyday life.”
The site includes a downloadable lesson plan and links to other sites with “how-to’s” such as spotting fake news, checking a politician’s claims and recognizing twitter handles who aren’t who they say they are. There’s also a trivia quiz noting popular political claims – but are they factual?
There’s a hoax-off and a map showing sites all over the world where others are celebrating International Fact-Checking Day.
This summer, JEA’s Press Rights Committee will create additional materials for teachers and students. Look for our lessons, activities, essays and resources and more by the start of school.
#FACTCHECKIT
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Student reporting faces ‘fake news’ charges
as it tries to bring light to hiring process
Sunshine Week celebrates
use of public records
Reporting done by a repeat recipient of scholastic journalism’s First Amendment Press Freedom Award faces charges of “fake news”as it tries to gather information about the private hiring process of a new principal.
According to a New York Times article, “Students working on the school newspaper, The Classic, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request this week asking for the names of the 38 people who had applied to be their principal.”
The Times also reported the hiring process is all done in private with position interviewers required to sign a confidentiality agreement.
The “fake news” charge is from a school system official and aimed at how students “aggressively covered the tensions at the school” and the principal, The Times reported.
Student said in The Times article, and in another article, they were just doing their job.
This week, March 12-18, is Sunshine Week, highlighting the importance of using the Freedom of Information Act as an essential part of reporting.
Students, reported in dnainfo, a New York paper, wrote a letter to school officials, “”To label our reporting as ‘fake’ is to disparage all the hard work we do,” Hasan and The Classic’s Managing Editor, Mehrose Ahmad, 17, wrote in their Mar. 5 letter to the mayor and schools chancellor. “If we were fabricating our material, we would be able to leave school far earlier than we do.”
According to The Times, students also said of their reporting, “Fake news is not poorly ourced journalism: It is wholly fictitious. Ms. DeSanctis (the school official who made the fake news charge) is therefore not accusing us of being wrong; she is accusing us of purposefully making up lies and reporting them as news. If we were fabricating our material, we would be able to leave school far earlier than we do.”
The fake news accusation is ironic with Townsend Harris’ prior FAPFA recognition and the fact journalism students are using an important FOIA approach to gather and report important news to the public.
So your student media can make use of FOIA and Sunshine Week, find more information at:
• Sunshine Week, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• Sunshine Week Program, Open Government. Org
• Sunshine Week 2017 at the National Archives
Mark Schlefer and the
Federal Freedom of Information Act
by Nancy A. Olson, CJE
Photo credit to John Nopper.
Mark Schlefer helped to make history.
Schlefer was one of the three lawyers who drafted the legislation that became the federal Freedom of Information Act, and he helped to guide it through Congress to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s desk. Johnson signed the bill into law on July 4, 1966, to take effect one year later.
“In the drafting, we were adamant that you didn’t have to have an interest to have access,” Schlefer said in an interview. “You could just be a citizen. This was critical.”
The federal FOIA website, www.foia.gov, describes the law as the “law that gives (the public) the right to access information from the federal government[…] Since 1967, it has provided the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency[…] It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government[…] Federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement.”
[pullquote]“In the drafting, we were adamant that you didn’t have to have an interest to have access,” Schlefer said in an interview. “You could just be a citizen. This was critical.”[/pullquote]
“According to my internet research,” Schlefer said, “this law has since been copied in all 50 states and by at least 93 foreign countries.”
Now 94 and a resident of Putney, Schlefer was then a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D. C.
Schlefer’s involvement in the FOIA came about indirectly. One of his clients, the Pacific Far East Line, had ships that loaded raw materials, such as coconuts, raw sugar, and rubber, in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Pacific Far East Line wanted to add a new stop in the Mariana Islands and asked Schlefer to file the tariff documentation with the Federal Maritime Commission. A tariff is a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
“Any common carrier has to have on file publicly documents listing all its charges: port charges, loading and discharging charges, and freight charges,” he explained.
In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Schlefer described what happened next.
“A few days after filing the tariff documentation,” he wrote, “I got a call from the commission’s staff advising me that the tariff was illegal. I asked who had made the determination, and was told it was the commission’s general counsel, James Pimper.
‘May I see a copy of his opinion?’ I asked.
A day or two later, the response came back: ‘Mr. Pimper regards his opinion as confidential.’
“Do you really mean his opinion of the law governing the tariff is confidential?” I said.
‘Yes,’ came the reply.
‘How can you keep the opinion confidential?” I asked. “I believe the tariff complies with the commission’s rules, and I am advising my client to proceed with the Marianas service. Mr. Pimper can file suit to stop the service, but he will have to disclose his reasons to the court.’”
Schlefer wrote he then contacted the Practice and Procedure Committee of the American Bar Association to suggest drafting a bill to permit access to government documents and learned that two of the lawyers on the committee were already working on such a bill. Schlefer was invited to join them. He learned that other lawyers “had had problems as outrageous as mine” in dealing with government agencies.
The ABA committee chair took the draft the three produced to the ABA convention in Chicago, and it met with overwhelming approval, Schlefer said.
Schlefer heard that Rep. John E. Moss (D-Calif.) had been trying for some years to obtain documents from the administration.
According to a commentary by Michael R. Lemov at www.niemanwatchdog.org, Moss, first elected to Congress in 1952, “as a first-term member of the obscure House Post Office and Civil Service Committee, was almost immediately frustrated by his inability to obtain information from federal agencies regarding seemingly public information.
He first ran into problems with government secrecy when he requested documents from the U.S. Civil Service Commission on the firing of 2,800 federal employees, allegedly for ‘security reasons.’ Moss thought the reasons given were too vague and sought more details, since ‘security’ could cover a broad variety of conduct and reflect badly on the workers who were fired. The Civil Service Commission flatly refused to furnish the information.”
As a result of this experience, Moss continued to work toward greater government transparency although his efforts were continually frustrated.
In his Post commentary, Schlefer wrote that when he brought the draft of the bill to Moss’s office, he “had planned just to leave it with him, but (Moss) asked me to sit. After reading it slowly and carefully, he looked up and said, ‘Mr. Schlefer, I’ll deliver the House. You deliver the Senate.’ I had no idea on how to ‘deliver’ the Senate.”
However, Schlefer continued, he asked Bernard (Bud) Fensterwald Jr., “chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former roommate of a college friend, if the committee might hold a hearing on the bill. (Fensterwald) approached the committee chairman, Sen. James Eastland, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi. Eastland agreed to hold a hearing.”
At the Senate hearings, “the New York Times and the Washington Post did not openly support the bill because they were afraid of compromising sources,” Schlefer said. “The Wall Street Journal, however, openly supported the bill, meaning they testified in favor, because they were having trouble getting documents from the Richmond, Virginia, office of the Small Business Administration.
The three major television networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—agreed to support the bill openly if we put in an exemption for financial information submitted to the government in confidence, which we did.
“All government agencies were opposed to the bill,” Schlefer continued. “They were concerned about internal agency documents which they considered confidential. The committee was concerned by this objection. But those were the very documents we wanted. So—and this was my suggestion—we agreed to exempt documents unless those documents would be produced by a court order in litigation with the agency.”
[pullquote]“The bill didn’t have to do with race, so Eastland could support it,” Schlefer said. “It had nothing to do with liberal or conservative. It required the government to produce the documents. Both sides might want documents from the government for their own political reasons. In the end, the committee voted for it unanimously.”[/pullquote]
(This was the very argument Schlefer had made to Mr. Pimper in seeking documents for the Pacific Far East Line.)
“The bill didn’t have to do with race, so Eastland could support it,” Schlefer said. “It had nothing to do with liberal or conservative. It required the government to produce the documents. Both sides might want documents from the government for their own political reasons. In the end, the committee voted for it unanimously.” The bill passed the Senate.
Even though every member of the President’s cabinet recommended a veto, Schlefer said, and in writing, which indicated their strong opposition, President Johnson signed the bill on July 4, 1966.
Johnson signed the bill in Texas. While Schlefer did not attend the signing, Fensterwald told him later that before signing the bill, Johnson said, “I may be making a mistake,” but he signed it anyway.
A few years later, Schlefer learned that the Maritime Commission was holding chief counsel’s opinions as confidential communications between lawyer and client. (Mr. Pimper was still general counsel.) Because FOIA was law, Schlefer brought suit against the Maritime Administration, requesting the release of all general counsel opinions and an index to them (Mark P. Schlefer, Appellant, v. United States of America, et al. 226 U. S. App. D. C. 254).
Although Schlefer lost the case in the district court, he appealed the decision. Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia (later to become Justice Ginsburg of the Supreme Court) wrote the decision, reversing the lower court and ordering the agency to disclose the requested documents and an index.
[pullquote]Nancy A. Olson, CJE, joined JEA 20 years ago and is a life-time member. She recently retired after 35 years teaching English and journalism at Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Vermont, and now free-lances for the Brattleboro Reformer, the local daily newspaper. She is JEA state director for Vermont and also serves as a mentor in the JEA mentorship program. Nancy A. Olson can be reached at olsonnan47@gmail.com.[/pullquote]
“I won,” Schlefer said. “This principle could be used in any other agency. For example, the Internal Revenue Service holds all general counsel’s opinions as public. My suit was in the public interest, not because of any particular case I had.”
The FOIA website states, “As Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have all recognized, the FOIA is a vital part of our democracy.”
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