Ethics in the eye of the storm
Keep your live coverage error-free
Queens, N.Y., Nov. 1, 2012 — FEMA Community Relations (CR) team members moved through Breezy Point and Rockaway, NY, after Hurricane Sandy. The CR members talked with disaster survivors about FEMA assistance and assessed the situation on the ground. Photo by Walt Jennings/FEMA
by Megan Fromm
When Hurricane Sandy hit the United States early last week, citizens turned to Twitter for a constant stream of information. The hashtag #Sandy provided hundreds of live perspectives each minute, including photos of the impending storm and subsequent devastation.
For those covering the story live, the storm spawned an entirely new lexicon of descriptors (“Frankenstorm” among the most widely-used) and created an ethical dilemma all-too-common in today’s instant media environment: How to sort the fact from the fiction?
Even today, a week out from the storm’s landfall, fake images from New York and New Jersey are still making the rounds on social and professional media outlets.
Would your students know which photos were real, and which were fake? Have your students take this quiz, and then use the following information to further consider the importance of verifying information as it is shared in real-time.
This Atlantic article is among the best sources we found for updating Sandy images as they are verified (or debunked) and is a great starting point for a larger discussion with your journalism students and scholastic journalists:
• Did your students retweet or repost any of these images? Which ones?
• How many followed the Hurricane Sandy hashtag? Did they make any attempts to verify the information they were receiving? Why/why not?
Yes, Common Core has room for law & ethics
by Candace Bowen
Like so many things, it’s good news and bad news. The Common Core State Standards actually may help us show how journalism has skills everyone should know, but in the process could we be losing support to teach the very framework necessary to use our voices in democracy?
In other words, where does teaching law and ethics fit with the new standards?
Nowhere that’s obvious, that’s for sure, but maybe we can find niches that aren’t so apparent.
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Visual guidelines join online, yearbook ethics
Because student media designers, photographers and illustrators also face ongoing ethical decisions, we are releasing a third set of ethical guidelines to aid your students as they play critical roles in the decision making process for your media.
Read MoreTeaching ethics: making it personal
*Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of rotating columns by commission members to appear Wednesdays. Megan Fromm will present best practices for teaching ethics; Jeff Kocur will discuss common problems student leaders and advisers face and how to overcome them; Candace Perkins Bowen will examine journalistic ties to Common Core standards; Mark Goodman will write about current events and impact on law as it affects scholastic media and Marina Hendricks will address ethical issues and online journalism.
by Megan Fromm
I remember vividly the day my high school newspaper adviser called an emergency editor meeting. Editors filed into the office, lunch bags in hand, and waited not-so patiently to hear what the fuss was all about.
Once settled, our adviser informed us that a student group at the high school was waging some rather serious accusations against another student group in the form of a letter to the editor.
Read MoreConstitution Day learning materials, part 2:
Journalism ethics hypotheticals
by Kelly Furnas
In honor of Constitution Day, JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission provides these hypothetical ethical dilemmas for you and your staff to discuss and debate. Each answer is then discussed via video by a member of the SPRC once you have completed the quiz.
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