Ethical coverage is contextual and relevant
by Megan Fromm
A recent discussion on the JEAHELP listserv focused on whether students can, and should, write about international news. With the crisis in Syria escalating, and the potential for an American strike more real than ever, high school journalists want to flex their international reporting muscles by covering the conflict in their scholastic media.
Students enjoy reporting on international affairs because in many ways, it makes them feel connected to events from which they would otherwise be totally disassociated. As their world perspectives widen, involvement in foreign politics helps them to develop their dispositions as global citizens.
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In this way, engaging in media coverage of international affairs is a fantastic way to build students’ news and media literacy. The more they read and watch of the world beyond their school walls, the more they are likely to maintain this curiosity for information as they mature.
However, there are ways to cover international affairs in your scholastic publications that demonstrate both news literacy and relevancy for your school community. After all, the best and most ethical coverage is both contextual and relevant
With tremendous thanks to JEA’s fantastic membership, here are some tips from JEAHELP listserv members on how to encourage your students to cover international news in the most ethical, appropriate way:
1. Localize, localize, localize. Ask students: how can we connect something happening so far away to our own community? Who here, in this school, has a clear, immediate stake in what’s happening?
2. Report, report, report. Covering international politics requires interviews and research just like any other story. Remind students that writing about the media is not news. What local experts could they interview? Who in their community has perspective and experience to offer?
3. Consider secondary coverage. How can your students use infographics or other visual coverage to put international news in a local context? When information isn’t especially timely or local, alternative copy can help to humanize and localize.
4. Don’t regurgitate Google. If students could find the information elsewhere, your publication becomes irrelevant. Tell the stories students can’t find anywhere else.
Finally, advisers should remember that ethically and legally, content decisions in student publications that are designated public forums should ultimately be left in the hands of student editors. Encourage them to demonstrate the best reporting and news writing practices, and grade them accordingly if they fail to adhere to the standards for your publication. But telling students what to report, or not to report, facilitates neither good journalism nor news literacy.
Read MoreBuilding a credible brand: Stick to the facts
by Candace and John Bowen
April 1. April Fools.
JEA listservians have carried out a lively discussions on the merits and demerits of publishing April Fools editions. SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte even said to keep his center’s phone number and e-mail address handy if students published such an issue. 
Tough decision. Some commercial media publish such pieces. Why not scholastic media?
We think there are two core reasons for not publishing an April Fools issue:
• The information is known to be false. We spend the rest of the school year developing our credibility over controversy and defending students’ rights and obligation to print the truth. Then in one day we throw caution to the wind and go with information that is not only untrue but even could be taken to be misleading.
• We give others the right to know what is coming. Prior review. Prior approval. We do this, in some cases, with the best of intentions, so sources will not be caught unaware, and to make sure information is not too far out of line. We might even mix the untrue with the true, hoping our audiences can tell the difference. This scares us. We, including those of us carrying out JEA’s official position, argue and rant daily about the educational dangers of prior review. So in this case we want to say, here, check it out ahead of time? What will we say to those, now used to prior review, when they ask for it on something of substance?
Various journalism experts stress that ethical journalists do not add what is not there.
That includes making up information that is not true, or real.
Think about what you want your brand, your reputation, to be. Stick to credible journalism.
Modified and reposted from an original piece March 2, 2010.
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Ethical decisions are important,
sometimes carry a cost
by Jeff Kocur
I am encouraged by the stories of some former students who have encountered ethical dilemmas at their college newspapers.
One of my former students resigned as managing editor at a college newspaper on the East Coast after he said he watched his editor-in-chief repeatedly breach standard journalistic ethics in gathering and reporting information. Several other editors accompanied him in his very public resignation.
Good journalists act as a watchdog and expose the truth even though it may have a cost. This journalist had the courage to accept a very personal cost when he saw the editor-in-chief operating in a way that was not acceptable, and he did journalism a favor by standing up to it.
Will it change anything? Will the editor-in-chief understand his breach of ethics? Will he ever work as a professional?
I don’t know.
I do know that my former student, who is enrolled next year at the Medill School of Journalism for a graduate degree at Northwestern University, understands clearly what harm can be done by acting unethically in his profession, and I hope we see more people coming into this profession that see things like he does.
For more information about this situation: http://www.thejustice.org/forum/alleged-sexual-assault-represents-problem-with-greek-life-1.2988498#.UUC0ctHF1uI This commentary in the other campus newspaper at Brandeis discusses the issue at the Hoot, which was one of the three reasons the editor resigned. It also discusses several other things connected to the issue, but not specifically related to the ethics of the editor’s actions.
Read MoreTweet19: Practice sensitivity in your reporting
Practicing sensitivity is essential. Examine your approach to covering difficult topics. #25HZLWD http://tinyurl.com/a9w8szq
How do we, as today’s information consumers, sift through the rumors, the gossip, the failed memories, the spin and try 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 rightly, accurately and coherently.
We must also note any coverage can turn controversial if the reporter has not done his or her job. As Kovach and Rosenstiel in “The Elements of Journalism” quote Walter Lippmann, “just because news is complex and slippery, good reporting requires the exercise of the highest scientific virtues.”
In other words, the authors say, the journalist is not objective, but his method can be.
Objectivity can thus be equated with the approach, the professionalism in information-gathering and storytelling.
For example, Kovach and Rosenstiel list these intellectual principles of a science of reporting:
- Never add anything that was not there.
- Never deceive the audience.
- Be as transparent as possible abut your methods and motives.
- Rely on your own original reporting.
- Exercise humility.
In applying these guidelines to reporting of teens, also look at: http://jeasprc.org/minors-as-subjects-of-sensitive-topics/
The goal, say the authors, for any coverage of sensitive information or not: what does the audience need to know so it can evaluate the information for itself.
Resources:
• Protocol for covering sensitive issues
http://www.walsworthyearbooks.com/idea-file/32880/protocol-for-covering-sensitive-issues/
• The future of news: Investigative journalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbTtS0UWpsE&feature=related
• Explain controversial coverage to your audience
http://rjionline.org/ccj/explain-controversial-coverage-your-audience
• Can unconscious biases affect our news?
http://justicejournalism.org/justnews/index-2.html
• How the media frames political issues
http://www.scottlondon.com/reports/frames.html
• 10 ways to talk to students about sensitive issues in the news
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/10-ways-to-talk-to-students-about-sensitive-issues-in-the-news/
• Confidential news sources policy
http://www.nytco.com/company/business_units/sources.html
• Getting source consent when handling sensitive issues
http://jeasprc.org/getting-source-consent-when-handling-sensitive-issues/
• Tips for successful investigative reporting
http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/investigative-journalism/583-successful-investigative-journalism
• Six roles, or job duties, of modern journalism
http://howardowens.com/2008/01/26/six-roles-or-job-duties-modern-journalism/
Questions for thought:
• 1 Walter Lippmann once castigated journalists as untrained, accidental witnesses. How do we train them not to be? In a 300-word position paper assignment, suggest ways students would try to develop scholastic journalists who were not.
• 2 Watchdog reporting implies that the student press should recognize where powerful institutions, like public schools, are working effectively as well as where they are not. What types of reporting would illustrate this statement? Develop a lesson plan to explore this approach with students, stressing its heritage and future with new media. Is it something they are willing to do?
• 3 Choose a topic sensitive to your school or one you know would be at your school. Outline the approach to the reporting, from planning to packaging and publishing. (Could also include multimedia. As you plan sources, etc., show how you will avoid legal and ethical entanglements by identifying potential trouble points and how you would solve them.
• 4 School officials argue prior review is important because school media represent the image of the school to the community. Analyze this argument and make two sets of recommendations: one supporting prior review, the other arguing against it. Develop criteria and arguments for each position.
• 5 Explore instances where scholastic media excess damaged public trust, a belief in the First Amendment and/or a school system. What led to the excess? How best could it have been prevented? What actions, including censorship, would have prevented it? Would we be better off limiting our freedoms to avoid the excesses? Why or why not? Sketch out an approach that could have prevented the excess.
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Tweet18: Develop, follow code of ethics
Develop a strong code of ethics, and follow it daily in planning all coverage. #25HZLWD http://jeasprc.org/tweet18-develop-follow-code-of-ethics
No matter which media platform you use, ethics will play a daily role in your decision making.
Rushworth Kidder in “How Good People Make Tough Choices” says ethics is a “right versus right” process.
“Right versus wrong” situations are best decided by knowing and applying press law. The act of deciding involves a concept we will call ethical fitness. Ethical fitness removes the need for control because students practice critical thinking. At the same time, we do not permit anyone to punish students for making – or failing to make – decisions that are not right versus wrong instances.
When it is time to take action, students who are ethically fit, who have already done the thinking, are prepared to resolve issues they face.
From story selection to explaining why a decision was made not to name a source, ethical thinking is at the core of a successful scholastic journalism program.
Resources:
• NSPA Student Code of Ethics
http://www.studentpress.org/nspa/pdf/wheel_modelcodeofethics.pdf
• JEA Adviser Code of Ethics
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/JEAadvisercodeof-ethics-2015.pdf
• Press Rights Commission Online ethical guidelines for social media
http://jeasprc.org/online-ethics-guidelines-for-student-media/
• Press Rights Commission yearbook ethical guidelines
http://jeasprc.org/yearbook-ethics-guidelines/
• Visual reporting ethical guidelines
http://jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Visual-ethics2012.pdf
• Questions student staffs should discuss before entering the social media movement
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Questionsstudentstaffsshoulddiscussbefore-enteringsocialmedia-environment.pdf
• Online ethics resources
http://www.jeasprc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Questionsstudentstaffsshoulddiscussbefore-enteringsocialmedia-environment.pdf
• Journalism ethics situations
http://jeasprc.org/constitution-day-learning-materials-part-2-journalism-ethics-hypotheticals/
• Social media toolbox available
http://jeasprc.org/social-media-toolbox-available-to-help-those-considering-and-using-social-media-in-journalism/
• So say we all
http://jeasprc.org/so-say-we-all-2/
• What values?
http://new.jmc.kent.edu/ethicsworkshop/2009/
• What are the ethics of online journalism?
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