Apply for First Amendment recognition
with FAFPA Award
Constitution Day participation can be a time to focus student journalists a on recognition for First Amendment practices and policies as well as civic engagement.
For instance, the FAPFA award.
This First Amendment Press Freedom Award recognizes high schools that actively support, teach and protect First Amendment rights and responsibilities of students and teachers. The recognition focuses on student-run media where students make all final decisions of content without prior review.
Roughly, here’s a sample of what the judging committee looks for in determining FAPFA recipients:
- No prior review or restraint by school faculty for all student media.
- Student staffers make all final decisions of content for all student media.
- Establish policies at all student media and school system levels or both as public forums for student expression.
- Remove Internet filters for student journalism use
- Students, advisers and administrators agree on First Amendment practices, philosophy and application across platforms.
As in previous years, schools compete for the title by first answering questionnaires submitted by an adviser and at least one editor. Those who advance to the next level will be asked to provide responses from the principal and all media advisers and student editors, indicating their support of the First Amendment. In addition, semifinalists submitted samples of their school and media online or printed policies that show student media applying their freedoms.
Schools recognized as meeting FAPFA criteria will be honored at the opening ceremony of the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle.
First round applications are due annually by Dec. 1. Downloadable applications for 2017 will be available on the JEA website in the fall.
Save this link and apply now.
Meet the challenges raised by Constitution Day. Apply to be a FAPFA-recognized school.
This is the 17th year for the award.
Read MoreOur right to comment
Our right to comment
Description
Since media organizations have moved to online formats, they have struggled with the practice of hosting online comments next to their content. Many news organizations require posters to meet specific standards, moderate the comments, and reserve the right to remove or delete comments and users. Some organizations even require each post be approved by a human before it can be live on their sites. More recently, NPR is the latest news organization to completely remove comments from their news sites. Has the ability to comment on news stories created a more or less informed culture?
Objectives
- Students will explore the best ways to interact with news media
- Students will define the roles of a media outlet
Common Core State Standards
| CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.1 | Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. |
Length
60 minutes
Materials / resources
NPR story about taking comments away
Lesson step-by-step
- Have the students read the article linked above
- Break the students into groups of four and choose a current event. Have each group read the comments section of a different media outlet you assign them for the current event you have chosen.
- Have the students complete the worksheet.
- As a whole class, discuss the findings.
- As an editorial board, come up with guidelines for your own media. You can find model guidelines here.
Differentiation
During this activity, Editors who already have had discussions about comments could be exploring the policies that various student media have.
One group of students could also be using the time to look at ways that social media fills the role of the comments section for some media outlets.
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Analyzing how ‘facts’ are used by politicians
during the election cycle
Analyzing how “facts” are used by politicians during the election cycle
Description
Sometimes politicians misconstrue facts during debates and political ads. This lesson examines the “truthiness” of the ads running currently. Students will analyze one from the Democratic and one from the Republican party. Students could look at a TV ad, online ad or print ad.
Objectives
- Students will analyze the facts in political ads.
- Students will report their findings.
- Students will discuss what they find.
- Students will examine the factual nature of the information found in the ad.
Common Core State Standards
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.7 | Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem. |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.4 | Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). |
| CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.5 | Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter). |
Length
60 minutes
Materials / resources
Handout: Charting what you find — political ads and election coverage
Computer/internet access
Lesson step-by-step
Step 1 — introduction (5 minutes)
Teacher should survey students on how they get their breaking news on (is it through traditional news venues, online only, social media only, they don’t access, etc.). Tally what you find. Compare this to the following breakdown from the Knight Foundation’s study Free Speech on Campus: almost half of college-age students would access traditional news media to learn of national and international news. Approximately 25 percent use social media while 20 percent would access online-only news sources. How often are these places flooded with advertisements? How are you impacted by these advertisements? How do you know what is true and not-so-true?
Step 2 — Research (10 minutes)
Option 1: Separate students into pairs. Ask them to look at both the major party presidential websites. Have the students comb through the websites and fill out the chart included in this lesson. You may want to show the ads more than once.
Option 2: Project presidential campaign ads. Ask students to fill out the chart included in this lesson. You may want to show the ads more than once.
Step 3:— Research (15 minutes)
Ask students to verify the facts found in the ads. Remind them to log in where they verified the information.
Step 4 — Research part 2 (10 minutes)
Ask students to again verify the information, however this time, use PolitiFact.com to verify.
Step 5 — Feedback (10 minutes)
Students should compare what they learned about the information in the political advertisement. Which appeared to have the most information? Seeing the progression of the research, were the original contents correct? Was the the information first verified really true?
Also, ask students to examine how news media and citizens should deal with the inclusion of partial facts by candidates.
Step 6 — Large group discussion (5 minutes)
What surprised you the most? What was the best source for verification? How as a journalist should you use this exercise in your own reporting?
Step 7 — Assessment (5 minutes)
Have students fill out the reflection form. If time permits, have students share what they learned.
Differentiation
In assigning roles, you may want to give struggling readers the social media assignment.
Extension
You also could see previous breakdowns of “truth-o-meter” from Politifact.
Read More
Making points; not just giving them
by Stan Zoller, MJE
A recent series of posts on the JEA Listserv piqued my interest more than others.
The topic was news quizzes.
What intrigued me was the discussion about not the quality of the news quizzes, where they are available and how they are being used. There was also discussion about using them as a graded assignment as well as where teachers can find alternative quizzes to those posted by Candace Perkins Bowen.
Bowen, if you are not familiar with her, has done more for JEA than just write weekly news quizzes. She currently serves on the JEA Board as past president, having served as president from 1993 – 1997. She is currently associate professor of journalism and director of the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University. A little transparency is in order here; not only have I worked with Candace for a number of years on various projects, I am also a huge fan of the news quizzes.
But I don’t give them.
Instead I use them to generate class discussion. I know — it’s not rocket science. But rather than focus on what students know about the news, I use the news quizzes to find out how students found out about a specific news story, why the read the news story, what they thought of the story and what molded their opinion about a specific story.
[pullquote]I am often amazed by what stories resonate – or don’t – with college students. The awareness, or lack of, adds challenges to the discussion. Tease to a sports story and they’ll know it. A story about the Kardashians or Beyoncé and they’ll know it. A story about international affairs and you may get a series of blank stares.[/pullquote]
Like Bowen, I am often amazed by what stories resonate – or don’t – with college students. The awareness, or lack of, adds challenges to the discussion. Tease to a sports story and they’ll know it. A story about the Kardashians or Beyoncé and they’ll know it. A story about international affairs and you may get a series of blank stares.
For those stories that receive a lion’s share of coverage, there’s a good chance there will be some familiarity with the issue.
For example, late last semester and, unfortunately into this semester, a story that continues to rear its ugly head is the continued fatal aggressiveness by the Chicago Police Department toward young African-American males.
The ongoing investigation and release of new videos documenting excessive force by Chicago cops gives students a chance to do more than say something like “yeah, I saw the story” or “that really sucks.”
It gives them a chance to debate the nature of today’s journalism, with many ethical questions being raised and discussed.
Among some of the discussion points that have been raised and discussed include:
- Should broadcast media outlets have shown the entire video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald? Was it too sensitive for general television audiences?
- Was the repetitive showing of the McDonald video in both the long and short form essential to follow-up reporting, or has it been done to generate viewers and website hits?
- Is it more effective to have an African-American reporter assigned to the story? If so, can they be objective?
In addition to ethical issues, issues of legal matters can filter into the conversation. For example,
- Was the Chicago Police Department within its right to deny FOIA requests for release of the dash-cam video of the McDonald shooting within the realm of the law?
- Were the minutes of the Chicago City Council meeting when a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family readily available after the meeting?
- Why was another FOI request required to have the audio on the dash came included?
- How much of the information posted on social media was verified?
These are just a few questions that could be asked from one news story, albeit a major one. Instead of just citing a topic, I find coverage of a specific story and use it as an example. Careful deconstruction of the stories in a news quiz can cover not only the journalistic fundamentals, but also ethic and legal issues.
Bowen goes above and beyond in providing news quizzes for JEA member students. Are there others out there? Sure. But odds are most are not ready for use in your classroom.
Using these news quizzes should do more than give points.
They should make points.
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