How to seek truth from power
By Marina Hendricks
At the recent JEA/NSPA Fall National Convention in San Antonio, members of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission conducted open forums for students and advisers to discuss issues they are having with prior review and restraint.
One discussion yielded a gratifying display of peer mentoring, with students who freely practice journalism in their schools counseling others on how to build sounder journalistic relationships with their administrators. Reflecting on it later, I was reminded of how important it is for student journalists to develop the habit of questioning authority – not as rebels, but as reporters.
“When journalists don’t fully understand how power shapes language to serve its own ends, they inevitably become pawns to those who do. Power then takes the wheel of society, and drives it where it will,” writes Doug McGill, a veteran reporter and author of The McGill Report media blog.
The following lesson plan is designed to help student journalists become more comfortable with interviewing and holding sources accountable – particularly the sources who are considered “authority figures.”
Goals for Understanding:
Essential question:
How can we conduct effective interviews, especially with authority figures?
Critical engagement questions:
• How can we go beyond face value with our sources?
• How can we respectfully push for the information we need?
• When we don’t understand something a source says, how can we ask for explanations or elaborations?
Overviews and Timeline:
Activity 1 (one 50-minute class)
Students will read “A Syllabus for a Moral Journalism.” In small groups, they will review stories from the school publication (chosen in advance by the instructor and the editor) to identify cases where sources could have been more thoroughly interviewed. Groups will consider what information is missing, what information is not adequately explained, what terms are not defined, what points of view are not included, and so forth. For homework, students will read “Handling Tough Interviewees” and “Avoiding the Suits.”
Activity 2 (one 50-minute class)
Groups will present the results of their content reviews. Led by the editor, students will discuss how they would report the stories in light of the three readings in Activity 1. The editor will note key strategies on a board or flip chart, then will use those to create an interview tip sheet.
Activity 3 (one 50-minute class, plus advance preparation time)
The instructor will invite an “authority figure” from the school community to participate in an interview with the class. The editor will moderate the interview, and will work with students in advance to help them develop questions. The instructor may want to record the interview for future reference.
Assessment (one 50-minute class)
Led by the editor, students will discuss the interview with the authority figure. They will review the tip sheet from Activity 2 and update it based on their experience. Grading will be based on participation in group and class discussions, and demonstrated ability to analyze situations in a mature, logical fashion.
Looking for a few open forums
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision reminds us how important it is to have student media that are open forums for student expression either by school policy or by practice. Do they exist? We hope so…
Our goal: To showcase your schools and your policies to the nation on a Forum Map so we see that not all student media are subjected to the limitations and censorship of that misguided decision.
We, JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission (SPRC) and Kent State’s Center for Scholastic Journalism (CSJ), ask all student media that are open forums to complete the attached form and return it or send links to your policies to us.
• Here’s what you do:
Download the writeable form and return it to KentStateCSJ@gmail.com with requested policies and other materials.
Read MoreFighting censorship?
Here’s a Blueprint for help in your state
by Kathy Schrier
It’s obvious, by the frequent reports of administrative prior review and restraint across the country, that there is a lack of clarity about the law and the First Amendment rights of students. The waters, muddied by the 1988 Hazelwood Supreme Court decision, are much more clear now in seven states where anti-Hazelwood legislation has passed.
For the student press in all other states, there is a constant tug of war between student journalists and their administrators over what is allowed: Under what circumstances is administrative control over content justified? What recourse do students have when their rights have been infringed upon? What is the role of the adviser? Who is liable when unprotected speech slips through and is published?
It has become clear that, in the states where legislation has passed, these questions now have answers; in the states where there is no clarifying law, the answers to these questions are ill defined. There are no winners in the resulting tug-of-war between school administrators, their districts, and the student press.
Members of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission decided this situation warranted the creation of a guide for those in states where legislation has not yet passed. This document would be a “blueprint” to guide individuals determined to see scholastic press rights bills introduced their own states. During an intense two-day meeting in March 2012, a team of SPRC Commission members poured over archives documenting successes and failures in passing legislation, and the result is a downloadable “Promoting Scholastic Press Rights Legislation: A Blueprint for Success.”
This guide is not a guarantee of success, but the SPRC hopes that it will offer insights into the challenges, and will be a practical reference for those who choose to navigate the unpredictable waters of the legislative process. The information will also be available on our homepage, in the menu section, on the right.
To help provide background information about the Hazelwood decision, download this legal research by theStudent Press Law Center.
Read MoreMinors as subjects of sensitive topics
*Editor’s note: This is the second 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 Jeff Kocur
When my students told me they wanted to write a story about a transgender student, my first thought was. “Here we go again.”
After last year’s series of controversial topics such as fighting, teen pregnancy, hazing, race, and other issues that raised the ire of my admin, simply because of their topics, I was ready for at least one issue that didn’t push the envelope.
But that isn’t really journalism.
Read More
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 More