Developing standards for social media use in your student media: Part 1
by Marina Hendricks, SPRC commissioner
For “Social Role of the Mass Media,” a Kent State University online graduate course, John Bowen asked us to draft a position paper on social media as a tool for student journalists. I found it easier to think through the assignment by approaching it as a hypothetical letter from an adviser to students. Here’s the result.
Dear students,
Before we launch our Facebook page and Twitter feed, I’d like you to think about how you will use them in your coverage of the school community.
Keep in mind that our editorial policy applies not only to our print edition and website, but also to our social network platforms. As a result, your Facebook posts and tweets must be accurate, objective and fair. Information you collect from or share via Facebook and Twitter must be checked and verified – with no exceptions. This is especially critical for breaking news. You must get it right, even when it takes time to verify facts. Your audience depends on you for accurate information and trusts you to provide it. You don’t want to jeopardize that trust. Once it’s gone, it may never return. And readers and users will go with it.
Just as important, you must practice transparency. For readers and users, that means letting them know where you obtained information and under what circumstances. For sources, that means telling them how you plan to use information they provide. And as always, refer to the policy for guidance on anonymous sourcing.
Be vigilant about Facebook and Twitter content that is libelous, obscene, materially disruptive of the school process, an unwarranted invasion of privacy, a violation of copyright or a promotion of products or services unlawful (illegal) as to minors as defined by state or federal law.
Speaking of promotion, remember that you are in the news business, not public relations. You wouldn’t include rah-rah statements in print or online stories, would you? The same rule applies for social media content.
We’ve talked a lot about the responsibilities associated with being journalists. As tempting as it sometimes is, we don’t use our power of publication to promote personal agendas or settle scores. The instantaneous nature of social networks makes that even more tempting. However, I know you will continue to use the same exceptional judgment you bring to our print and online publications by remembering at all times that you represent (school publication name). I know your posts and tweets will reflect your professionalism as journalists.
Our Facebook page and Twitter feed give us two new ways to reach our school community. Use them to start conversations, seek feedback and provide another window into our newsroom.
Finally, take a look at our editorial policy and see if there’s anything you want to update with respect to our social media platforms.
Good night, and good luck …
Your Adviser
Resource: “Online Ethical Considerations,” provided through Social Role of the Mass Media, Kent State University, spring 2011
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Foundations for Scholastic Journalism
Late last year, the Scholastic Press Rights Commission asked JEA members and others what clear statements about legal and ethical issues they would like to see compiled in one easy-to-access place.
From their responses the Commission created these 11 Foundations for Scholastic Journalism, in downloadable PDF form below, the first installment of our series. Foundations run from the general, including curriculum standards for law and ethics, to the precise, such as how and when to get consent when publishing articles. It’s a start, and the Commission welcomes suggestions for others we can add in the future.
Some of these incorporate and expand on JEA policies and statements the Board has passed and are available elsewhere on the Web, but here you will find them all in one place. They also offer links to resources that support each concept and can serve as handouts or posters.
1. Journalism as 21st Century skills
- 2. A Free and Responsible Student Press
3. Administrators Should Support Scholastic Journalism
4. Why advisers should oppose censorship
5. The Importance of Getting Consent
6. The Use of Anonymous Sources
7. Verification is important
8. Handling controversy
9. Foundations to meet Common Core standards for law and ethics
10. A road map: Getting to know the SPLC
11. Who owns the copyright?
We welcome your feedback and recommendations.
Read More#sjw11: As journalism teachers our job is to fight censorship
Teaching journalism is rewarding, but can become frightening and frustrating when advisers face prior review and/or censorship as part of their daily expectations.
A key decision to fight censorship, Adam Goldstein, SPLC attorney advocate said, is for journalism teachers who live with prior review or restraint to do more than recognize its educational weaknesses.
Their job, he said, is to oppose it as best they can.
“Prior review sends the message that actions don’t have consequences because there’s always someone else who can clean up your mistakes,” Goldstein said in an interview. “People who grow up in an environment without consequences don’t function well in the real world.”
JEA knows some teachers may face job loss if they try to protect student learning. We know sometimes there is no other choice but to do as ordered.
Still, we urge all teachers to consider these points:
• Advisers teach professional approaches to journalism – whether in gathering information, in providing leadership through coverage or opinion or in presenting the information accurately, completely and coherently.
Limiting this process strips any pretense of student learning, critical thinking or application of principles schools teach. It also strips away information citizens need to maintain civic engagement.
“The entire gamble of representative democracy is that people make good choices in their own best interest when provided with honest information,” Goldstein said.
• Students learn most when they practice responsible journalism. When advisers are required to accept censorship or censor students’ work themselves, they are placed in an untenable position undermining what they strive to teach.
“Aspirationally,” Goldstein said, “If the goal of education is to prepare students for their role in society, nothing is more essential to that role than the ability to create and disseminate their thoughts. The entire marketplace of ideas that makes our democracy function depends on it.”
• Students and communities suffer when censorship exists.
“Censorship of high school students creates new citizens in that democracy who think, first, that the information isn’t honest; and second, that they aren’t free to share their own information,” Goldstein said. “These days people look at the political process and wonder how it got so hostile, misinformed and regressive, and then shrug their shoulders when, every day in high schools, students are told not to tell the truth.”
• Learning to report material responsibly is a unique opportunity denied students who face censorship. The exciting part of advising and teaching journalism is watching students expand their ideas and become educated not only in the specifics of media but also about the importance of a free press in a democracy.
“Prior restraint is even more troubling because it undermines everything we try to instill in students about the American way of life,” Goldstein said. “The ability to just remove the right to free expression from anyone is something that is irreconcilable with our political system. So students get cynical about it and think administrators are liars.”
• Reviewing media materials, while not illegal, has no legitimate educational value. Advisers need to educate themselves, their administrators and their communities about students’ legal rights, ethical responsibilities and educational obligations.
“Journalism and social studies teachers end up suffering the most when they turn a blind eye to student rights because they are the ones tasked with inculcating a respect for the values that censorship violates,” Goldstein said. “It’s one thing if a science teacher chooses not to believe in the basic functions of democracy, but if your journalism teacher doesn’t think speech is important, it suggests that nobody thinks this is important.”
• Some administrators are unaware there is no legal or educational rationale for censorship. Teachers can help them understand the value of journalism to all stakeholders. Journalism education organizations can enhance the ongoing education of all parties.
The full measure of the Hazelwood decision, CSPA director Edmund J. Sullivan said in a JEA listserv discussion, won’t be felt until the generation of advisers working before 1988 leaves the scene.
That is now happening.
Knight chair for Scholastic Journalism Mark Goodman said in hundreds, maybe thousands of high schools around the country, there is no censorship.
“It is possible to create an environment in your student media program that supports the values of our democracy and does something other than teach students how ‘journalism’ is practiced in China,” Goodman said.
At other schools, that may take time, he said, but it’s worth striving for and doesn’t have to risk your job in the process.
“The one thing that I think is vital — our most important obligation —” Goodman said, is “we HAVE to teach students that censorship is wrong, morally, educationally, journalistically, even when it cannot be avoided or overcome. And we have to do it in such a way that we don’t make kids so cynical they think the entire idea of the First Amendment is a joke.”
Read More#sjw11: Tear down this wall…
Looming large in the news this past week has been the role the Internet played in Egyptian protests.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded the Internet’s role in the spread of democracy.
“For the United States, the choice is clear,” Clinton said. “On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. Now, we recognize that an open Internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And Internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But we believe the benefits far exceed the costs.”
Despite her comments Feb. 15 at George Washington University, perhaps the secretary does not examine the costs a group of U.S. citizens pay because many cannot exercise Internet use for educational revolution and growth, too.
Our high school students.
“Together, the freedoms of expression, assembly and association online comprise what I’ve called the freedom to connect,” Clinton said. “The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same. Because we want people to have the chance to exercise this freedom. We also support expanding the number of people who have access to the internet.”
As we support protesters around the world as they fight for freedom, we should also help our students protest against overly restrictive Internet filters that arbitrarily wall out information that should be open to all.
Perhaps Ronald Reagan said it best when he said, “Tear down this wall” so others could experience the promise of democratic freedom.
It’s time to tear down another wall.
The Internet firewall.
Read More#SJW11 and beyond: Legal and ethical foundations for tomorrow’s citizens
The Common Core State Standards were developed by the National Governors Association Center of Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers to “provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn” and were “designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”
When released in June 2010, the NGA Center and CCSSO indicated these standards are “aligned with college and work expectations, so that all students are prepared for success upon graduating from high school.” The writers concluded, “With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.” As of mid-February 2011, all but nine states have adopted some form of these.
The standards only address English-language arts and math, according to the Common Core State Standards website, “because these two subjects are skills, upon which students build skill sets in other subject areas. They are also the subjects most frequently assessed for accountability purposes.” The group “may develop common core in additional subject areas.”
Yet, without the legal and ethical foundations on which the United States is based and the free expression these support, no amount of focus on rigor or international benchmarking will be enough to save our democracy. Standards that offer expectations for tomorrow’s citizens, whether headed to college or career, are vital. Being able to read is not enough without the ability to assess accuracy, completeness and bias of content. Being able to write or speak without knowing legal constraints and ethical guidelines is equally worthless.
Thus, members of the Journalism Education Association’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission offer these additional standards as a way to address what we believe is missing from those currently available. We offer the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Citizenship and the Media. These mirror the format of the Common Core Standards in all but two ways: (1) They are readily applicable to journalism and/or media classes, though they could apply to social studies and English courses as well, and (2) they do not offer grade-specific standards because many such courses have a range of student grade levels included. With no national group currently proposing such a set of standards, we suggest each state adopt its own.
Key Ideas and Details
1. Demonstrate the core values and principles of U.S. democracy as set forth in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and court decisions.
• Understand First Amendment rights and responsibilities when choosing media content.
• Analyze relevant court decisions as precedents.
• Practice these key ideas by collaborating on decisions through a student-led democratic process.
2. Demonstrate understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the principles of civic involvement, including individual rights and their accompanying responsibilities.
• Produce opinion or editorial pieces that spark conversation and question authorities regarding current issues.
• Report accurately and objectively on the news and issues of the day.
• Search for solutions to problems.
• Provide alternative voices through credible reporting and constructive criticism.
3. Understand the importance and function of the marketplace of ideas in a democracy, including the necessity for diverse views.
• Create an open forum for student expression, including opportunities for outside voices to be heard.
• Strive to ensure all social, economic, ethnic, academic and grade-level groups are represented.
• Use a balance of sources and coverage in presentation of topics.
• Resist prior review and restraint by authorities and present sound reasons why that practice should not be instituted or continued.
• Exercise critical thinking and exchange ideas when making final content decisions.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Demonstrate knowledge of the function, effect and parameters of law as they apply to the specific content areas.
• Exercise rights as afforded by the First Amendment and court cases.
• Recognize the difference between protected and unprotected speech and apply it to media choices.
• Recognize and abide by accurate interpretations of FERPA, FOIA, HIPPA and other relevant legislation.
5. Assess ethical issues and how society might be impacted by choices affecting students and community members.
• Explore, analyze and debate the impact of ethical choices by government officials, including public school administrators, school board members and other figures of authority.
• Provide leadership through sustained coverage of topics related to such ethical choices.
• Localize off-campus issues to show how they impact readers.
• Engage communities through accurate and thorough reporting of such issues.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
6. Apply ethical principles in decision-making, including responsibility, thoroughness, honesty, accuracy, independence, accountability and credibility.
• Recognize the importance of independent thought in reporting.
• Utilize constructive criticism in editorial commentary.
• Access multiple resources to ensure accurate, thorough and balanced reporting.
• Accept accountability for all content.
• Correct and retract misleading or incorrect information.
7. Develop and refine ethical skills for choosing, gathering and organizing information.
• Investigate credibility of sources and confirm questionable assertions.
• Use anonymous sources only when it is essential to the content of the story, and honors confidentiality promised.
• Verify and synthesize when gathering and disseminating information.
Application of Knowledge and Ideas to Future Concepts
8. Prepare for the legal and ethical implications of technological changes in communication.
• Apply copyright laws to digital media.
• Properly attribute sources when using the work of others.
• Practice transparency in information-gathering by identifying methods of acquisition.
• Refrain from creating a false impression of reality through digital manipulation of photo, video or audio files.
• Avoid conflict of interest in information presented.
• Work to assure accuracy and thoroughness of information.
• Recognize privacy implications when gathering and publishing information.
Are we missing anything? We’d love to hear your suggestions – and comments.
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