Tweet2: Choosing your forum status is like choosing the best medicine
Which forum? Best prescription to cure Hazelwood is open forum for student expression.
http://jeasprc.org/choosing-forum…-best-medicine/ #25HZLWD
Establishing your student media as open forums for student expression – not closed or limited forums – can make a huge difference in developing a cure of Hazelwood. The best forum is like preventative medicine. The worst is like being exposed to active disease cultures. The information and resources below can help you on the road to wellness.
The information below is broken into several
categories:
• Deciding which forum best serves your students – and your community
• Importance of designated forum status
• Questions to consider when setting up your forum status
• Questions to ask those who want to limit the forum
• Additional resources (Forum definitions, List of designated open forums, CSJ Forum PowerPoint, CSJ Forum Application)
Fighting FERPA with facts
by Mark Goodman
As noted in the JEA SPRC blog in September, the Student Press Law Center is taking on schools that misuse FERPA in a new and powerful way. Scholastic journalists can get in on the action.
FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It’s the federal law enacted in 1974 to regulate the release by educational institutions of student “education records.” FERPA sought to put an end to schools releasing student grades and other academic records without the student’s permission (or the permission of parents if the student is a minor). It also sought to ensure that students (and parents) had a right to see their own records maintained by the school. The penalty for non-compliance with FERPA is the risk of loss of federal funding.
But as many student journalists and advisers know, FERPA has become a monster, something much bigger than what its legislative sponsors ever intended. Over the years, schools have learned they can use the law as justification for refusing to provide all sorts of information they might rather not reach the media or the public.
From crime reports about college athletes to the signers of petitions submitted to a public school board, schools across the nation have used FERPA as the perfect excuse for denying information to the public.
The SPLC and advocates for open government are now saying, “no more.” Their FERPA Fact website chronicles the growing number of misuses of FERPA made by schools and exposes those that are inaccurate interpretations of the law. The site is a great source of story ideas for scholastic journalists.
It also is a good reminder to high school reporters and editors not to presume every time FERPA gets thrown in their face, the justification is a valid one.
If FERPA has been used as a justification for denying your staff records maintained by your school, submit your story for a FERPA Fact “fact checking.” You might get the arguments you need to counter your school’s denial.
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Need help with censorship issues?
Press the Panic Button!
JEA’s Scholastic Press Rights Commission (SPRC) has set up a uniform process to help advisers – and students – who seek advice about handing censorship or other legal issues.
The Panic Button is an online reporting tool to collect information from those experiencing some type of censorship.
When an adviser or student uses the Panic Button to submit information, designated SPRC members receive notification. This sets in motion a series of responses following a checklist system. In no way will the commission direct the fight against censorship, but each person has a different course of action in supporting the adviser and students while offering suggestions and resources specific to that situation.
As JEA vice president and Commission member Sarah Nichols reported in an email to state and regional directors and board members, “We [a Press Rights Commission subcommittee that developed the process] focused on four key goals:
• A consistent method of reporting
• A process that works quickly
• A tool for collecting data
• A way to avoid overlap and prevent harm.”
Here’s who gets involved and how:
When the adviser hits the panic button and files a report, he or she instantly gets a check sheet with steps to take – like “Take a deep breath — you have support” and “Keep a paper trail.” A student can hit the Panic Button, too, and the check sheet he or she gets is a little different, including, “Contact the Student Press Law Center,” and “Get parental and other student support.” That request for assistance goes to six SPRC members, who quickly respond.
Need help with censorship issues? Press the Panic Button!
Those looking for guidelines to prepare state groups to pass free expression legislation now have a draft document package to work with.
The Scholastic Press Rights Commission has completed a draft version of its Blueprint for Success: Promoting Scholastic Right Rights Legislation, and makes that information available in time for the JEA/NSPA Seattle convention.
The commission welcomes comments and suggestions before it publishes a final version in the coming months.
The Blueprint can be downloaded here or from a link in the right-hand menu under state legislation on this site.
Several additional legal and ethical sites are also worth noting:
• Back issues of the Student Press Reports. Found at Issuu, this site gives everyone access to information from The SPLC Reports, the Student Press Law Center’s magazine, since it started. Well worth time to just browse or look for information to support local reporting.
• The Panic Button. Found here, The Panic Button links you or your students directly to assistance and information about handling an issue of censorship. Members of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission and 45Words students will respond quickly, offering suggestions and providing information as your students and others plan a strategy to handle censorship.
• The forum map. This map, a project of The Center for Scholastic Journalism, is a list of schools the Center has determined to be open forums for student expression, either by policy or practice. The purpose of the map is to enable journalism programs seeking to become open forums to have models and contacts to assist in the quest.
• Application to be on the forum map. This writable PDF is your way to apply to have your school recognized as an forum by policy or practice.
• Certification map. This map shows requirements for teaching journalism in 49 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and links to each state’s department of education.
Read MoreGuidelines, recommendations for advisers facing prior review
Based on an increase in the number of of prior review incidents and administrative attacks on advisers, we are reposting this information.
At the spring 2010 Portland JEA/NSPA convention, JEA’s board passed a definition of prior review and prior restraint. The SPLC also recently endorsed the statement.
At the time, the Press Right Commission was directed to design a recommended process and guidelines on how advisers might handle prior review if faced with it. Below you will find those guidelines and process along with links to supporting philosophy and resources. We welcome your input.
While we know advisers will make decisions regarding prior review and other educational issues based on what they believe they can best support philosophically, JEA reiterates its strong rejection of prior review, and hence prior restraint, as a tool in the educational process. With that belief, we feel an obligation to help advisers faced with this situation.
Statements to accompany JEA’s definitions of prior review and restraint:
As journalism teachers, we know our students learn more when they make publication choices and that prior review or restraint do not teach students to produce higher quality journalism.
As journalism teachers, we know the only way to teach students to take responsibility for their decisions is to give them the responsibility to make those decisions freely.
As journalism teachers, we know democracy depends on students understanding all voices have a right to be heard and knowing they have a voice in their school and community.
Thus, to help students achieve work that is up to professional standards, journalism educators should consider the following process:
• Encourage transparency about who determines the content of a student publication by alerting readers and viewers when student media are subject to prior review and restraint;
• Advocate the educational benefits of student press freedom if student media are subject to prior review or restraint;
• Provide students with access to sources of professional advice outside the school for issues they need to address;
• Provide students with tools that include adequate knowledge and resources to successfully carry out their work. By using these tools, we build trust in the learning process and the theories on which it is based;
• Encourage students to seek multiple points of view and to explore a variety of credible sources in their reporting and decision-making;
• Coach instead of make requirements or demands thus modeling the value of the learning process and demonstrating the trust we place in our educational system;
• Empower students to know the difference between sound and unsound journalism and how to counsel their peers about potential dangers;
• Model a professional newsroom atmosphere where students share in and take responsibility for their work. In so doing, we increase dialogue and help ensure civic and journalistic responsibility;
• Use peer editing to encourage student interaction, analysis and problem solving;
• Instruct students about civic engagement and journalism’s role in maintaining and protecting our democratic heritage;
• Showcase student media where the dissemination of information is unfiltered by prior review and restraint so the school’s various communities receive accurate, truthful and complete information.
Recommended process if facing prior review, restraint
If, after employing the above techniques, student journalists still object to changes an adviser discusses, the following describes a process to handle potential disagreement:
1. Adviser and students disagree about content for publication.
2. Adviser and students discuss all angles of the disagreement; they try to find common ground.
3. The adviser and students decide if the disagreement is based on an ethical issue or a legal one.
4. If violations of libel, obscenity, unwarranted invasion of privacy, copyright infringement or material disruption of the school process are likely at stake, the adviser urges students to get advice of the Student Press Law Center or reliable legal resource. Not just any school lawyer or administrator will do. The resource, which could include non-live information, must be reputable for scholastic media. The phrase “unprotected speech” might not be enough because Hazelwood so muddied the concept.
5. If the disagreement is not over a legal consideration, the adviser urges students to consider the “red light” or similar questions raised by The Poynter Institute to see how various stakeholders might react if the material is published. Students see and consider the possible outcomes of publication and discuss with the adviser ramifications of their actions.
6. Adviser and students continue to discuss and explore alternative approaches until they reach a point of no possible agreement.
7. This process fulfills the adviser’s commitment to advise, not to make or require decisions, and to be cognizant of his/her responsibilities to school and students.
The Journalism Education Association reiterates its position that prior review and prior restraint violate its Adviser Code of Ethics and educational philosophy.
Additional links and resources:
• 10 Tips for Covering Controversial Subjects from the press rights commission website
• Just this once
• JEA’s Adviser Code of Ethics from the commission blog. Scroll to the bottom
• Questions to ask those who would prior review
• JEA’s statement on prior review from the JEA website
• Results of a Master’s study on prior review and publication awards from the commission’s website
• Resources from the press rights commission on developing professional standards from press rights website
• NSPA Model Code of Ethics for student journalists from NSPA’s website
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