The issues with April Fools coverage QT 11
April Fool’s issues are fake news and can damage student media’s credibility.
Yes, some find them acceptable, but their negatives far outweigh their positives. The ultimate question is are they worth the risks?
As a publication that strives for authentic, storytelling journalism for your community, breaking that convention for a satirical, or even mean, publication is counter to the principles good journalists should strive for. When you break the conventions and principles for which you are known to produce satire, you may be opening yourself up to charges of libel, obscenity, or even disruption. Satire is incredibly hard to do consistently well and correctly, and it is best left to the professionals who have far more protection.
Guidelines: April Fools issues have little to no journalistic value and do not advance the brand of student media. As a result, students should not publish an April Fool’s issue.
Question: Are April Fool’s issues and satire worth the risk? What is the journalistic value of publishing April Fools materials?
Key points/action: If your goal is to publish factual stories with impact and significance, then publishing April Fools material and other fake news may not be your priority. To publish information you know is false might lead to other legal and ethical issues, but if your media are designated public forums, that would be your choice and your responsibility.
Students publishing information they know is not true would be well advised to have a good grasp of legal and ethical journalistic standards.
Professionals have mastered the art of satire and comedy as a form of news reporting, but does that mean we should be trying to teach it in high school? Publications like The Onion have shown us satire can tell stories at the same time that they entertain, but can we effectively teach students to master the same skill
Stance: There are no quick and easy absolutes. Students need to balance their free expression rights with their mission and social responsibility to truth, accuracy and verified reporting. School publications put themselves at great risk when they publish April Fool’s issues and/or satire.
Reasoning/suggestions: Publishing something knowingly false raises significant legal issues of libel and malice and the newly concerning fake news plague. Decisions to choose a path that brings your student media into conflict with serious legal and ethical issues would have to fulfill essential media missions and goals.
Professional publications engaging in satire do so with a clear brand. Most of the public clearly recognizes the convention of the medium, and that gives it much more protection. Your student publication does not have the same brand.
As a publication that strives for authentic, storytelling journalism from your community, breaking that convention for a satirical publication is counter to the principles good journalists should strive for. When you break the conventions and principles for which you are known to produce satire, you may open yourselves to charges of libel, obscenity or even disruption. Satire is incredibly hard to do consistently well and correctly, and it is best left to the professionals who have far more protection.
Resources:
April Fools’ negatives outweigh positives, usually don’t fulfill techniques of satire
SPLC article: The joke is on these college editors — offensive April Fools humor can backfire badly
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
Read MoreSo your student media
want to do senior wills? QT10
Because senior wills have minimal journalistic value and great potential for damage, they should not be used in school publications.
Seniors wills have been dying a slow death in high school yearbooks. Yes, students love them, but can we defend them as a journalistic device? Do they represent the best of our work, and the most creative way to tell the stories of students in our schools?
Publishing something information not related to all students and which creates significant issues of review might have harsher outcomes than foreseen. Passing Senior Wills off to the senior class for publication might be a workable solution to solving a clash between professional standards and meeting student desires.
Guideline: Because senior wills have minimal journalistic value and great potential for damage, they should not be used in school publications.
Question: What is the journalistic value in publishing senior wills?
Key points/action: Seniors wills have been dying a slow death in high school yearbooks. Yes, students love them, but can we defend them as a journalistic device? Do they represent the best of our work, and the most creative way to tell the stories of students in our schools?
Stance: Students need to balance their free expression rights with their mission and social responsibility to truth, accuracy and verified reporting. Senior wills should be taken out of your yearbooks and replaced with better ways of telling student stories.
Reasoning/suggestions: Publishing something information not related to all students and which creates significant issues of review might have harsher outcomes than foreseen. Passing Senior Wills off to the senior class for publication might be a workable solution to solving a clash between professional standards and meeting student desires.
Senior wills are a vestige of the past and serve little purpose in advancing the stories of the school year. When you allow senior wills, you are inviting others to create content for the product which has your name behind it. You lose control of the message and invite students the opportunity to include inside jokes, Libel, innuendo or other messages which may harm other students in your school. Content could slip in that covertly bullies or harms members of your community, and you would be responsible for it.
Resources: Winner of ‘worst reputation’ award sues Ind. High school over comments in newspaper
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
Read More
Should student media publish
senior superlatives? QT9
Publishing senior superlatives, if seniors decide they are worthwhile at all, is one of those “traditions” best moved from student media to those who most clearly benefit – the senior class.
Face it, publishing senior superlatives is akin to publishing fake news. They are not newsworthy, not in line with most student media mission statements and not factually based. It can also be argued they take precious funding from other more journalistically responsible topics.
That said, if students really feel they serve a legitimate or traditional purpose, move them totally to the legal, ethical and financial responsibility of senior class officers, including printing or distribution.
We recommend student editorial boards begin work with senior class officials to shift the legal, ethical and financial responsibility to those affected. Once those students and their adults see the difficulties of publishing senior superlatives, only time will tell their future.
Guideline
Publishing senior superlatives, if seniors decide they are worthwhile at all, is one of those “traditions” best moved from student media to those who most clearly benefit – the senior class.
Question: Should student media publish senior superlatives?
Key points/action:
Face it, publishing senior superlatives is akin to publishing fake news. They are not newsworthy, not in line with most student media mission statements and not factually based. It can also be argued they take precious funding from other more journalistically responsible topics.
That said, if students really feel they serve a legitimate or traditional purpose, move them totally to the legal, ethical and financial responsibility of senior class officers, including printing or distribution.
Stance:
Senior superlatives should not take away space, time or finances from responsible journalism. Shift the energy it takes to come up with them to those who benefit most, the senior class.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Students, and sometimes school officials, sometimes forget their main mission of publishing: informing their communities of real news that affect them. Senior superlatives achieve none of those standards.
We recommend student editorial boards begin checking with senior class officials to shift the legal, ethical and financial responsibility to those affected. Once those students and their adults see the difficulties of publishing senior superlatives, only time will tell their future.
Bottom line: student media should stay away from fake news and focus on real stories.
Related: These points and other decisions about mission statement, forum status and editorial policy should be part of a Foundations Package that protects journalistically responsible student expression.
Read More
When hatred speaks, we must speak back
Exploring the First Amendment on Constitution Day
by Kristin Taylor
In 2004, Senator Robert Byrd attached an amendment to a federal spending bill to create a new national observance: Constitution Day. This amendment required public schools and government offices “to provide educational programs to promote a better understanding of the Constitution.”
“I hope that kids understand that in this country, everything that we do in everyday life is touched upon by the Constitution of the United States,” he said in an interview. “It protects our liberties and it protects our freedom of speech. It protects our religion. It protects the freedom of speech so the newspapers can tell us the news every day.”
As a member of the Scholastic Press Rights Committee, it is especially important to me that students explore the First Amendment on Constitution Day, a critically important conversation to have in the face of today’s political climate and the rise of hate speech.
The 2017 Newseum’s State of the First Amendment survey showed an uptick in political speech this year — petition and assembly are two of the five freedoms, and almost half of those surveyed took advantage of them this year. It also showed overall agreement that a watchdog press is crucial, yet 22.5 percent of participants supported the claim that First Amendment freedom protection goes too far.
I suspect that number would be higher were the survey to happen today in the wake of Charlottesville and similar events.
Like many educators, I am troubled by the uptick in hate speech across the country and by white supremacists’ use of the term “free speech” to label rallies that are really about hatred. But as despicable as hate speech is, the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed, it is still protected by the First Amendment. It is not among the categories of unprotected speech defined by court cases over the years.
How can we face our students of color, our Jewish students or other students from marginalized groups and tell them that supporting the First Amendment means supporting the right of groups like the KKK or Nazis to spew this kind of hatred?
The American Bar Association has a good article to start the conversation. It outlines the difference between hateful speech and hateful acts using relevant court cases, and it defines libertarian and communitarian viewpoints on the issue. It also gives an example of how this played out on one college campus.
[pullquote]A more compelling question to ask our students is if they trust our government — and future governments — to decide what is offensive. Some European countries do, and this suggests that democratic societies can have reasonable, differing views on the matter. But others argue “the freer the speech, the stronger the democracy.”[/pullquote]
But I think a more compelling question to ask our students is if they trust our government — and future governments — to decide what is offensive. Some European countries do, and this suggests that democratic societies can have reasonable, differing views on the matter. But others argue “the freer the speech, the stronger the democracy.”
In my experience, my more liberal students are quick to say the government should ban offensive speech, and my more conservative students believe everyone is afraid to speak because of “political correctness.”
To even begin a meaningful conversation, students first need the facts, and Constitution Day is a great time to provide them.
I recommend starting by clarifying that the First Amendment is about how the government doesn’t have a right to censor or punish speech; it has no bearing on how private citizens, companies or employers choose to react. White supremacists’ constitutional right to speak will not shield them from counter-protests, public humiliation via social media or personal consequences, such as being fired by a private employer. Similarly, social media platforms owned by private companies such as Facebook or Twitter are not public forums set up by the government, so they have the right to censor any content they deem offensive.
This leads into the second point: the danger in giving the government the power to censor is that there isn’t a common understanding of “offensive.”
In a blog post explaining why the ACLU filed a lawsuit defending provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech, James Esseks, Director of the LGBT & HIV Project, expressed the deep divide between Yiannopoulos’ hateful speech and the ACLU’s core values: “Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all. We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones.”
However, he goes on to write, “Without free speech protections, all civil rights advocacy could be shut down by the people in power, precisely because government doesn’t agree with the ideas activists advance. That was true of the civil rights fights of the past, it’s true of the movements facing pitched battles today, and it will be true of the movements of the future that are still striving to be heard.”
Many people believe speech about such issues as abortion, gender identity or sexuality are offensive, Esseks argues, and “if First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it’s not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court.”
[pullquote]This is the heart of the First Amendment — the question of whether we trust the government to regulate our speech and define what is offensive and what is not, or if we want to retain that freedom ourselves.[/pullquote]
This is the heart of the First Amendment — the question of whether we trust the government to regulate our speech and define what is offensive and what is not, or if we want to retain that freedom ourselves.
That said, student editorial boards are not “the government.” They can and should make ethical decisions about what to publish, and they have a right to refuse to publish hateful speech, though I would caution them to differentiate between “hate speech” and student opinions they dislike. They also have the right and the responsibility to act as ethical leaders who take informed positions in unsigned editorials.
The editorial board of the nationally award-winning Harbinger Online provides a great example of ethical leadership in response to hateful speech in their most recent editorial, “Burn the Eastonian.” The Eastonian is an underground student newspaper known for its “diabolical” and “abusive” attacks on and lies about students, teachers and administrators, and this editorial makes a compelling case to convince students to end this “most shameful tradition.”
This editorial demonstrates how punishment and censorship are seldom as powerful as more speech can be. According to the piece, this tradition has been going on for decades, despite threats of suspension, being banned from school activities or legal consequences (I assume for the libel, which is a form of unprotected speech).
These deterrents didn’t end the Eastonian last year, but the Harbinger’s passionate editorial might. By naming the problem, humanizing the victims, explaining the consequences — not just to the perpetrators if they get caught, but also to those defamed and to the reputation of the school — and providing examples of prominent students in the community who have pledged to take no part in the Eastonian, the Harbinger editorial board has shown the power of more speech in the face of hate.
Schools across the nation will celebrate Constitution Day on Monday, Sept. 18, this year. I urge you to use this opportunity to bring to the surface difficult conversations about hate speech and the First Amendment.
In addition to the resources I’ve linked to in this blog, you should also check out the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Committee’s 2017 Constitution Day lessons.
Read MoreAvoid senior quotes; give them
to senior class for publishing, risks QT8
The question of using senior quotes in student media came up recently on JEA’s listserv. The Scholastic Press Rights committee would urge schools not to run them, but turn them over too the senior class as part of its responsibility.
Senior quotes present too much potential for damage and turn over too much control of your student publications to students not trained in legal and ethical considerations. Libel, innuendo, and bullying could be slipped into content, and it may slip past your editors or advisers, thus causing harm to students and damaging your publication.
Use your valuable copy space for better ways of telling student stories.
Guideline:
Because senior quotes have minimal journalistic value and great potential for damage, they should not be used in school publications.
Topic:
Students love senior quotes in the yearbook or newspaper, but what happens when a student slips something inappropriate in the quote? When does the editor decide what can and cannot go in? What if another student is bullied through a quote, and you don’t catch it? What if a double entendre slips in that no one recognizes? What if a student says something in September that they don’t want published in May? Can you guarantee every student will be equally represented?
Stance:
Senior quotes should be taken out of your yearbooks and replaced with better ways of telling student stories.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Senior quotes present too much potential for damage and turn over too much control of your student publications to students who are not trained in legal and ethical considerations. Libel, innuendo, and bullying could be slipped into content, and it may slip past your editors or advisers, thus causing harm to students and damaging your publication.
Read More