law, ethics, and news literacy

Law

Starting from the very beginning

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is the basis of all we do and why we can do it. It's a reminder of not only the right we have but also the power there is to the freedom of speech. However, during my time in The Emery, that there are many, many more layers to it, when it comes down to the local level.

Constitution of Michigan, sec. 5

Every person may freely speak, write, express and publish his views on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of such right; and no law shall be enacted to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.

But then we zoom in even more, and it may look like this:

Prior Review

Under our past school principal we were prior reviewed. This meant that every issue that we were going to print had to be approved by her before we sent to press. The agreement was that if we did not receive a response within 24 hours we could proceed to print.

We were prior reviewed for the entirety of my first year part of the newspaper. Then, during the summer of 2021, we had a new principal, Ché Carter. A few weeks after he was hired, the editorial board and my adviser scheduled a Zoom meeting with him. The purpose was to tell him about how we functioned, how our finances work, our mission statement, goals for the year, and how we used to be prior reviewed. We sent him MIPA's guide to a principal of a school with a student paper. Within the first few weeks, we had built a sense of trust and understanding that Mr. Carter decided not to prior review us.

Resources everywhere!

During the first month of the school year, we study court cases (Tinker v. Des Moines, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, Bethel School District v. Fraser, etc.) to teach about the nuances under the right to free speech specifically in public schools. These court cases showed that such an umbrella statement as the First Amendment needed specifications, which these court cases allowed for. Here are some of the decisions made afterward:

"First Amendment applied to public schools, and school officials could not censor student speech unless it disrupted the educational process"
"Public schools do not have to allow student speech if it is inconsistent with the schools' educational mission"
"Public schools have the right to discipline a student for giving a speech at a school assembly that is indecent, although not obscene"

Journalism education organizations such as JEA also have terrific resources that we like to reference when introducing the topic of law and ethics in journalsim to the class.

Ethics

Through our website, thehuronemery.com, we have our policies detailed for every scenario: content, opinion/editorial, death, guest writing, anonymity, takedown. Having all of these policies clearly written on an accessible page eases decisions during ambiguous situations.

Anonymity

When it came to reporting very personal topics such as one writer recounting their relationship with sex for our sex spread or another detailing their journey with drug addiction, anonymity was a topic that naturally made it to the table of discussion. What's distinct about a school paper versus a national one like The New York Times or The Washington Post, is that due to the significantly smaller size of our audience, and most readers knowing The Emery staff, publishing personal information can have a different effect than recounting such experiences to an audience that for the majority will not personally encounter that person. With this in mind, and the fact that the majority of us are under 18, when the writers for the two articles above requested to be anonymous, we believed it was an appropriate scenario, despite it not "endangering" the writer if they were published under their real name.

The extra mile

Being a high schoolers myself, I understand the culture of being part of a school paper specifically. Often times, "Anonymous" is not sufficient, as word can spread quickly beyond the staff. In order to protect the privacy of our writers, either I or my adviser will make a copy of the article and then share it with editors to edit so that the history does not show who wrote the piece.

Dealing with conflict of interest

This is something we bring up a lot, especially in a school where there is so much overlap. Someone could be a newspaper editor, band, Mock Trial, and National Honor Society member. At times, when we are so focused on reporting a story, we have to stop and think about the potential conflict of interest. This is also the bullet point for which the most frustration has been expressed. People bring up how there will be no conflict of interest for a club they only attend meetings for once a month. That may be true, but then it becomes nuanced where we draw the line. After all, when it comes to ethics and accuracy of what we report, it can never be too much.

When does it cross the line?

When it comes to opinion writing, many ambiguities come into play. For example, when we had a guest writer write about her experience as a Ukraine in America, we really appreciated the raw and vulnerable voice they bravely brought onto the page. They recounted unfortunate instances of being treated differently by some Russians for speaking Ukrainian. However, some parts of the draft generalized negative attributes to all Russians. Going through the article with a fine toothed comb, we had to navigate this fine line of personal voice and offensive generalizations. Through back-and-forth communication with the writer, expressing The Emery's ethics policies, we were able to find a middle ground to highlight their voice while following our policies.

news literacy

Appreciating the power of press

The beauty about teaching journalism is that just a percentage of it is skill based. The other larger piece of the pie is understanding, appreciating, and knowing the informative and impactful storytelling we can offer to our audience. When it comes to teaching the class, I have found that sometimes what's most impactful for our staffers is not the news happening at the national level, but rather the happenings at the local level, just next door to us all. Seeing places we know, people we know, events we have witnessed or directly heard of because of the school publication that one is a part of can instill a lot of pride. And great things can happen when a contributor is proud of their work and the publication they are a part of.

Our student body depends on our timely and accurate information. Here are the analytics for two recent posts: left post is about police responding to hoax calls and the second is about an announced snow day. Both posts had very high engagement, especially in terms of reposts (meaning people reposted it onto their story or shared it with someone).

When leading a local middle school's newspaper, The Cougar Star, I teach the power of accurate dissemination of information. It starts with teaching them how to navigate the backend of our website, monitor page views, and alike analytics. When I taught about social media journalism, I did the same: walking through how to navigate the "behind the scenes" area, where to find all the statistics for each post, revealing how far-reaching our content is. Through understanding management and how large of an audience their content reaches, I was able to help establish a strong understanding of the pertinence of student press, even at the middle school level.

Before we started reporting in the Clague Middle School social media team, we delved into the importance and power of social media journalism.