Law, Ethics and News Literacy
Being back after a year of isolation meant most of our staff needed a refresher on journalistic ethics and law. Creating an up-to-date staff manual and constantly going over law and ethics issues as they came up with our entire staff helped us make sure our publications were the best they could be.
Staff manual
At the beginning of the year, I decided to create a comprehensive staff manual. Working with my adviser, co-editors and pieces of past manuals, I compiled a one-stop place for everyone on staff to get the information they need.
The first section of the staff manual was a summary of our publications and the history of our staff. The Budget has been around for more than 100 years and highlighting that history and legacy of success was a priority for me when introducing people to our team.
The next section of the manual introduces staffers to the different resources, applications and programs they need to be familiar with to help our staff thrive. Making sure every staffer was familiar with these resources from the get-go was crucial to maintaining strong communication and efficiency for our publications
The third, and most important section, was the law and ethics section. This portion of the manual outlines our staff's stance on a full range of ethical and legal questions for use by both staffers and editors. It lays out the roles of every member of staff in upholding best practices in all of our content and publications.
Setting expectations with staff
After finishing the staff manual, I worked to create some presentations to help go over important topics with our staff. One of these was about expectations for the staff. A huge portion of our team was new this year due to COVID-19. This meant that our staff was very inexperienced. Only two members had been on staff for three or more years: a co-editor and I. So we decided to set up presentations to help teach our staff a lot of things that are usually passed down in the classroom. These included lessons on staff hierarchy, deadlines and responsibility. The LHS journalism staff prides itself in running like a professional publication, and training our staff to buy into that same mindset early in the year is key to helping our team run.
Conference presentation
At our regional journalism conference I presented alongside some of my co-editors about how we have covered news this year and some of the ethical issues we've had to face along the way. Our slideshow aimed to give real examples of times where we faced dilemmas and questions and sought to prepare other staffs to work through the same questions with their own publications.
Tackling tough issues
I never wanted myself or any of my staffers to shy away from a story that presented legal and ethical challenges. We always worked together as a team, with the help of our adviser, to make sure that every story got told, even ones that were difficult. Here are some examples of tough stories that I covered:
When writing my story about “devious licks” trend on TikTok, we encountered a significant issue with reporting that was done early in the process. One of our newer staffers had promised anonymity when interviewing students who had committed the thefts that were then promoted on social media. Our adviser and editorial board had to be careful as we navigated the law and ethics of keeping sources anonymous when activities being engaged in were against the law. The issue sparked a staff-wide conversation about the process of giving sources anonymity.
Breaking a news story is one of the most exciting parts of being a reporter and journalist. In this instance, even though we knew the facts of the story early on, it was important to do our due diligence and make sure everyone's voice was heard as we reported on football players and officials violating COVID protocols. We made sure to interview local health officials and reach out to district communications officials. We also wanted to make sure we gave the football coaches and athletic director a chance to speak about their actions. Making sure that our reporting is fair is always my priority as editor.
Living in Kansas means that we, as students, get press rights that many other states do not. While it is an honor, it also comes with important ethical challenges and legal responsibilities. When students organized a protest sit-in to support our gymnastics program, it was important for us to review these laws with our staff. The Kansas Student Press Act notes that student journalists are not protected if they engage in activity that would be disruptive of the school day. So when covering the protest, we had to be very careful that people who were there as journalists were only there as journalists and not as protestors. It gave us the opportunity to talk about these super important legal and ethical issues as a staff.
Media Literacy
In a world riddled with false information, claims of "fake news" and more, being able to sift through all of the information and be accurately well informed on the society around you is an important task for anyone. But for the journalist, it's essential.
During this year, I wanted to make sure that our entire staff was able to accurately read and interpret media and journalism, and that started with me. Making sure I was well informed and literate in interpreting media was an important learning journey and process.
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Having the staff take part in current events games and discussing major news issues as a class always helped keep our staff up to date and ready to interact with the constantly changing media landscape.