Law, Ethics, and News Literacy
Throughout my years in student journalism, I've come to truly understand bias, misinformation, and the way they affect our society. As journalists, it is absolutely first and foremost our prerogative to protect the whole, unbiased truth. As a sign in our classroom said my sophomore year, "speak the truth, even if your voice shakes."Â
In Wyoming, being fairly disenfranchised from larger society, I believe our citizens are especially susceptible to misinformation, misleading pieces, and "fake news."
My freshman year, I learned about Student Press Law Center and their role in student journalism. I also did a project on 1st Amendment school court cases, analyzing cases like Tinker v. Des Moines, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, and my heaviest emphasis on Bethel School District v. Fraser. These studies lit a fire under me as an ethics geek and news literacy advocate.
News Literacy
This is a commentary I did last year on how the student body can help themselves analyze and watch for bias in the news they consume. As we know, during the Trump era, buzzphrases like "fake news" began to spread like wildfire, and distrust in "the media" was rampant as ever. I made this story in effort to explain news literacy in a simple yet effective way, after having tried to explain it to some of my peers in conversation unsuccessfully one too many times.
Ethics
Since learning about ethics in year 1, I've come to be passionate about ethics, and holding myself and the staff to the highest ethical standard. Each bootcamp, we go over ethics and newsworthiness, and we're sure to cover the SPJ code of ethics.
Usually, as director, the final say on ethical decisions is mine. Recently, we had a story about a student who plays E-Sports, but what we didn't know was that the game was a first-person shooter game. As we were watching through the show, Raelyn and I noticed it. Ultimately we decided to take it out, because it would reflect badly on us to PCSD 6 parents and our elementary school viewers. We didn't want to cut the story, so we sat the reporter down and re-edited most of it with him minutes before final export - and we got the show out in time.
Law
Luckily, our school administration is very good about understanding that they don't legally have the power to prior review our shows, which means they trust us to be sure that what we're doing is the best, most ethical newscasting we can; in CHS Wired, that's our responsibility as journalists. As escribed earlier, I did extensive research on 1st amendment court cases. Though ill-formatted as I had little to no experience in making an effective or well-designed PowerPoint fresh out of the 8th grade; the knowledge I gained has stuck with me throughout my years.