charlieardengee
Law, Ethics & News Literacy
There's been a wide array of ethical dilemmas I've faced in the past few years on my journalism staff, especially involving tough decisions as Print Co-Editor-in-Chief. Here's how I made them.
Supplemental Law, Ethics & News Literacy Section
To the Journalist of the Year judges: Please reference a pdf sent through email by Joe Humphrey for a supplemental law, ethics & news literacy section not available to the public that is crucial to my application.
Protest ethics
In our protest coverage, we have strived to prioritize the safety of our sources. One such way we did this was for a series of protester profiles. We drew the participants instead of showing a picture of their identifiable face. We also informed them, and any other sources we had in articles featuring Black Lives Matter protest coverage, of the potential risks of having their names associated with the movement and made sure they understood and accepted them before publishing. For the profile article specifically, we also got parent permission.
Building trust with the BSU
In my time as Co-Editor-in-Chief, the Black Student Union was reformed at our school following a series of protests in November. For our next issue, we wanted to highlight its formation and the students who put it together. There were rumors floating around that the BSU was wary of media coverage, but everyone we talked to told us different things.
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To clarify, we established a task force of 4 WSS volunteers, two of which being my Co-EIC and I, to meet with the 4 leaders of the BSU to see what they would be comfortable with. We learned that, unfortunately, other local news sources had misquoted the administration during protest coverage, leaving the students feeling misrepresented and untrustworthy of the media. They voiced their concerns, and we mentioned options on how we could maintain journalistic integrity but still make sure they weren't misrepresented, keeping in mind our freedom of press rights.
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Talking with the BSU leaders established trust. Being a student publication, we assured them that we would handle their student stories with the utmost care. We confirmed their direct quotes with them to make sure they weren't misquoted while avoiding sharing the entire article with them. We gave them a chance to respond to what the administration said. The result was a cover story that accurately and ethically spread the word about this vital safe space for Black students and the students who created it.
Teaching editors ethics
One of the most important parts of my job is to pass on strong ethical values to our staff because they will be the ones to keep the publication going after I graduate. I started the year with this by reinforcing the importance of using anonymous sources very sparingly, as per our editorial board policy because I felt like we had too many people that should have just been cut from articles in the past rather than been given anonymity.
Next, we required editorial board members to read not only our editorial board policy but also multiple professional journalism codes of ethics, as per the recommendation of our advisor. I plan to suggest the next EIC require their board to do the same thing so that the editorial board can be equipped with the tools to make difficult decisions.
Finally, I taught staff and editors to fact-check information that staffers hyperlink for data and evidence in their articles. It's a regular part of our job as EICs to ensure information comes from a reliable source, and we wanted to prepare section editors to do so as well. This is mutually beneficial because it adds an extra layer of protection to ensure we don't present incorrect information. In the first cycle, I specifically focused on our news and health and science section editors for this task since they had the most links, and from there encouraged editors of all sections to check links. This taught news literacy in our staff, especially when editors pointed out and explained unreliable information to new staffers.
