HiLite adviser Jim Streisel's Cliff Note's definition of the standard:
Students understand and apply knowledge of legal and ethical principles related to the functioning of scholastic journalism in the United States.
But, what are the legal and ethical principles?
"MUST": LEGAL PRINCIPLES
There are seven principles we must know as a student journalist.
- Censorship: the action of suppressing free speech. As student journalists, we need to understand that administration may censor some content due to the emotional maturity of the audience; however, they may not censor our speech for the reason to protect the image of the school. At Carmel High School, we typically are not censored for any of our material, thanks to our administration.
- Obscenity: "hardcore pornography". It's imperative that student journalists avoid using obscenity in the publication because it is not protected under the First Amendment. Thankfully, this has never been an issue for HiLite.
- Copyright: gives creators the credit that no one can take away. Journalists need to stay away from copyright infringement by using their own content. Often, we come into contact with possibilities of copyright infringements when we try to get inspiration for graphics, design, photography or stories; however, inspiration is inspiration and shouldn't be too similar to the original work. To avoid this, we localize our issue and ideas to the Carmel community. In addition, we would use items that are labeled for reuse online.
- Privacy: right to have your own little "bubble". Journalists must respect a person's privacy unless they are out in public.
- FERPA: protection of students' privacy. This prohibits student journalists from finding medical information, individual grades, and more; however, it does give journalists the freedom to ask about general census questions. If more questions are required, the parents of the source must grant permission for such information to be published.
- Libel: FALSE information that could ruin a person's image. The key word is "false"; if a reporter finds out the truth, it is not libel, which is why accuracy is very important in journalism. This is the reason why we do "Source Questionnaires": guarantees everything we publish is accurate.
- Prior Review: allows administration to read publication before it's actually printed. This is a regular process at Creekside Middle School; however, because HiLite acts like a public forum, our principal typically doesn't read it beforehand.
- Retraction: publications may make corrections to make changes of false information in the previous issue. This also maintains the credibility between the publication and audience.
EXAMPLE:
"SHOULD": ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
The HiLite staff values our trust with our audience; as a result, journalists must keep these ethical principles in mind:
- Confidentiality: protection of sources. For us, we never use anonymous sources (see below). However, we make sure our sources know that, so they can refuse our interview request.
- Use of Anonymous Sources: some publications allow their journalists to use anonymous sources or change the sources' name for confidentiality; however, in the HiLite, we will not run anonymous sources because we want to make sure that everyone is not fabricating their story (see below).
- Fabrication: the act of making up a story or anything in it. No journalist should ever do this on any grounds.
- Photo Manipulation: act of editing the photo in order to increase its quality. That being said, there are certain limits to which we can edit the photo: as long as we aren't changing the sight of the physical state of objects, i.e. color of the background, it is ethically acceptable. Another restriction is that we may not change the direction that the photo is facing in order to fit our needs.
- Off-the-Record Remarks: whatever the journalist is told can be reported so long as it is not attributed to the person who said it. We typically don't run into this issue because we record our entire conversation with our sources, so if there were to be any problem, we have the recording to prove it.
- Plagiarism: obviously, if one plagiarizes, it would also be illegal under copyright infringement; however, as moral beings, we should be original by doing our own work and not directly copying other people's hard work.
EXAMPLE: ALONE IN THE CROWD
For the "Alone in the crowd?" spread, I had to recognize that the reporters needed to fill out the FERPA form since we are talking about the students' medical conditions. The reporters submitted a FERPA form to Mr. Streisel who then called the parents to make sure this was okay. In addition, we also had to make sure the sources were okay with us publishing this piece because ethically, we have to make sure the sources agree for this to be published especially because we don't run anonymous sources in the HiLite. Some sources for the Q&A refused to publish their portion, so we had to find other sources to make up for them instead of just publishing it without their permission. Through this spread, I learned how to appropriately reflect the legal and ethical principles of journalism in my work.