As a student journalist, not only did I learn how to write or report, I learned about the importance of standing up for my First Amendment rights. I have had to struggle through awkward conversations with the school administration and sources over my rights as a student journalist. These rights are immensely valuable to me. With them and with protections like the California education code 48937 which gives student journalists and their advisers more freedom of the press, I get a seat at the table and can amplify student’s concerns about ensuring a safer and more welcoming school community. Despite the uncomfortable exchange, my belief in equity, communication, and representation transcended compliancy.
In addition, I am aware that benefitting from these rights also bears great responsibility. I have prioritized transparency and news literacy as a publication staff member and consumer of journalistic content. Below are a few examples of this important work.
Law, Ethics and News Literacy
#ScholasticJournalismWeek
Last school year, the National Journalism Education Association offered student publications the opportunity to submit work to be featured on their Twitter account during Scholastic Journalism Week. I worked with our Online Editor-in-Chief to fill out the application and submit our content to be featured. Each day during Scholastic Journalism Week was assigned a specific theme and we worked to find a story produced by our publication that fits that theme. This week allows the staff to promote news literacy with its readers by being transparent about how you gather news, why you select certain stories or angles, and an over-all-behind the scenes look at your newsroom. Below is an image of what our application consisted of.
Below are some of our stories that were selected to be highlighted during #SJW2020
Click on the image if you want to be redirected to the tweet!
I was the main editor for the DACA walkout story highlighted above and for the story about teens struggling with stress.
#SJW2020 link
We were also highlighted this school year by the Scholastic Journalism Week account:
Covering a sexual misconduct case
As soon as a classmate and I were assigned a news story on a Birmingham Community Charter High School's girls' lacrosse coach who was arrested for sexual misconduct, I knew that this was a very delicate subject and that we had to be extremely intentional with how we covered this topic. Immediately upon beginning to report on this story, we were faced with a major ethical issue. We were able to obtain the court records from the local courthouse regarding the case. These documents stated the names of the victims, many of whom were minors at the time. Although that information was available to us, we very quickly decided that we would not be publishing the victim's names. Many of them were minors and some of them attended our school. It was of vital importance to us that we protected their anonymity throughout this entire reporting process. To ensure that this information wasn't leaked in any way, I was in charge of keeping the physical records in my possession. We would never leave them in the newsroom or any public place just to ensure that no one had access to them except for the reporter writing the story with me, my adviser and me. Our coverage on this case was used by a professional newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily News.
Throughout our extensive reporting of this case, we aimed to diversify our coverage as much as possible. To do this, we reached out to an abundance of sources ranging from school administration to lawyers and police stations. Ultimately, we were able to get in contact with the coach's attorney for the case. Although she asked to not be mentioned in the articles, she was able to provide us information pertaining to the case and trial dates. After publishing our fourth article regarding the case, the attorney reached out to us in a combative manner, saying that we had provided false information in our story. When we asked her to elaborate, she provided us with a list of what she claimed was incorrect throughout the story. My classmate and I as well as our adviser sat down to review all of her claims and ensure that proper steps were taken if there were mistakes on our part.
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Although covering this proved to be very difficult and stressful, I am incredibly proud of our work. These articles were able to reach not only our regular student audience but it was also a source of information for many community members and other local papers. While trying to decode complex court records, making numerous phone calls to police stations yet constantly being redirected and receiving criticism from attorneys, I was truly able to report in-depth on this case. I learned immensely about the art of reporting and the importance of staying ethical and balanced despite the difficult decisions we had to make.
Conflict with administration
After seven years, our previous principal, Ms. Deb Smith, decided to retire, making my sophomore year her last year as principal. Ms. Smith was incredibly supportive of our journalism program and she always made sure to be available for interviews. We appreciated her enthusiasm for our publication and were definitely sad to see her go. Since we were about to undergo a change in administration, our staff was somewhat concerned about who our new principal would be. Once junior year began, we almost immediately began having issues. Our reporters would reach out to her for interviews only to be met with annoyed glances and eye rolls. This frustrated the other editors and me because we saw how discouraged it made our new staff writers.
This tension between our staff and new principal came to a peak a couple of months into the school year. Ms. Smith was always known to value student expression and chose not to heavily enforce the traditional dress code for our district. As a result, students at our school were used to being able to dress in the way they felt comfortable. Our new principal didn't agree with this precedent and decided to start heavily enforcing the dress code. Students were outraged about this decision, feeling like it was primarily aimed at forcing female students to cover up. Aditionally, students were reporting that the principal and other staff were making sexist comments to students who violated dress code, making them feel uncomfortable.
In response, a group of students decided to organize a protest against this enforcement. They were planning to wear clothing that violated the dress code and walk out of class on Sept. 27, 2019. Once our principal got wind of this, she scheduled a lunch meeting to discuss the dress code. This meeting was open to all DPMHS students so we felt that it was important as a publication to cover the event. We assigned the coverage to our staff writer Jonathan, who was to attend the meeting and report on it. However, when he got there, the principal told him that he was not allowed to report on the meeting at all. This was obviously a huge violation of our rights are student journalists and we knew that immediate action had to be taken. I, alongside our two publication Editor-in-Chiefs immediately set up a meeting with our principal the next day. We went to the meeting prepared with printed out versions of student free expression laws. We also brought with us a copy of the book "A Principals Guide to Scholastic Journalism" and made to sure highlight sections of the book that we felt she should read up on.
After this meeting, we found out that the students who were originally planning the protest decided to change this to "Crop Top Day." Instead of walking out of class, students and especially male students, were encouraged to wear crop tops in solidarity with the female students who felt the most victimized by this
dress code enforcement. Our staff decided to cover this event via a Twitter thread. Our social media editor was able to obtain an interview with a male student who participated and our photographers snapped photos of them throughout the day.
Our principal was actually off campus on the day of the demonstration and didn't want to be interviewed. After our Twitter thread was published, we once again heard that the principal disapproved of our content. Instead of coming to the staff with her concerns, she shared
them with other students and administration on campus, which is how we found out. She was upset that the student interviewed had mentioned her name in one of his quotes. She felt that we had misrepresented her. We once again decided to set up another meeting and discuss the issue. She claimed that our tweet insinuated that she was in support of dress code violation. We understood her frustration and offered to run a correction which she denied.
Our staff leadership up ended up having multiple meetings like this throughout that school year. Although these conversations were extremely frustrating at times, they were necessary to ensure that our staff still had the freedom to report on what we deemed important. Whenever she raised a concern, I made sure to discuss her claims with the rest of the editorial staff and the staff writer(s) involved. We reviewed the content, discussed the issue among ourselves and then set up a meeting to address her concerns. This experience allowed me to learn about how to deal with hostile administration who isn't welcoming of student media. I was able to expand my ethical and legal journalistic knowledge to defend our publication in a factual and respectful manner.