John Bowen

John Bowen , MJE , is an adjunct professor at Kent State , chair of Journalism Education Association ( JEA ) Scholastic Press Rights Commitee and former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year . Bowen has been a member of the SPLC Board of Directors and convener of the SPLC Advisory Council and a high school journalism teacher and adviser .

s your student media prepare for the start of a new school year , refreshing the understanding of legal and ethical principles should be a priority .

Then , if more online publishing and social media are in the not-too-distant future — especially some of those bells and whistles everyone is talking about — it is even more important to make sure the staff is ready .

To help students – and advisers – with these issues that come up when building firm foundations of journalism to use with all student media , we outlined three areas for discussion and adoption of principles .

SET UP THE BASICS

• Student media should have a clear mission statement , a strong editorial policy outlining them as public forums for student expression , a comprehensive set of ethical guidelines to carry out that mission and policy and a staff manual that establishes

clear procedures of ethical operation .

• Policy contains student media ’ s forum statement , a statement about prior review and restraint and who makes final decisions of content . The policy statement could also have a section on journalistic principles , along with historical and educational rationale for being a public forum for student expression . Your forum status is the same no matter what medium it ’ s for . One policy should cover all student media . Resources :

• Working with a board-approved policy

• Media-level editorial policies

• Ethical guidelines state the principles by which you carry out the policy and mission . We would recommend a Red light , Green Light discussion with your students about what kind of concepts guide your student media . Dealing with ethical dilemmas builds what Rushworth Kidder called ethical fitness . Lord John Moulton defined ethics as “ obedience to the unenforceable .” Not following an ethical principle should

not be a basis for punishment of student expression . Resources :

• Questions staffs should discuss before entering the social media environment

• Policy and ethics sitemap

• Staff manual procedures present the specific process to implement ethical guidelines and editorial policy . Resources :

• How to use this guide for ethical use of staff manuals

Within this foundational document , much like a constitution , staffs should create clear separation between the policy , ethical guidelines and staff manual sections .

In other words , student media want to be able to update and change the ethical guidelines and staff manual as needed without disturbing the policy , which , like a constitution , should not be revised casually .

An example would be byline style or use of unnamed sources . No one would want to have them in the same section as the forum and