Law, EthicS & News Literacy
Law and Ethics
Website
My sophomore year was the first time the newspaper staff ran the website. Therefore, a take-down policy was created.
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The take-down policy includes:
​•"Stories will only be pulled for factual errors, blatant violations of the NSPA Code of Ethics, extreme circumstances, or potential safety concerns. If corrections can be made to digitally “fix” any errors, they will be made first, before pulling a story."
• "Disputes about quotes will be handled on an individual basis and will include the writer, editor and adviser to determine if an error requires the story to be taken down."
• "A letter of “request of removal” for a story can be submitted to the adviser and will be considered on an individual basis. The final decision rests with the current year Leadership Team upon consultation with the adviser and, if necessary, SPLC lawyers. Requests will be handled in as timely a manner as possible to reach a final decision. Letters must include a detailed explanation of why the request is being made."
• "A writer/photographer may request a story they wrote to be removed from the online edition by direct request in writing. The writer/photographer may only do this after graduation or in extreme circumstances."
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At the Ball State journalism workshop in 2020, I attended a meeting on covering controversial topics in publications. Here, I learned the ethics of being an unbiased reporter not hiding any facts.
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Social Media
Similar to the website, our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts have a policy.
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This policy includes:
"The editorial board reserves the right to remove comments that violate any provisions outlined by this policy. Information posted on social media platforms should be held to the same standard as all other reporting in terms of information gathering, fact checking and objectivity. Transparency is important. Mistakes made on social media posts should be corrected as soon as possible and any deleted posts should be acknowledged."
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In the beginning of this school year, our Instagram account received a comment that was verbal abuse towards an administrator. At the time, we did not have a comment policy, so I created one.
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The comment policy includes:
"Bishop Miege Press reserves the right to remove comments that use profanity, contain false information, are discriminatory, or make attacks towards another student, faculty member or commenter."
Photos
In our print issues, web and social media posts, we place an emphasis on making sure that every photo is given photo credit to the correct photographer. On our website, we place a watermark on the photos to limit the chance of copyright.
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At the 2022 JEA/NSPA fall conference in St. Louis, I attended a photojournalism workshop. Here, I learned about the ethics of photojournalism.
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news Literacy
How I Get My News
On the fourth page of every print edition of the newspaper, we have a page highlighting local, state and national news. The fifth page is followed by a news story relating to our school.
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I used to never watch the news. I found it boring and negative. However, since joining the newspaper staff, I have grown to watch the news more. The timely happenings shape our society.
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Yes, I do watch the local new with my parents, but I also get a majority of the latest news headlines through social media, specifically Twitter.
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On my personal Twitter account, I follow all of our school's accounts. So, when I am laying in my bed scrolling through my feed, I screenshot any tweets about awards that students won or an article that impacts our school. Then, I share them with other members of the staff when we are brainstorming story ideas.