Sitemap for developing
Policy and Ethics in Student Media
Policy and Ethics Sitemap
Links from the boldfaced main sections below are intended to be sequential in nature but can also be used menu style. Pick one model from policies and as many as you need from the ethics/staff manual sections and you are on your way to building your own Foundations package. We think the policy section should come first since it sets the stage for all other areas, but that choice remains yours.
Introductory articles to policies
This section will outline the importance of our two types of policies, board-level and media-level and provide you with recommended language as well as comments on each of the five recommended levels. Other articles outline public forums and prior review.
—Front page to the project —Introductory article —Public forum overview —Prior review and restraint —Quick access to policy models —Creating a mission statement –Model for ethical guidelines
Introductory article link to ethics
This section will introduce how we visualize our concept, why we created it this way and our thoughts on updating ethics guidelines and staff manual. Please note that we believe in user additions to all these sections.
Establishing program Structure
We designed the ethics and staff manual sections into four main segments, from establishing the principles and ethical guidelines to evaluating them. This group of guidelines and procedures strives to establish basic principles and structure that work for all student media.
—School board and media policy —Publication level policy
—The role of student media —The role of the adviser
—Editor-staff relationships —Staff conduct
—Balance and objectivity —Academic dishonesty
—Ownership of student content —jeamodeleditpolicy
— Creating “Put Up” guidelines —Recognizing public spaces
—Understanding “no publication” guidelines —Publishing satire
Planning and gathering information
This group of guidelines stresses basic principles and process of information gathering across platforms. These represent more detailed approaches to carrying out daily journalistic functions.
—News judgment and news values —Prior review/prior restraint
—Controversial coverage —Diversity of sources
—Recording sources during interviews —Verification
—Allowing sources to see content before publication
—Email, texting and digital information gathering
—Unnamed sources —Treatment of minors
—Public records and meetings —Treatment of sources
Producing content
This group of ethics statements and staff manual procedures focuses more on the production of journalistic content, from print to social media and from reporting to advertising.
—Handling links —Guides for breaking news
—Providing content —Writing process
—Social media –Use of profanity
—Obituaries —Sponsored content
—Advertising —Visual reporting
— Producing video dubs — Handling user-generated content
Assessing and responding
We envision this section focusing on how students and advisers evaluate their content. We would also include specialized issues.
—Evaluating and critiquing content —Correcting errors
—Takedown requests — Letters to the editor/online comments
Requests for specific ethical/manual statements
This version of Policy and Ethical guidelines is a living, breathing document to which we welcome comments and suggestions. If you have experience with something we did not include, please use the comment section here to let us know what you would like us to add, or just to comment.
Resources
We intend for these resource lists bring additional support and perspective to each of the more specialized and directly related resources attached to each of the files above.
If there are resources you find useful, please use the comment section here to share your knowledge.