Law, ethics & news literacy
A large aspect of journalism is ensuring that the reporting is ethical and legal. Navigating ethics and law is a part of my role as EIC, and I work with my staff if needed to make sure we feel good about publishing the story online. I also value news literacy and follow the news closely myself, and encourage others to do the same.
Medill cherubs
When I attended the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute the summer before my senior year, I had the opportunity to learn about many aspect of journalism from professionals. A part of that was talking about law, ethics, and news literacy.
I attended multiple classes that consisted of discussions with professors about journalistic ethics. We pondered questions like "Is it ethical to remove this object from an image if it is distracting?" and other ethical dilemmas that can occur in journalism. We would raise a red, yellow, or green card that represented our opinions. our discussions almost never ended with a black and white answer. I took this knowledge with me when I went back to the school in the fall.
Cherubs attend an ethics class, raising green, red or yellow cards that expressed their viewpoints on certain journalistic ethical dilemmas.
Foundations of Journalism
Right from the beginning of my journalism journey, I’ve been introduced to the law and ethics of the field. In my foundations of journalism class freshman year, we did a unit on journalism law and ethics. At the end of the unit we took a test over what we learned, and wrote down the first amendment for extra credit.​
News literacy
Being a journalist doesn’t only mean writing the news, it also means following it. I started seriously following the news in large part due to my foundations of journalism class freshman year.
I started out by getting email subscriptions to the Iowa City Press Citizen and the Des Moines Register. I also get emails from the New York Times and the Washington Post. My mom got a family subscription to the New York Times, so I read a large majority of national news on their website.
I also get a lot of my news from social media. While it is true that social media is full of misinformation and exaggeration, there is also lots of factual reporting there too. On social media, I follow a variety of news organizations from across the political spectrum. I follow the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, and Reuters. I also follow independent journalists Taylor Lorenz, Jordan Berman, Dave Jorgenson, and Mosheh Oinounou. I particularly like listening to Berman’s podcast “Unbiased,” because she focuses on presenting facts in an in-depth manner without showing any of her own opinion. She explains both sides of an argument, and legal analysis of current events, which allows people to form their own opinions.
To encourage people to follow the news, and also as a fun bonding activity, we do a current events quiz every Thursday. Our advisor creates around eight questions ranging from national, local, and sports news and an AP style question. We write down our answers on white boards as heard music plays then tally up the points to decide the winner. Even if staffers don’t follow the news in preparation for the quiz, at least they learn some of what has happened just by playing.