Law

It’s not our fault you’re bad at this: Law and ethics and “accidentally” public information

Journalists often use open records requests to shed light on things public officials would prefer remain secret. Courts often seek to balance the public’s right to know against individual privacy rights in determining which documents merit public scrutiny and which ones should be kept out of the public eye.

In some cases, courts or public information officials will try to “split the baby” on the release of documents through a process known as information redaction. For example, if a document contains information that meets the standard of public information, but it also includes information that should clearly remain private, record keepers can “black out” those private parts before releasing the documents. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

redact

In the “old days, the copying and redacting process was often done with a thick, black marker and a photocopier. Now, since many of the documents are kept and shared digitally, records keepers use PDFs and some Adobe editing tools to do the redactions, which is what led to a clash between the Broward school district and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The paper requested documents pertaining to the school district’s interactions with Nikolas Cruz, the former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, who killed 17 people at the school in February. The courts ruled that the documents should be released, but that certain information needed to be redacted, which the district thought it did.

However, when reporters downloaded the files and pasted the information into a word-processing file, they found that all of the redacted information was visible. They also found that the information in the documents painted a much different picture of Cruz and the school district than the public officials had put forth. Seeing this information as valuable and in the public interest, the Sun-Sentinel published it. The judge who ordered the release of the documents was not pleased about this, as she demonstrated in a hearing to determine if the reporters should be held in contempt of court: 

Scherer was not swayed. She threatened to restrict what the media can report, a practice known as prior restraint.

“From now on if I have to specifically write word for word exactly what you are and are not permitted to print – and I have to take the papers myself and redact them with a Sharpie … then I’ll do that,” she said.

At this point, let’s unpack a few things you might find useful or at least amusing:

  • The statement Judge Elizabeth Scherer issued about writing “word for word exactly what you are and are not permitted to print” is a bit scary and more than a bit unconstitutional. The courts cannot dictate content to the press in this fashion. It’s barely legal for your high school principal to do this, and that’s only through gross misinterpretation of one of the worst court cases in media law history.

 

  • In the video, the judge berates the publication for manipulating the documents by downloading them and then pasting them into another program, saying she had “never heard of such a thing.” Scherer is 42 years old, so computers have been around for much of her lifetime. It’s not like she’s Sen. Strom Thurmond, who lived to be 101 and once referred to a microphone as “the machine.” I have no idea how she never had to use a PDF before. In any case, just because you don’t understand how something works, it doesn’t follow it’s not standard operating procedure for the rest of the world.

 

  • She also made this statement: “You all manipulated that document so that it could be unredacted,” Scherer said. “That is no different than had they given it to you in an old-fashioned format, with black lines, and you found some type of a light that could view redacted portions and had printed that. It’s no different.”
    Right, and I know that more than a few of us have done something like this to try to figure out what was behind the black lines. In the days of typewriters, the keys made impressions on the page, which were still visible through the black marker. With toner (essentially plastic powder melted onto a page), the black of the text was different from the black of the marker, which allowed reporters to backlight the page and read the content. None of this is illegal.

 

  • I checked in with two legal experts about the issue of publishing information that was intended to be redacted to see what the law had to say about the topic. Both of them told me that it’s the record keeper’s job to redact the information he or she wants to keep out of the public eye. It’s not the newspaper’s job to look the other way. In short, it’s not our fault you’re bad at this. The law does not prohibit the publishing of this information.

What you should be concerned about is the ethical issues associated with publishing information in a case like this. This is where the balancing test comes into play, where you weigh the public’s right to know against an individual’s right to privacy. As one of the “legal eagles” explained to me:

Basically, I think it’s completely ethical for journalists to hold redacted documents up to the light (or, in the digital sense, to search for letters/words to see if they show up in the redacted blocks of text). In fact, I think our job demands us to find out as much info as possible (seek truth and report it, right?).

That said, I think ethics come in when it comes to publishing. It’s a bit like handling a leak — what distinguishes us from Wikileaks, besides the Russian control and efforts to undermine democracy of course, is that we make editorial decisions based on journalism principles and practices. So you’ll be balancing public need to know with privacy concerns.

So, as a reporter, you might not want to publish certain information you receive from a source or a document, such as the name of a crime victim or an unproven rumor. However, that’s a judgment call that rests with the journalists, not the courts. When you have the information, it’s up to you to determine what the public should know and what they probably shouldn’t. It’s a monumental responsibility, but that’s why journalists make the big money.

The paper saw within the documents a pattern of the district failing Cruz, as it denied him access to services he desperately needed. Reporting this information was within the best interest of the public, the paper decided.

Earlier reporting on this, done without those documents, was refuted by the superintendent, Robert Runcie, who called the coverage inaccurate and even “fake news.” Runcie and his colleagues sought to hide these failures and gloss over the district’s responsibilities and without those reports, the paper was at a decided disadvantage. This is why open records matter and why using the information within them can shine a light where it matters most.

Connecticut’s “vexatious” standard for open record requests should scare the hell out of student journalists

The state of Connecticut recently passed a law that allows public agencies to deny open records to any citizens the agencies feel are pests. Although the legalese is a bit more nuanced, this news piece captures the core of the law:

Citizens who routinely and repeatedly file Freedom of Information complaints over thin reasons are the subjects of a new law passed by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy June 7.

House Bill 5175 — An Act Concerning Appeals Under the Freedom of Information Act and Petitions for Relief from Vexatious Requesters — gives additional authority to the Freedom of Information Commission to determine whether a FOIA request or appeal is vexatious and if so determined, grant relief to an aggrieved municipality or public agency.

An agency may petition the commission for relief from someone the agency alleges is a vexatious requester. Upon receiving the petition the commission shall determine whether, given the allegations, a hearing is warranted.

If it is determined that no hearing is warranted, the commission can dismiss the petition, said state Sen. Toni Boucher (R-26), who voted for the bill. If, after a hearing, the commission determines the request rises to the level of a vexatious requester, it can grant relief to the municipality or public agency. That would allow a municipality or public agency to not respond to their requests for a period of a year, she said.

The term “vexatious” sounds like something predatory, but as the Student Press Law Center’s coverage of the topic explains, it simply means anyone “who repeatedly attempts to get information from their government through frequent or voluminous requests.”

(So, so, so sorry to “vex” you m’lord…)

This should scare the hell out of you as a student journalist, even if you don’t live in Connecticut. The idea of “how much is too much” is now in the hands of people who don’t want to tell you things, thus giving them a leg up in potentially punishing you for your requests. Also, if one state does something and it turns out to be a really bad idea that punishes journalists and gives people the opportunity to hide their weaseldom, it’s a safe bet a few other states are likely to try this thing. Keep an eye out in your state for similar bills that might wander into the statehouse.

Frank LoMonte, who has worked for and with SPLC for years, noted that the vague language in that definition, as well as the lack of any measurable to quantify the difference between “vexatious” and simply being a pain in the keester of a record keeper, makes this law a serious problem:

“While a journalist making legitimate use of FOI requests shouldn’t ever have to worry about being categorized as ‘vexatious,’ the Connecticut law doesn’t give adequate guidance about what makes someone a ‘vexatious’ requester,” LoMonte said. “Basically if a school district or a college got tired of a particular reporter, they could petition to have the person banned from making future FOI requests on the grounds that their requests were too frequent. But there’s nothing in the law that specifies whether thirty requests a year, or three, is regarded as too many.”

When I saw this, I remembered a student I had in Indiana named Justin Hesser, who started as the Ball State Daily News working as a quiet, unassuming sports reporter. During one summer, he made an open records request on some documents pertaining to a beef the school was having with its custodial and food employees. He dug into meeting minutes, agendas and all sorts of emails to find out what was going on with a contract dispute. The story itself turned out to be relatively pedestrian, but Justin was hooked on FOIA.

He started digging into tons of stories on campus, using the open records law to shine a light into all manner of dark corners at the university. He looked at allegations of sexual harassment, NCAA violations and more. My favorite story was the time he unearthed a $44.5 million “slush fund” the university developed based on unused student meal money. The best quote of the story came from Jon Lewis, the director of dining services, who admitted the whole thing was rigged against the students:

“If there’s not that much forfeited money we’d have to charge the students more so that we could put that money in the surplus,” Lewis said.

I had a meeting with the head of PR for the university at one point to talk about something or other, but the first words out of her mouth were: “You have to get a handle on this Hesser kid.”

Why? He’s not doing anything illegal. He’s actually doing his job better than a lot of journalists.

“He’s turning in like three requests a day!” she told me. “And he’s WALKING THEM IN!”

Justin had found a neat part of Indiana law that stated requests anyone mailed, faxed or emailed in gave the record keepers seven days to respond. However if the requester physically presented the request (as in walked it over to the record keeper and hand it it to him or her), the agency had to time stamp the request and reply within 24 hours.

So, he wants you to abide by the law?

“We have to respond within TWENTY FOUR HOURS!” she yelped at me, as if her tone would somehow convince me that Justin was doing something wrong. “We don’t have the personnel to do that for EVERYONE!”

I told her he was abiding by the law and that it wasn’t his fault she felt overwhelmed by a college kid filing FOIA requests out of a student newsroom. She couldn’t just deny his requests out of convenience. However, if this new Connecticut law was the rule of the land, this is exactly what could happen.

The concept of open records is the idea that citizens have the right to access documents to understand what public agencies are doing for them and to them. Record keepers have been trying to cut into those rights in a variety of ways, such as requiring requesting parties to pay exorbitant fees and delaying the fulfillment of the requests until the information the documents contain would be old news. In other cases, the records are so heavily redacted (where the record keeper “blacks out” portions of the text for a variety of reasons) they are essentially worthless.

(A quick post-script: Justin Hesser graduated from Ball State, to the relief of the university’s PR department, about a year after that meal money story ran. He went on to study law at the University of Wyoming and is now an attorney and a partner in a Cheyenne, Wyoming, law firm.)

“I wasn’t going to roll over and give up:” Catching up with Alex Nemec and his “No-Comment Story” open-records lawsuit

Back in April, I posted a story on how to make a story out of a series of “no comment” statements. Alex Nemec, now a general-assignment reporter with the Oconomowoc Enterprise, matched wits against a system meant to tell him nothing in hopes of making sure he could tell students at UW-Oshkosh something about the removal of a professor from a classroom.

Nemec’s story, titled “The Curious Case of Willis Hagen,” is just one part of a reporting experience that has led to a yearlong court battle over open records. Last week, an appeals court in Wisconsin ruled that Nemec was entitled to the records he sought about previous university investigations into Hagen. The records will remain sealed for 30 days, during which time, Hagen can decide if he will appeal the decision to the state’s supreme court. If he chooses not to do so, the records will be released. If he decides to appeal, the case will continue.

I checked in with Nemec after the court made its ruling for an update on the case and his thoughts about the process:

You graduated back in December, your current job has no attachment to this at all, it’s been 18 months since the catalyst (his removal from class) that got you interested in this and you still have no idea what is in these things. Why did you continue to push for this release when you could have said, “To hell with this” and let it go?

I continued to push for this because it was the right thing to do. Open records laws are important to journalists and the more cases we win as journalists, the more cases there are to point to when we are receiving push back from people who don’t want to release them. If we continue to rack up the reasons why, there won’t be many reasons left as to why not.

In addition, I kept fighting this cause I wanted these records and wanted to know what was going on. A professor being pulled out of class by police officers is a big deal and I don’t really care if it wasn’t some huge scoop where he did something awful at the school, the students and taxpayers should know why.

This could have all been done and over with for a long time now if Hagen or the College of Business had just talked to me and told me what was going on. I intervened in this lawsuit because I believed it was the right thing to do after talking with you. I wanted to make sure this thing went my way and that the people understood what happened.

Lastly, I wasn’t going to roll over and give up just because I’m not affiliated with the case anymore. One, that’s just lazy and you can’t be lazy in this business. I had to fight the good fight for the sake of the industry. Two, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that he had beaten me or succeeded in delaying it for so long that I just gave up.

Who has been helpful to you on this and what can you say to other student journalists about the SPLC?
Frank LoMonte from the Student Press Law Center helped me in the beginning with the circuit court case and getting things moving for me to be an intervenor. After Hagen had appealed, he referred me to Christa Westerberg and Aaron Dumas at Pines Bach LLP, both of whom have been incredibly helpful in writing briefs and keeping me updated where the case was in system. They explained to me every step of the way what was going on and answered questions when I had them. I can’t thank any of them enough.

The SPLC is a wonderful resource that every student journalist should be aware of if they are having issues with records request or any other legal matter with their student newspaper. They are there to help and I’m so thankful they were there for me.

If you had it to do over again, would you? Why or why not?

I would absolutely do it over again given I had the same resources I have now. Receiving all this help pro bono is obviously a HUGE help, I don’t know what I would have done had it not been pro bono. But yes, given the same resources I have now, I would do it again because it is important that the University community and the taxpayers know what is going on and aren’t being left in the dark.

Anything you’d like to tell student journalists out there who are looking into a “big story” via open records?
To the students who have a scent of a big story of open records, absolutely go for it. Open records is a great thing to get a handle on and understand, not even as a a journalist, but as a citizen. Journalists are suppose to inform the public of happenings in the community and open records is a great way to do that. If someone is denying the open records request, they are more than likely hiding something, which is in turn, a great story to write.
Given my experience with open records requests, they can be either quick and easy and you’ll get what you want fairly soon, or you end up in a year and a half lawsuit. Long story short, pursue open records stories.
More often than not, my money is on that if they won’t give you the records, it’s a good story and one you’ll enjoy writing.

A few reminders of how the First Amendment works in the wake of the NFL’s “no kneeling” rule

One of the key reasons many journalism programs include a J-law class is to make sure you fully understand the rights that are afforded to you as a citizen and as a member of the media. (This, of course, goes against the popular theory that students have, which is the class is there to see how quickly a GPA can crash and burn after a single semester.) In many cases, people think they know the law after watching a few episodes of “Law & Order” or hearing a couple words that sound legal like “libel,” “habeas corpus” and “cappuccino.” (If I had a nickel for every time someone threatened to sue me for libel, when it was clear they had no idea what they were talking about, I could keep an old-fashioned slot machine spinning for quite some time.)

The National Football League made a recent rule change that had people arguing about the law and how it works in relationship to free speech. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Wednesday that the league would fine teams if they had players who failed to stand for the national anthem. Over the past two years, players have kneeled or refused to stand for the anthem as a protest against racial inequality and police brutality, a movement started by Colin Kaepernick.

The NFL’s announcement has led to the question of freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the rights of the players in the NFL. In a satirical piece , The New Yorker noted that the NFL “added the First Amendment to its list of banned substances.”

We talked a bit about the reasons the First Amendment doesn’t do everything people thinks it does when we covered Harley Barber, the Alabama sorority member who took to her “finsta” to spew racist language. Given this set of concerns, it’s important to take a look back at the First Amendment itself and some of the misconceptions people have about it:

No one can stop you from publishing content or expressing yourself: The First Amendment clearly notes, “Congress shall make no law,” which was later extended to all forms of government. However, the government isn’t the only body or organization that can prohibit you from publishing things. Corporations that own your newspaper or magazine can prohibit certain things from being published. The Federal Communication Commission has a say in what can and can’t be done on television news. Even certain web platforms place specific rules and regulation about content in their user agreements. In this case, the NFL is a private entity that can make certain rules and regulations for its players, and this happens to be one of them. The new rule might be popular or unpopular, but it doesn’t violate the First Amendment. In addition, the consequences of his choice to kneel have been severe for Kaepernick, who was unable to find a team to quarterback after he protested in this fashion.

Nothing bad can happen to you after you publish or express yourself: The ability to publish without governmental prohibition isn’t as great as it sounds in some cases. People erroneously equate “free press” and “free speech” with “consequence-free press” and “consequence-free speech.” Whatever you publish can run afoul of the law and that can lead to some negative outcomes. If you publish incorrect information that harms someone, you can end up on the wrong side of a libel suit. If you enter a private area without permission, someone might sue you for invasion of privacy or trespassing. Even if you publish accurate information, you could still be harmed in the “court of public opinion,” with readers turning their backs on you. The First Amendment doesn’t protect you from every potential harm, so you need to be careful with what you publish. It also doesn’t mean that there won’t be backlash for the NFL or its players.

The First Amendment is clear and absolute: The amendment is neither of these things, as the government has limited speech and press during times of war, as it did with the Sedition Act during World War I and with the Smith Act during World War II. Courts have limited speech with time, place and manner restrictions, prohibiting people from doing certain things at certain times in certain areas. Although the phraseology of “Congress shall make no law” sounds like a rock-solid judgment from on high, plenty of people have found out the hard way that the First Amendment is open to interpretation.

In the end, the NFL will be able to stand on this from a legal standpoint as far as the First Amendment is concerned. However, as the players, owners and fans debate and discuss the merits of this rule, other consequences may develop for any or all of them.

Guest Blogging: 10 Things J-Students Need To Know, But J-Schools Won’t Tell You

Each week, we will strive to post content from a guest blogger with an expertise in an area of the field. This week, we are fortunate to have Kelli Bloomquist, a part-time lecturer at Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. She also owns the Dayton Review newspaper which has served the rural farming community of Dayton, Iowa for nearly 140 years. Her post today lays out the 10 things journalism students need to know but that they don’t learn in journalism school. Interested in being our next guest blogger? Contact us here.

 

You Aren’t A Lawyer, But You Play One In The Newsroom

That media law class that’s a graduation requirement at your university is actually more important than you think. While every j-school class is important, media law is one class that you should show up to, stay awake for, and soak in and retain the information from because you will absolutely need to know every single nugget of knowledge taught in this class.

Journalists need to know media law like it’s your job, because it is! Never before in the history of journalism have professional journalists been questioned and denied access as we are today.

The First Amendment, Freedom of Information Act, open meetings laws, state recording laws, these are all necessary knowledge bases that every journalist must know front to back and back and forth.

I have been a working journalist, editor, a current newspaper owner, and also a university lecturer for more than 20 years. I have written my fair share FOIA requests, sat in on hundreds of city council and school board stories, and know Robert’s Rules of Order like the back of my hand. That’s my job.

Every student entering the workforce should know how to write a FOIA request. You will write dozens of these throughout your career depending on the beat that you’re assigned. Your professor should have you write one during media law class. If they don’t, ask them why.

I have been a guest lecturer in many university journalism classes in recent years and I’m always baffled at the number of students who don’t know their state’s recording laws. Iowa, for instance, is a one-knowledge state which means that a journalist doesn’t necessarily have to tell a source that they’re recording the conversation, though it is typically the best option to do so. These are all items that are covered in media law classrooms as are court proceedings, access at the scene, and even legalities surrounding citizen journalism.  The concepts and tools taught in this class will be used daily throughout your career. I’m completely serious about that last sentence, and it’s not the university instructor in me saying that, it’s the 20-plus year veteran journalist saying it.

My very first dip in the legal pool was at the age of 17 when my radio news editor sent me to the local diner to see if our school board was meeting in quorum outside of regular business meetings. There I was, a 17 year old high school radio news intern, surrounded by diners my grandparents’ age who were ordering their daily usual. I tried to inconspicuously order toast and coffee while also keeping an eye out for a possible illegal meeting.

Sure enough, halfway through my toast, a quorum of school board members sat down near me and began discussing how they would vote at that night’s meeting. Bingo. An illegal meeting just took place. I took the information back to my editor and he – along with the local newspaper editor – made the call to the state and to the local superintendent that they were aware of the illegal meetings taking place. Ultimately, the school board members received additional training and were told not to make the mistake again, but the message was clear – the business of the public school system needed to legally happen with transparency before the eyes and ears of its constituents.

Small potatoes? Perhaps. But it set a precedent in the town that is still followed decades later. Know the law because you will have to put it to use daily during your career.

Pay attention when it comes to legal specifics when you’re out in the public working on a story. Where can you legally stand when covering a house fire? What are you legally allowed to print and copy when you visit law enforcement agencies for daily reports? What is the best response when you’re denied access? Remember that response and repeat it often. You’ll need to know it.

Early in my radio news career I was covering a local house fire. I knew all of the police and firefighters on scene and was making small talk with a few of them while standing in the parkway near the road. The homeowner suddenly appeared and was livid that their home (and weed grow lab, I might add) was going up in flames. They screamed and yelled at me to leave what they believed was their property when in actuality, I was standing on a city-owned parkway.

Items like this might seem small and boring at the time, but these are the items I have continually had students come back to me and say “I’m so glad you covered that in class! I actually had to use it today!”

 

Be Prepared To See The Best And The Worst Of Humanity

You will see humanity at its absolute best, and you will still be required to report on it at its worst. The role of journalism has many facets which also includes documenting history. As a journalist, you will cover murder trials, child abuse cases, shootings, flooding, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, and before your eyes, you will be required to step back and in the moment put your own emotion aside and report and photograph people at their best and at their worst with an unbiased and solely factual approach. It will change you and how you view the world outside of your newsroom. Quite honestly, there’s no way that it can’t. One of the hardest lessons that I had to learn personally was to go to a scene, do my job, and not become emotional while still at the scene of that incident. Journalists are human and we have the very same emotional responses that every other human being does. But showing that emotion at the scene can be viewed to some as bias, so learn to go to the scene, do your job, get in your car, take a deep breath while buckling your seat belt, and drive blocks away before parking your car and letting that emotion out. Even journalists need a good cry.

The very first court case that I covered early in my career is one that is sadly well known in my home state of Iowa. A mother and her boyfriend were found guilty of beating and killing their toddler aged daughter and blamed her death on younger baby brother who allegedly – they claimed – had pushed her off of a couch, killing her. Decades later, I don’t remember reporting on opening arguments, closing arguments, or witness testimony, but I can recall the uncomfortable wooden chair that I sat in while the state’s lawyers showed billboard sized autopsy photos of a toddler girl, her bloodied and bruised body, and listened as medical experts detailed how every single bruise and laceration allegedly took place. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t not listen to what was being said. It was my job to report on that day’s testimony, to write down specific details that were said, and then write my story, edit audio, and record my story for that day’s multiple newscasts. I remember after the trial walking into the office of my editor and saying “I’m done! I can’t go through a lifetime of child murder trials.” He sat me down and told me that my response was normal, human, and that I needed to learn self care.

As a student, now is that perfect time for you to also learn the methods that work to calm you, to relieve stress, and to see joy again in the world. Perhaps it’s running, being with friends, maybe even a crafting class or a massage, but now is your opportunity as a college student to discover these self care tactics. Try new activities as you will need to institute them at some point in your early journalism career. For me, I bought a gym membership and began running and cycling, especially after particularly difficult days. I ran (albeit on a treadmill) away my frustrations, my anger, and even my joys. Now as a parent of six, university lecturer and newspaper owner, I’ve started running again and seen my stress levels greatly reduce. Try things now when you have the opportunity to find what you like and don’t like.

 

Be Prepared For Criticism

Don’t like the grade that you received on that last exam or ticked off at the email that your professor sent when they couldn’t meet with you during an opening in your personal schedule? Well just wait until you hit the real, working world! As a student, you need to learn how to accept and move forward with criticism. Sure, the easiest route would be to lose your temper, yell, be sarcastic, or even to take to social media to call out those that you’re angry about, but in a job situation, doing any of the above will have you packing up your desk and on the job hunt before the next edition of your newspaper even publishes.
People want you to report the news, but only when it fits their personal and political agenda. People will get mad at you for reporting what takes place in the world. This isn’t a new concept and is one that shouldn’t affect the way that news is reported, but as a student, you should be well aware of the fact that people will email you, tweet you, and call your desk to tell you how wrong you were in a story just because they didn’t agree with it. The age of social and digital media has made this more common as readers and viewers have more opportunities to seek out like-minded media instead of seeking out unbiased media outlets.

So how will you respond? Learn now while you have the time and the opportunity to accept criticsm without boiling over. Learn what your triggers are and how you can take a step back. As soon as you become aware, it will be easier for you to recognize and de-escalate when you do receive that screaming phone call from a mother who is angry that her kid’s picture didn’t make the sports page.

 

Create Relationships!

The act of cultivating and keeping news sources Involves creating relationships! Social media is an excellent way to do this. Create professional social media accounts now and post to them often. Follow professionals in radio, print, and tv journalism and public relations specialists and interact with them. Utilize your professional accounts to create relationships with those in the field that you wish to join after graduation. I should add that these accounts absolutely, and for all of eternity, must be professional in every way, from the content that is written, the photos that are posted, and even the handle that you choose. Years ago, I had a student who tried to explain to me at a Twitter handle of @ILoveVodka was completely understandable and legitimate for a television reporter to use while building a portfolio. Yet this very same student couldn’t understand why they weren’t getting interviews for jobs they had applied for. Keep it professional and relevant. Show us a rare photo of your goldfish or of your friends and parents but keep the alcohol, sex, curse words, etc. out of the purview of photos and postings.
Order some business cards. There are plenty of online retailers that sell business cards within a college student’s budget. Order them and then put them to use. Pound the pavement. Being a journalist means you actually have to meet people outside of social media and outside of the email world. It means that you’re actually going to have to leave your dorm room, your classroom, and your desk in order to have face-to-face conversations with people.

 

Be Confident In Your Writing

Please raise your right hand while reading this. Repeat after me. “I will never ever lie in order to get or report a story.” You have now officially taken the oath of journalism legitimacy. Now make sure you stick to it for all of eternity.
If you aren’t happy with your writing, don’t turn it in. Take what you have and ask your editor or a seasoned journalist to take a look and give you feedback. As a seasoned journalist, I relish in the opportunity to speak with new journalists and help them to polish their stories and photos. All seasoned and award-winning journalists were once newbies too. Most of us had someone who took us under their wing and helped us. There is nothing wrong with asking for help, in fact, it is looked kindly upon.

Don’t let your sources read your story before you publish it. As a college media adviser, I was floored at the number of students that were told they would only be given an interview if the source was allowed to proofread and approve the story ahead of time. I can only equate this to me – a journalism professor – proofing students’ math homework, and quite honestly, math has never been my forte, but I suppose when assessing their homework I could just wing it. It would be the same for a math teacher to proof a student’s journalism story. If you allow a source to proof a story ahead of publication, you’re undermining yourself and the journalism industry. What’s to say that that very source won’t say “well, I didn’t really like the way I said that so you need to change it” or “no, I don’t want this published at all” even after the interview has been given or for the person proofing it to not be a trained journalists who understands how and why our industry functions as it does. As a journalist, you will have an editor or a superior of some sort. Blame your editor or your publisher. We’ve been through the ringer and are more than happy to take these phone calls and explain why it’s our job to be the proofreader, not your source. We will be your scape goat. It’s our job.

 

This Isn’t The Daily Planet

Listen, you aren’t Clark Kent. I’m not Perry White. Lois Lane only exists in comic books and television shows. Journalism isn’t sexy and it doesn’t happen like Hollywood depicts it. If that’s your expectation, then you need to dive in head first into an internship or join campus media organizations to see how this field works and what being a journalist really means. You’ll spend more time in school board meetings and copying arrest reports at the cop shop than you will in secret undercover investigative stings.

 

Tell The Truth. Never Lie.

Truth is one of your most valued assets as a person and as a journalist. When you allow that to be compromised for the sake of a story or for power, you’re putting yourself and the journalism industry as a whole at risk. As a journalism student, you’re walking into a world where our field is constantly criticized, even by our own president, as being #Fake News.  But you’re also the generation that has the power and the understanding to change that. A single lie to gain a story puts all of that at risk. Tell the truth. Always. See item number five above. Remember, you took the pledge.

 

You Aren’t The Story

There is no “I” in journalism. Well, actually there is. But when you begin to insert yourself into the story – both literally and figuratively – you’ve crossed the line of journalism. No where in a story should it be read “when I interviewed Sally, she said…” No. Stop. Rewrite. We already know that you interviewed Sally because you’re the author of this article. Also – and most importantly – you should never show up to cover a story and suddenly the story is about you and not the event or person that you originally came to cover. You should never show up to cover a city council meeting and then speak from the floor or offer your opinion. You should never go on assignment to cover a protest and then later be arrested for joining that very same protest. You should always be able to see yourself as a fly on the wall at these events, covering what is said and done and report it with an unbiased perspective. When you become the story, step away and find your editor immediately.

 

You Will Have To Talk To People

The news doesn’t happen at your desk, it’s just written there. You will have to leave the cozy newsroom and step out into the world. There’s just no way around that.

I’m a high functioning introvert. Throughout my career, I’ve had to learn how to fake it ‘til you make it when it comes to getting out in the public. It’s outside my comfort zone. I’m a small town newspaper owner. My office is quite literally me and two rescue cats. I prefer it that way after a couple decades of busy and loud newsrooms. When I’m teaching, I relish in the opportunity to speak with my classes and then I return back to my office and my cats. At the end of the day, I go home to six kids, a husband, and a farm filled with rescue animals and livestock. I love people in small doses and relish in the quiet calm of life. It’s just how I’m built. There’s nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with being the complete and total opposite. But for me, I had to learn how to get out there and talk to people, interview them, and not outwardly feel like an idiot. The first time I was sent out on assignment to interview a source, I made myself physically ill. I had to talk to someone that I didn’t know about a topic I didn’t necessarily understand and hope that they didn’t judge me for all of eternity. Listen up. Sources are more forgiving than you think. They’re the expert after all, so let them be the expert. But you’re going to have to actually talk to them in order to make that happen.

 

Can You Live With Yourself?

At the end of the day, can you look at yourself in the mirror and say that you honestly and ethically did your job to the best of your ability? You treated sources and your industry with the utmost of journalistic integrity? The day that you can’t say ‘yes’ is the day that you need to again seek out that seasoned reporter or your editor and fill them in on the fact that you’re struggling. There is no shame in reaching out and letting others know that you need help. It’s the lack of doing so that is cause for concern.

Journalism schools are constantly adapting to new technologies and storytelling techniques, but the 10 items listed above will never change. You will always have to know the law, be an ethical and trustworthy journalist, and to get out of your chair and pound the pavement of your city. Journalism is work, but it can also be one of the most rewarding careers imaginable. Journalism puts you in the front seat to be a change-maker, a recorder of history, and to meet some of the most inspirational and amazing people this world has to offer. I will forever say that journalism is the best, yet most challenging, career field and I’m ecstatic that so many university students are setting themselves on the path to continue the hard work that those of us before you started.

GAME TIME: Test your knowledge of the First Amendment!

It’s 45 words long and it delineates five (or six, depending on your reading of it) freedoms essential to citizens of the United States. The First Amendment seems so simple and yet it has been at the center of dozens of cases over the past 200-plus years that determined what forms of expression are allowed and which ones can be limited.

Think you have a firm grasp of this essential right? Try your hand at this 30-item quiz from the Student Press Law Center. It touches on all the key elements from speech and press to assembly and petition. (Don’t forget both angles on religion, either!)

Click here to take your best shot. Post your score below for bragging rights!

Following up on The Sunflower situation at WSU (or what happens when things get messy)

As information continues to emerge in Wichita regarding the student government’s decision to slash The Sunflower’s budget and the issue of how “open” the meetings should be, it makes more sense to clarify these things in new post than to try to rework the old one.

(If you haven’t read the whole backstory on WSU’s student government, The Sunflower (the student newspaper) and the general weirdness that has led to a lot of student media folks keeping an eye on this situation, you can do so here. Short version: The paper submitted its budget, asking for a return to the $158,000 it received prior to a massive cut a few years back. The SGA met in closed session, despite protestations of the paper and other journalists, and decided to slash the budget it had almost in half. It then defended its right to do all of this without providing much rationale.)

Here are a couple updates/housecleaning items:

  • The budget cut that was proposed reduced the paper’s allocation from $105,000 to $55,000. The numbers in the previous post ($100K and $50K) came from notes I took during a discussion with EIC Chance Swaim. I’m sure it’s my fault, not his. Either way, it’s basically cutting the money for the paper in half. The original amount the paper requested was $158,000, which would have restored funding to an amount the paper had received for years prior to a major cut about three or four years ago, depending on how you measure the time span. I did find in my notes, however, that Swaim explained that the paper has records going back to the early 1990s and the paper had NEVER operated in that time span with as little SGA funding as had been proposed during the closed-door meeting.

 

  • The Student Senate at WSU tabled the discussion of student fees and sent the matter back to committee for further discussion. This happened after Teri Hall, the vice president for student affairs, read a statement from the university’s president, calling for the fee committee to meet in open session to discuss these issues. This means The Sunflower’s budget is still up in the air, but it also means that deliberations will likely take place sometime in the next week at an open meeting of the fee committee. The president, John Bardo, did not issue any statement regarding the previous decisions the committee made, so it’s unclear where he stands on the funding issue.

 

  • Media folks are taking a stand on behalf of The Sunflower. An editorial in the Wichita Eagle supported the paper while listing a number of quality pieces of journalism The Sunflower has produced over the past year or so. In many of those cases, the paper questioned administrative actions that looked a bit “off” or situations that had the appearance of a conflict of interest. An article from the staff of the Student Press Law Center dug into the issue of “censorship via funding cuts” and also outlined a variety of reasons why the paper might be on the hot seat. One item cited in the report was an article the paper published last year about current WSU SGA President Paige Hungate’s parents. The article outlines a criminal investigation “for battery and anti-black, hate “fighting words” following an altercation at a student government banquet.”  Her parents have been accused of using racial slurs against Student Body President Emeritus Joseph Shepard when he stated in his farewell speech that Hungate was not his “first choice” for president. Paige Hungate has stated repeatedly that the funding cut “has nothing to with content or coverage” produced in The Sunflower.

 

  • According to the SPLC article, Hungate stated the reason the SGA is not required to hold open meetings in this situation is based on a 1977 attorney general’s opinion. The opinion was issued in response to a question pertaining to the Student Senate at Kansas State University and its use of secret ballots to determine the election of its officers. The opinion notes:

    [T]he decisions of the Student Senate themselves do not carry the official authority of those officers and employees entrusted by law with the supervision, management and administration of the University. Thus, I cannot but conclude that the Senate does not exercise the administrative authority of the State of Kansas, of the Board of Regents, or of the president of Kansas State University, and thus does not fall within the compass of the Kansas open meeting law.

 

With all of that in mind, this leads to two questions worth asking and one thought worth knowing:

Should the meeting in which the fees were debated have been open? The SPLC quotes legal scholar Frank LoMonte as saying “Kansas law, like most state laws, says that if you have any role in the decision making process for allocating public money, then you are a public body. A student fee committee must open its meetings.” However the attorney general’s opinion does provide a legal basis for the SGA to close the meeting. I went back to my legal expert with the document and asked for a general sense of what this all means:

I wouldn’t put a ton of weight into an AG letter opinion from 40 years ago...It does give them cover for now, with no court opinion altering it – but if they were sued today, a court would probably reconsider the question entirely. Old AG opinion (is) persuasive but not binding.

He also noted that it would be difficult for The Sunflower to recoup any legal fees if the staff sued because the SGA could claim it operated in good faith, given the opinion.

Two things are clear here, though: First, the optics are bad. Nobody ever closes themselves in a room and demands total privacy for something they’re sure is completely fine and that they’re totally proud of. This is why openness is a good idea and why Bardo’s request and the Senate’s subsequent actions make sense. If you’re willing to do this, do it where people can see it.

Second, if this four-page memo that was released a day after the original “Star Wars” opened is the only thing keeping the SGA from being forced to open all its meetings, somebody needs to take a legal whack at this thing. I don’t know exactly what life was like at K-State in 1977, but a lot has changed over the past 40 years. You can no longer smoke on airplanes, cars now come standard with airbags and we’re finally pretty sure that Elvis is dead. Also, here’s a picture of my dad from a 1977 family gathering:

dad1970s.jpg

Can we agree that a lot of things that probably made sense in 1977 now look really, really bad in retrospect? This single AG opinion looks nearly as god-awful as Dad’s homage to polyester. Hope the SPLC will get on it. (The case, not the outfit.)

 

Is this a case of “financial censorship” against The Sunflower? Hall and Hungate have said repeatedly that this isn’t a case of using the budget to slap around the paper because they didn’t like the coverage. However, the paper HAS covered the administration aggressively and has shined a light in some pretty sketchy corners of WSU. It also publicized a situation in which Hungate’s parents were painted in a criminal and racist light. When you couple those facts with the size of the cut and the lengths at which the committee went to keep things private, it’s hard to believe nobody had any ill will toward the paper. This is why an open and fair process is necessary to let people know whatever reasons the committee had for this cut. In addition, given the way in which the media is now watching WSU’s actions, the ideas of openness and transparency are essential.

 

The big take away? WSU knows people are watching and that matters. The Post’s line about “Democracy Dies in Darkness” applies here. If nobody outside of WSU had heard about this issue, it is likely the cuts would have rolled on through without a second thought. However, people ARE watching. They ARE commenting on the paper’s articles. They ARE sharing stories about this mess. The legal and media attention here makes a difference, not just in regard to the administration but also in regard to the staff members of The Sunflower. Knowing that they have some support makes a huge difference. So does the interest of state and national media outlets as well as the SPLC.

My experience being on the wrong end of a student government’s sense of purpose wasn’t all that great, but I remember hearing from a reporter who covered the meeting where the OSA proposed my ouster. SPLC had taken up my cause and pushed against this, leading one of the people who was leading the charge to express concern about “some special interest group out of Virginia” that brought several legal issues to light. According to the reporter, who told me this about a year after this happened, “he looked totally freaked out” when SPLC spoke up.

I know it’s a weekend, but keep looking at The Sunflower and the Eagle and follow these stories. The previous post has contact info for all the people involved so you can make your voice heard if you want.

If it can happen to The Sunflower, it can happen to any of us in the media.

Sunshine laws, The Sunflower and the student government at WSU’s attempt to smack the student newspaper around.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is long and complicated, but worth it. If you disagree but still dislike the idea of student government officials randomly closing meetings, student newspapers getting financially bludgeoned and other similar things, hop to the bottom and contact the people involved to have your voice heard.)

A student asked me this question during our advising appointment this week:

“Why do I have to take media law?” she wanted to know.

“Because you need to know if someone out there is trying to screw you,” I explained.

I wish I could remember who asked that, because the situation involving Wichita State University and its newspaper, The Sunflower, is a perfect example of how government, law and media can become a jumbled mess.

The student government decided to cut the paper’s funding in half, from $105,000 this year to $55,000 for next year. This is on top of the cut the paper took two years before that of $58,000. (In case you’re a journalist and math-averse, that means the paper went from $158,000 to an expectation of $55,000 to start next year. That’s almost a 68 percent decrease over that time span.)

“We are the line-item that got cut the most,” EIC Chance Swaim said in a telephone interview Wednesday night. “In fact, many of the fixed items got an increase in funds.”

The Sunflower receives approximately 50 percent of its operating revenue from the student fees, with the rest coming from advertising. The student government retains the right to set amount of fee money the twice-weekly paper gets, which can create a problematic situation. News organizations serve as the “fourth estate” and will often have to call government officials to account for their actions. It is exactly this kind of coverage that has The Sunflower staff thinking the funding cut is retaliatory.

“We have not had the most favorable coverage of the student body president this year, but it hasn’t been overly aggressive,” Swaim said Wednesday. “We just cover SGA meetings. We had a lot of controversy last spring, but it’s been kind of a private year overall. The administration is where we’ve had a lot of big stories and they’ve given us a lot of push back on that.”

The administration’s take?

Paige Hungate, WSU’s student body president, said the proposed cut “has nothing to do with coverage, nothing to do with content.”

Also…

Teri Hall, vice president for student affairs at WSU, said the proposed budget cut “has nothing to do with punishing people for what they write.”

Or…

Neither of Hall nor Hungate said exactly what IS behind this draconian financial measure. At least, nobody said it in public, which leads to the second most egregious thing they did this week:

The Student Fees Committee closed the door to its meeting room in the Rhatigan Student Center Friday afternoon to deliberate about how to allocate between $9.53 and $9.82 million in student fees — claiming SGA is not a state agency, student fees are not state funds and, therefore, the meeting could be held behind closed doors.

Let’s unpack this quickly: The fee committee is part of the student government of Wichita State University, a public institution. In its own governing documents, the SGA notes the following:

The authority granted to the Association in this section is derived from and shall be subject to the authority of the Board of Regents and the President of the University.
The authority granted to student organizations, through a grant of official recognition, is derived from and shall be subject to the authority of the Association and its representative bodies.
According to the board’s website, the Kansas Board of Regents members are appointed by the governor (a public official) and:
The nine-member Kansas Board of Regents is the governing board of the state’s six universities and the statewide coordinating board for the state’s 32 public higher education institutions (six state universities, one municipal university, nineteen community colleges, and six technical colleges).
So EVERY entity in this chain of command is directly attached to a public institution, including the student government, making the claim that SGA doesn’t have to operate under Kansas Open Meetings Act self-serving and ridiculous.
I did some digging into the KOMA and couldn’t find a single instance in which the rules would allow for this meeting to take place in private. Given that my legal expertise starts and ends with binge-watching “Law & Order” reruns, I contacted a lawyer and a First Amendment expert for a ruling. His take:
Most places make student orgs like this subject to the law… 75-4318 sure makes it look like this is a government body subject to the act. It’s a board/council/authority supported by government funds and expending them, and it doesn’t fall under an exception.
The president of WSU, John Bardo, issued a statement to Hall after all of this, asking that future funding meetings be held in the open “so that the campus and the community know we are committed to the First Amendment and the freedom of speech required in a first-class university.” That’s great, but Bardo also noted that he did not believe KOMA applied or that the SGA violated the law, a statement that appears to be lacking in fact. It also doesn’t remedy what’s happened already.
The rule of law for the disbursal of student fees to organizations states that the money must be doled out in a “viewpoint neutral” way, lest the SGA violate the First Amendment. For example, an SGA can’t fund the Campus Democrats for X dollars and A, B and C activities and then turn around and deny the Campus Republicans X dollars for those same activities, simply because it doesn’t like what the Republicans have to say.
The way in which the public can figure out if this is what’s being done is to have these deliberations and decisions made in an open meeting. This prevents people from doing weaselly things in private and then polishing up their rationale for the public.
Even more, if, for some completely legal and yet unimaginable reason, the SGA COULD close that meeting for deliberations, there are rules that you have to follow to actually do so. The agenda for the meeting must note an intention to go into closed session and that agenda must be posted prior to the meeting in accordance with the state’s open meetings law. Then, the group must formally go into closed session. According to the state’s attorney general:

How does a public body properly go into an executive session?

First the public body must be in an open session, before going into an executive session.

Then, a motion must be made, and seconded.

The motion must contain statement of Justification for closure; Subject(s) to be discussed; and (3) Time and place open meeting will resume.

Example: “Madam Chairman, I move we recess into executive session to discuss disciplinary action against a student in order to protect the privacy of the parties involved.  We will reconvene the open meeting in the conference room at 8:30 p.m.”

Swaim said Wednesday no intention to close was posted, no motion was made and nothing else like this happened in the open, public part of the meeting (if one even existed).

“We tried to go in and Hall said, ‘This is a closed meeting,’ and closed the door on us,” he said. “Then she sent out the students who were on the committee to to see the attorney and they came back and told us ‘The meeting is closed.'”

In its reporting on the matter, The Sunflower found itself similarly rebuffed by vague answers and a lack of due process.

Hall said the students went to speak with the general counsel, “because the bylaws say, it’s a student government decision. That’s why they went over to do it.”

About 20 minutes after leaving the RSC, the students, led by (SGA President Paige) Hungate, returned. Hungate approached reporters and said the meeting would be closed “according to discussions with people.”

Asked to elaborate, she said she and the other students had consulted with “the general counsel’s office” who advised her it was “a student government decision.”

Hungate said she was advised “student fees aren’t public funds, and that SGA is not a state agency.”

The Sunflower basically finds itself fighting a war on multiple fronts: It is trying to figure out how to survive if it loses half of its already diminished funding, it is trying to find out WHY the funding cuts happened and it’s trying to fight for transparency in its government. It’s also trying to put out a twice-weekly paper and a daily online product.

“It doesn’t feel great,” Swaim said Wednesday. “I think, though, it’s a good opportunity for a lot of clarification. If we can get this cleaned up to where we don’t have to fight this every year, to where it’s clear where we stand on campus… I think it’s valuable to go through this. It’s something that will be an ugly fight, but it will benefit everyone and I think before it’s all said and done, someone in the administration is going to need to step up and say, ‘Enough. This is how we’re going to handle this.'”

With that in mind, here are three takeaways/action items associated with all this:

  • Know your rights and fight for them: People, especially people who don’t like you, will always try to weasel their way around the rules to benefit themselves and screw you over. This is why you have to know the law backward and forward so you can force the hand of people like the SGA folk. Most, if not all, state open records and open meetings laws put the presumption of openness first, which means you don’t have to prove why something should be public. The other side has to prove why it should be held private. That means actually citing a real law, not “tradition” or “our bylaws.” If the SGA rewrote its bylaws to dictate that before holding a meeting, the SGA president had to murder a freshman in front of everyone, would that make it legal to do so? Obviously not.
    If you know your rights, you can stop people from randomly violating the law and you can serve as a true watchdog for your audience.
    Don’t let people snow you under.

 

  • The media matters: The reason we all know about this is because media outlets (The Sunflower, The Wichita Eagle etc.) are on the case. The Washington Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and there couldn’t be a better example of this than what we’re seeing here. When any public body can operate without the oversight of the public itself (or its surrogate, namely the media), it can do a lot of things that will benefit it or harm its “enemies.”
    Truth be told, I HATED covering meetings when I was a reporter because they felt pedestrian, incremental and pointless. However, once I got into the editing side and could see more of the big picture, I started to realize how important it was to dig in on a lot of political issues, particularly those involving money.
    We have fewer and fewer media outlets out there and most of them are in a state of atrophy, due to budget cuts and staff reductions. Those that remain at the publications are expected to do more with less. This can’t lead to the erosion of democracy and public accountability.
    Support your local media in any way you can. Buy a subscription. Read it and talk it up. Connect with the staffers to let them know you value what they do.
    “We are the voice of the students on campus,” Swaim said Wednesday. We provide a forum for discussion of campus things. We bring the campus into the public sphere. We let people know what’s going on and we provide a historical document for our campus. We matter.”

 

  • It can happen to anyone, anywhere, so speak up: The story of The Sunflower is a sad one, but it’s not unique. The Student Press Law Center has a running list of stories that outline some of the egregious ways in which student governments or college administrations have yanked funding, threatened reporters, violated the law and other fun things. I know many student newspaper advisers and those of us who have been in the game long enough know that at any point, this could happen at our school.
    I had the benefit of working at Ball State University, which had its journalism department founded by Louis Ingelhart. Louie, as he was affectionately known, was a champion for and an expert on the First Amendment. His passion for student media imbued everyone in that department and flowed throughout the university. When we got a new president in the early 2000s, Louie showed up for the press conference. He was in his 80s at that point, but he found the student reporter and told him, “You go tell (the president) that nobody at this university has ever censored the student newspaper and nobody is ever gonna.”
    I also had the darkness that comes with student government people who feel way too self-important. After telling The Advance-Titan for years that we should “forget about the debt” we were accruing and that OSA (student government) would handle it, one group decided to use the debt as a cudgel to get rid of me. (It still bugs me to no end that if you google me, one of the top returns is the article where they told the city paper I needed to be fired if I didn’t resign.) Fortunately for me, I had a good chancellor and some good support, but there were also people unhappy that the paper and I escaped.
    The point is, that it can happen to anyone, or as Swaim told me,  “It’s really important for all of us (student journalists/media outlets) to be in this together because we are all in this together. An attack on one college newsroom is an attack on all college newsrooms.
    With that in mind, I’d ask that you let the people at WSU know what you think of this situation.JPEG ImageThis is Teri Hall, WSU’s vice president of student affairs, who was the administrator in the meeting where the funding was cut and the person who aided in the closing of the funding meeting. Click here for her email address and let her know how you feel about the issue of open meetings and their importance, or whatever else you have to say about The Sunflower situation.  Or call her at: 316-978-3021 and have your voice heard.

    Paige Hungate
    This is Paige Hungate, WSU’s SGA president, who said, “I’m not trying to have a discussion about this right now. I’m just trying to tell you what our decision has been made by student government association” as a legal rationale for closing a meeting in violation of KOMA. She based this decision  “according to discussions with people.” You can email her office here and express any concerns you have about this situation as well or call her office at 316-978-7060.

    You can also contact anyone at the WSA SGA from this page and express yourself, explain how open meetings work or generally let them know what you think about these actions.

    John Bardo
    This is John Bardo, WSU president, who wrote to Hall that the meetings should be kept open. You can email him here to thank him for a commitment to the First Amendment as well as state law. You can also let him know that you are paying attention to all this now, in case he decides to waffle after nobody’s looking. His office number is 316-978-3001 in case you’d like to chat with him.

    Finally, this is the website for The Sunflower, Chance Swaim’s office email address and the paper’s Twitter handle. Feel free to hit these folks up on any one of these platforms to let them know you support them. When the OSA was kicking my ass all over the place, the one thing that kept me sane was knowing people out there cared. It meant more than anything. I’m sure The Sunflower staff will appreciate it as well.

 

 

Geriatric Dr. Evil v. Mr. Nutterbutter (or defamation involves more than someone being mean to you, Bob.)

During the publication of “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing,” I frequently told the people at SAGE to avoid using color, images or whatever else because, “It’s not worth it to waste money on me.”

The only time I begged them to waste money was for a photo of a giant talking squirrel that was insulting a coal baron.

Comedian John Oliver spent part of a “Last Week Tonight” episode talking about the coal industry. During much of that, he mocked coal magnate Bob Murray, saying he looked like “a geriatric Dr. Evil” and stated that Murray placed his miners in unsafe conditions. He also made fun of Murray for once supposedly saying a talking squirrel once told him he should start owning coal mines. The episode concluded with a costumed staffer called Mr. Nutterbutter the Squirrel presenting Murray with a novelty check for three acorns and 18 cents.

While doing all of this, Oliver even called out Murray’s litigious nature, explaining that he knew Murray was likely to sue him, but he stood behind everything he said. Murray, who has sued numerous media outlets before for unflattering coverage, took the bait and sued Oliver for defamation, false light and more.

The minute this happened, I desperately wanted to include an image of Mr. Nutterbutter in the book, because a) I’m clearly crazy and b) it was the perfect example for the law chapter of how there is a distinct difference between defamation and just saying things people dislike. (I ended up with more of a stock image of Oliver, but hey, I’ll take it.) The court made that distinction clear this week saying that none of this was defamation and it would be dismissing the case against Oliver. Murray has already stated he plans to appeal the court’s decision.

(Perhaps the greatest filing in the history of our legal system came in the form of an amicus brief from the West Virginia ACLU, which includes the amazing heading of “Anyone Can Legally Say, ‘Eat Shit, Bob!'” Feel free to read about it here.)

This is not the first time someone has tried to bully a media professional through the use of the court system. Washington football owner Dan Snyder sued the Washington City Paper after it published “The Cranky Redskins Fans Guide to Dan Snyder” in 2010. Snyder’s legal team first approached the paper’s parent company with what amounted to a “cease and desist” letter. In it, the attorney made such “legally compelling” statements as these:

Can you imagine how you would react if your wife was battling breast cancer and her public role as the National Football League’s national spokesperson on breast cancer awareness was demeaned as a mere public relations ploy to “sell” the “transformation” of her husband’s public image?

Your paper’ s latest diatribe comes on the heels of more individual columns concerning Mr. Snyder than any other news outlet in the city has written about any single businessman in Washington, perhaps ever.

Mr. Snyder has more than sufficient means to protect his reputation and defend himself and his wife against your paper’s concerted attempt at character assassination. We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed, the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.

In case you need a rough translation here, the letter basically says, “You are being really mean, you do it a lot and we have a lot of money we can use to sue you.”

The paper didn’t back off, so Snyder sued. He eventually dropped his $2 million suit, saying he wanted to “focus on the coming football season and the business at hand.” In other words, “We had no hope of winning so we backed off our bluff.

The point of explaining all of this, other than to highlight two pieces of content that irritated extremely rich people who tried to sue the media into silence, is to outline the key legal aspects of what it actually takes to libel or defame someone. Also, it is an opportunity to explain how to deal with people who get angry and scream, “I’m going to sue you!”

NOLO.com lists a series of potential defenses against defamation, two of which got Oliver off the hook: Truth and opinion. A third defense, hyperbole/parody, is also solid defense, as the 1988 Supreme Court case involving Hustler Magazine and the Rev. Jerry Falwell demonstrated.

Whether you are reporting on a serious matter or using a 7-foot-tall talking squirrel to take on a coal mine owner, here are some tips as to how best to deal with people who threaten to sue you:

  • Remain calm: Just like when you are in the field, a panicking reporter is a useless reporter in this situation. You need to realize that the threat of a lawsuit is just that: A threat. It is highly unlikely that the person will sue you at all, let alone sue you successfully. However, you should take every call or email like this seriously and keep your wits about you while you do.
  • Determine the problem: Just because someone doesn’t like something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they have grounds for legal action. The key thing is to determine what has upset this person so you can figure out your best course of action. For example, if a caller says something in the story is wrong, you can determine if there is a factual error or if the person just disagrees with a source in your story. This will help you see if you need to run a correction or if you need to explain how reporters gather information from sources. (In the case of Bob Murray, it was less about factual inaccuracies and more about “OMG MEEEEN!!!” As the courts have repeatedly demonstrated, that’s not enough to win a suit, especially when the plaintiff is a public figure.)
  • Don’t make a promise you can’t keep: When a person is yelling at you on the phone about how you screwed something up, the “fight or flight” instinct can kick in pretty quickly. You might feel like the best way to get out of the situation is “flight,” where you apologize profusely for everything and assure the person everything will be fixed right away. This can lead you to make promises you can’t keep, such as changing a story, pulling something off the Web or something else to make this person back off. In other cases, you might go into “fight” mode, where you push back at the caller with some anger of your own. This can further enrage the person and lead to even worse consequences if your publication eventually has to correct an error or apologize for a story. You probably won’t be the final arbiter of how your publication will deal with these situations, so don’t promise action when it’s not yours to promise. The only thing you should promise is that you will do your best to look into this and inform your superiors.
  • Get contact information: You will almost certainly need to do a bit of digging before you can solve any problem. Even if the problem isn’t yours to solve, you want to make sure you have the contact information from the person who raised the issue. With email, this is easy enough, as you can forward the complaint to the reporter involved in the story (if it’s not you) or to your editor and the person’s email address is right there. In the case of a phone call, make sure you get the person’s name and number so you or someone else at your office can get back to them as needed.
  • Provide resolution: Either you or your editor should provide the person with some form of resolution to the issue. During this process, you need to explain what you found, what you decided to do and how you will proceed. If the person is still upset, you should have options for him or her to pursue the issue further. At that point, it might even be a lawsuit, but you have done your best to resolve the issue.

“Just grab a stock image for free” and several other dumb things photojournalists have heard over the years.

The issue of how photography should be used in journalism came to a head last week after a column on the Poynter website suggested that writers should find free, generic images to pair with their content. The column drew a sharp rebuke from photojournalists who felt their work was devalued or considered simply “art” to decorate “real information.” The National Press Photographers Association wrote an open letter, expressing both dismay in Poynter’s approach to photographs as well as outlining the true value of quality photojournalism.

(Quick disclosure: I’ve said before that our field has about two or three degrees of separation to it and it is true for me here. Kristen Hare, who co-wrote the Poynter column, is a former newsroom student of mine from my time at Mizzou. Danny Gawlowski, who signed on as one of the authors of the NPPA letter, is a former newsroom student of mine from Ball State. I’m not even sure if they know I’m alive anymore, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t look like I was hiding something.)

For this post, I asked photo folks I know to tell me the most annoying, problematic or ridiculous things people have told them about photography or the value of their work.

Here we go:

It’s gotta be the equipment!

(“Money it’s gotta be the shoes!” Um… no. He’s just really gifted and he practiced a lot.)

Photographers often carry an abundance of high-end equipment to make sure they can get the best possible shot in each set of circumstances. However, the equipment alone doesn’t create the photos, as one former student who now shoots for a Major League Baseball team pointed out:

One thing that really bugs me is when people say, “You take really nice photos! You must have really good camera equipment.” Equipment only gets you so far. You need to know how to use the equipment and look for the angles that will make the photos the most interesting.

I’ve heard this issue discussed in a variety of circumstances and ways. One former colleague pulled out his phone during a meeting and told a skilled former news photographer that, “I have an iPhone, so I’m essentially a photographer now.” A photojournalism professor and former news photographer noted something similar about the “anyone can do what you do” vibe:

When people say something like, My brother/sister/cousin, etc. is a photographer. I’d ask who they work for if they own a photo business, and I’d usually find out it was a hobby. Putting together Lego buildings with my kids never made me an architect or a construction worker.

Equipment does matter to some degree, as we’ve pointed out before on this blog, but the photographer’s eye and skill matter a lot more. The ability to compose an image, capture a mood, cope with lighting issues and a ton of other things make the difference between great photography and whatever my 12-year-old is doing with her Instagram account.

You mean you want me to pay you?

It’s weird what we’re willing to pay for and what we’re not. People will happily pay the neighborhood kid to cut the grass or shovel the snow. We pay for lollipop hammers in “Candy Crush” or coins to play app-based slot machines. People will even pay for “moisture” that may or may not exist any more.

CanoSnow

(Yes, this is a real thing and yes, I own one of these. Don’t judge.)

One thing apparently people don’t pay for is photographs, as one long-time shooter noted:

One of my peeves is when people ask to do it for free. I didn’t spend money on gear just so I can give images out for free. Not to mention the time spent at the event but also post-production/editing. Time is money.

Speaking of time, a photographer who has worked internationally noted that time is not only money, but it’s also often miscalculated by people who hire shooters:

“It’ll only take like 30 minutes…” To clarify, it ignores the time spent cleaning the gear, editing the photos, traveling, gear insurance costs, software costs, archive costs etc. Photographers used to be able to roll this into film processing fees, but now without those everyone thinks the day ends when the event is over.

Skilled work takes time in all fields. I’m sure Pope Julius II could have gotten the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling painted in a lot less than four years if he had fired Michelangelo and called on a local kid with a roller and a couple cans of eggshell white.

Skilled work also costs money to buy the gear, go to the event, shoot the event, edit the photos and provide a finished product. Again, you’re not paying for just the image any more than you are paying for the chemicals in the prescription medication you are taking. There’s a whole lot of R & D that goes into those pills so that the stuff comes out the right way. You’re paying for more than the materials. You’re paying for the skills.

Just grab some clip art

This argument was at the core of the Poynter article: Go find free stuff online and use it as you see fit. A former student media adviser who has family in the photojournalism business noted how this is a really dumb idea:

A volunteer I work with (and respect): Can you get some photos off the internet and make a video for these kids?

Umm. I’m not going to “get” anything off the internet without permission. I explained, taught a copyright/ownership lesson, only to hear this same request on another day. Why is it that many people don’t think words and images have value — that they just are out there for the taking?

A current journalism professor also mentioned a similar concern:

“Just grab some clip art” usually leads into my real world case study of the blogger who was sued and lost thousands for “just grabbing” a Google pic of a green pepper from Google Images.

(We discussed this particular issue before with the “ECOM-dude” who thought photographers had “trapped” him into using content and then suing him.)

Three key thoughts here for anyone thinking about “grabbing” images:

  1. Just because it’s out there, it doesn’t mean its yours for the taking. Even the line about “There were a whole ton of images and I just took one,” makes no sense. Every day, I can see a parking lot full of cars from my office. I can’t just go down there and take someone else’s car because I like it and it was there for the “grabbing.” People own things, whether those are cars or images.
  2. Trying to limit your liability by “crediting” the source doesn’t work. (And let’s get this out of the way: Google doesn’t own anything, so writing “Photo courtesy of Google” is doubly insulting to photographers.) If you don’t get permission before you use it, this isn’t a “courtesy” use. Go back to the car analogy: If I steal your car and drive it around campus, it doesn’t it make the situation any better if I tell people, “Driving around courtesy of Jimmy!”
  3. The argument that it “wasn’t an important/valuable/rare image” so it shouldn’t be such a big deal is really stupid. The whole reason that particular image was stolen was because someone looked at it and found it appealing. Sure, it might “just” be a photo of a green pepper or a sunset, but it was the quality of that particular shot of a green pepper or a sunset that drew the person’s attention. Thus, the effort and the eye of photographer played a role in the inherent value of the image. Something to think about…

 

Here’s the biggest point: Stock images fail you in journalism

Even if you’re not swayed by the argument that photographers are part of the journalism ecosystem and that when you steal stuff or use generic images you are harming a fellow journalist, think about the point of photos in journalism: They tell stories.

There’s a reason why I used the term “photojournalist” quite a bit here and why good quality publications hire photojournalists to work for them. Just like ALL forms of journalism, the images that these people create are meant to engage readers and provide value to your audience members. The images operate in a symbiotic fashion with text or tell stories on their own. To do this, they have to be composed with the underlying story in mind by a journalist who understands how to tap into that story.

In closing, consider these thoughts from a couple of the photojournalists noted above as food for thought the next time you are tempted to “just grab” an image:

In my opinion, stock is very bland. Photojournalists capture raw emotion and the scene. Stock images can be ok for some things but real photos tell more of the story.

Photos are what draw people into a moment that already happened. They help draw the reader into a story. Photo journalists are valuable, because we know how to search these moments out to tell the story visually. You will not get the emotions or angles of moments that photo journalists would get from stock photos.

Good photojournalists know how to grab something more important than photos. They know how to grab eyeballs. In a time in which every journalistic operation is fighting for attention, it pays to take advantage of their expertise as part of a storytelling process.

 

3 things media students can learn from Harley Barber’s racist tirades

My Wednesday lecture to my media-writing class about social media and my Thursday look at the media law conveniently dovetailed with a horrific story out of the University of Alabama. A 19-year-old student named Harley Barber posted two videos on Instagram in which she repeatedly used vile, racist language.

(I’m linking to the Washington Post and the AL.com stories, but not the videos themselves, as they are definitely NSFW. If you decide to watch them, you might want to consider headphones and a crash helmet.)

Barber has been kicked out of her sorority (which she states on one of the videos is the most important thing in her life) and the university itself. Alpha Phi sorority and the university’s president issued statement condemning Barber’s racist tirades. Barber’s estranged mother spoke out against her daughter in the media and Barber herself has moved back to New Jersey and gone publicly quiet about the situation.

What happens next is unclear, but if the case of Justine Sacco, the PR practitioner who once tweeted about going to Africa and “hope I don’t get AIDS” is any indication, Barber may never recover.

Even if common sense and normal human decency has you thinking nothing Barber did could ever impact you, consider these three takeaways from this situation that will help you as a journalist:

  1. When you are on social media, you are playing with live ammo: I asked the students in my class how many people had a Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat account. All of them had at least one, and many had all three and more. I then said, “Understand this: You are all publishers and that comes with some huge risks.” I think it was the first time that many of them understood that social media provided them with a public presence that could go viral in a ridiculously fast time period. I could see at least a few of them mentally going back through their social media usage, wondering if they’d ever said something they might regret or posted an image the might embarrass them.
    Social media makes it extremely easy for people to post, share and comment on things in a way that traditional media outlets like TV stations and newspapers never could. That said, there also isn’t as much vetting that goes into tweets, posts and comments as there is in those other outlets. When you reach for your phone or a computer to hit social media, you’re locked and loaded and the safety is off. Don’t let a long line at the store, a bad break up or some other irritant drive you to rant on social media. The anger is momentary but the stupid could follow you forever.
  2. Free speech doesn’t mean consequence-free speech: The question of “Doesn’t the First Amendment allow her to say whatever she wants, no matter how vile?” came up in various conversations I had this week. The answer is yes, but that’s not the point.
    People confuse the idea of free speech as it’s explained in the First Amendment with consequence-free speech, as in you can do whatever you want and nothing bad will ever happen to you. The amendment notes that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech…” which courts have now taken to mean all forms of government shall not prevent people from opening their mouths and saying what they feel. (Obviously, that’s a little simplistic, as fighting words, time-place-manner restrictions as well as other court rulings have limited this.) That said, the First Amendment doesn’t mean you won’t suffer for your statements.
    Private organizations, such as the sorority, are allowed to impose rules and restrictions on what people say or what happens when they say something awful. Some educational institutions, both public and private, have “codes of conduct” that will place restrictions on some forms of speech or outline consequences for particularly vile speech.
    Even if those institutions didn’t or couldn’t levy consequences against someone like Barber for her language, there is always the court of public opinion ready to drop a hammer on people when they behave in a way seen as reprehensible. Before she went off the grid, Barber said she was receiving negative phone calls and other messages from people displeased in her choice of words, to put it mildly. As several members of the hivemind debated if the school could legally kick her out, I noted that the school might be doing Barber a favor in expelling her. It’s hard to imagine being Public Enemy Number One on a campus that size and having to go back to class like nothing happened.
    In short, every action has consequences and something like this can have incalculable ones.
  3. You are never as safe as you think you are: One of the things that came up in the Harley Barber saga was the fact she posted these videos on her “finsta,” or fake Instagram account. According to various sources, (read: a newspaper article and students I know who know way more about this stuff than I do) these “finsta” accounts are where people feel free to be who they are without ramifications. It’s like the Instagram account associated with you is who you are when you meet your date’s parents and the “finsta” is the party freak you become later that night.
    “Security features” of this kind can really lull people into a false sense of security and an erroneous belief that they have some level of privacy on this wonderful “information superhighway.” No matter how you set your Facebook privacy settings or how you lock down your Twitter account or how many “finsta” personas you have, someone can find you. Somebody out there knows you or will share it with someone who might not think your “Kanye Frat Party” isn’t that funny or that your 79-year-old house mother chanting the N-word in a video isn’t OK. You are never as safe as you think you are when it comes to these things.

Each time you use social media, you put yourself at legal, ethical and social risk, so make sure you are putting the requisite amount of thought into it. If you don’t, you never know what might happen.