The developments at Penn State are in so many ways national news: the sex abuse allegations, the cover-up, Joe Paterno’s unceremonious dismissal, the riots, the tears – the list of stories goes on and on.
Tag: newsgathering
Covering protests and demonstrations: Staying safe if your campus is next to be “occupied”
As the Occupy Wall Street movement gathers steam in both New York City and at satellite locations across the country and internationally, some of those covering the event for commercial media have been called out for watching from afar, failing (or refusing) to take the time to talk with the protesters and hear their message.
ACLU claims Calif. district allowed “prolonged, coercive interrogations” of student journalists
The Davis Joint Unified School District in California is facing criticism after two high school journalists were pulled out of class and questioned by police.Alana de Hinojosa, editor in chief of The HUB newspaper at Davis High School, wrote an article last spring exploring the artistic value and criminal implications of graffiti.
University of Kentucky Athletics takes heat for pulling student reporter’s access
The University of Kentucky is facing backlash after the UK athletics department punished the Kernel student newspaper by revoking its invitation to a special media event.After freshman forward Anthony Davis circulated a Twitter post welcoming walk-ons Brian Long and Sam Malone to the team Sunday night, Kernel managing editor Aaron Smith wanted to confirm the news from the players.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: College activity fees add hundreds to tuition bills; state laws may offer a peek under the hood
Student activity fees can be like those last-minute mystery charges tacked onto the bottom line when you're buying a new car.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Reviewing citizen complaints should be a police-beat staple
At least since "don't tase me, Bro" entered the national vocabulary as a T-shirt slogan and late-night punchline, the public has been fascinated by how university police use force in dealing with unruly but unthreatening members of the campus community.When working the campus police beat, journalists should make an at-least-annual public-records check for citizen complaints alleging unprofessional conduct by police, to see how many complaints are occurring and how they are being resolved.Public access to police complaint records was spotlighted by a recent state Supreme Court decision, allowing a lower court's ruling to stand, that the New Mexico sunshine law requires disclosure of citizen complaint files.In August 2010, the state Court of Appeals decided that the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act does cover records of complaints filed against officers of the state Department of Public Safety.
Want to catch a movie? You bring the camera, they’ll bring the handcuffs.
People fully flexing the First Amendment by producing a major Hollywood flick can’t be photographed, according to the City of Fort Lauderdale.Fort Lauderdale police officers arrested a journalist for photographing the downtown building in which a film was being produced.Journalists can’t use the First Amendment to cover a form of free expression?
“Sentenced” to write essay, videographer challenges fairness of UC-Berkeley disciplinary board
Considering that Josh Wolf had already spent seven months of his young journalistic career in jail, the "sentence" he received for his latest clash with the law might have seemed about as harsh as a Bart Simpson chalkboard apology.Still, Wolf continues contesting the penalty imposed by the University of California-Berkeley for his failure to leave a campus building while videotaping an anti-tuition-hike demonstration in November 2009: A five-page paper analyzing the rights of student journalists on campus and recommending disciplinary policies to avoid First Amendment clashes like the one that landed him in hot water."It was never about my punishment or my case at all," Wolf said Tuesday, discussing his decision to appeal.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Try this at home – some creative uses of FOI laws that you can swipe
On Saturday, I had the pleasure of teaching a public-records workshop to a roomful of bright, eager reporters at the Society of Professional Journalists' Region 11 convention.
Maryland journalists’ fight for campus sexual assault records yields more (and less) than expected
Twenty years ago, Congress decided that colleges could no longer hide behind federal privacy law to withhold information when they determined that a sex offense had been committed on campus.Knowing that serious crimes often are processed through secretive disciplinary channels outside of public view, Congress amended the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to say that the outcome of a disciplinary hearing is not confidential if the student is found culpable for conduct amounting to a crime of violence or a sex crime.Colleges have been slow to get this message, however, and Exhibit A is the University of Maryland -- which for the better part of the last three years fought student journalists' attempts to report on the way rape allegations are investigated and punished.It took a ruling from the state attorney general -- and even then, compliance took many months and a battle over jacked-up fees -- before the university agreed to comply with the Maryland Public Information Act and release the documents sought by student reporters from Capital News Service.Now it's apparent why Maryland was so resistant to disclosure: Because the answer to the question "who has been punished for committing a sexual assault on campus" is "almost no one."If the university's public-records production is complete, then only four students -- one of them a former Maryland Terrapins quarterback who transferred away in 2006 -- were punished by the school's Office of Student Conduct for sex offenses over the last 10 years, according to CNS. That is a remarkably low number for a school that enrolls more than 37,000 students annually.Maryland's Clery Act report, a federally mandated snapshot of campus crimes, shows 105 forcible sexual assaults reported from 2006 through 2008 alone.