Law & Ethics
Ethics and Legal Team
In 2022, I co-founded the Scot Scoop Ethics and Legal Team with two of my peers, Oliver Fichte and Gabi Shore. We have since recruited another member, Erik Cheng. Our team works to promote ethical behavior and practices in our staff, as well as answer any questions they may have about the legal side of journalism.
We created an Ethics and Legal Guide as a base for our work. If students have questions, they can consult this guide. It contains links to resources we find useful, as well as ones we created.
After creating the guide, we started making presentations to educate our peers on ethical journalism. We have also used the Student Press Law Center's presentations and quizzes.
In anticipation of the next school year, we have begun setting up a plan to keep our team as an official entity in the program.
Ethics and Legal Guide
Our publications have always been considered to be shining examples of proper journalistic practice in our local community. To promote the continuation of this tradition in our staff, we decided to create the Ethics and Legal Guide. It contains vital information to make sure that our staff's journalism matches the ethical expectations outlined in our staff handbook.
What is in the guide?
The guide contains links to helpful legal resources, our team's presentations, important program documents, and FAQs.
Who can use the guide?
The guide is available to any student involved with Carlmont Media.
Presentations
As of May of 2023, we have presented five times. For a few of these presentations, we have included a Kahoot! to test our staff on what they retained from the presentations in a fun and engaging way.
Scot Scoop Handbook
Our first presentation was an overview of the Scot Scoop Handbook, which lays out most of the guidelines for the entire journalism program. This first foray included collaboration with our adviser and Scot Scoop Editor-in-Chief, who gave us feedback about what information we should include. Beyond this feedback, our team created the presentation and Kahoot! on our own. The handbook was assigned as reading homework between the two activities.
SPLC presentations
Our second and third presentations were from the Student Press Law Center, covering student press freedom and privacy law. We were notified of these presentations at the 2022 National High School Journalism Convention, and decided they were a great resource and starting point for our work. As we develop our curriculum and work on creating presentations, we will be using a few of these presentations to promote ethical practices.
Copyright Law
Our fourth presentation was about copyright law, titled Copyright 101, compiling our knowledge with information from the SPLC and other research. This presentation was accompanied by a document covering the basics of copyright and fair use laws.
Reporters' Privilege
This presentation was our final presentation before the end of the year. It combined information from the SPLC and RCFP (Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press) about reporters' privilege, responding to subpoenas, and shield laws.
Documentation
In addition to the Ethics and Legal Guide, we created a copyright document and a website that acts as an "ethics hub."
Copyright Document
The Copyright Document was created to supplement the Copyright 101 presentation. It covers the basics of copyright and fair use laws. It acts as a legal guide to what our staff needs to know about copyright and how it applies to our program.
What is in the document?
The guide contains explanations of the basics of copyright, an explanation of fair use laws, and links to helpful legal resources.
Who can use the document?
The guide is available to any student involved with Carlmont Media.
Ethics Hub
The Ethics Hub is a website created by one of our founders, Oliver Fichte. It includes links to all of our presentations and documentation, as well as our member application and our contact information.
Who can use the site?
The site is available to any student involved with Carlmont Media. Students outside of the program can also view the site, at this link.
Comprehension
As a way to check for comprehension, we have created a final test based on the content of our presentations. This test includes information vital to the understanding of press law basics, as well as program-specific questions.
The final test was in the form of a Kahoot!, and was for assignment credit since we are still in the process of establishing ourselves as a permanent team.
Future Plans
Throughout the year, we created lessons, created documentation for the program, and provided advice to our staff. We planned to establish the Ethics and Legal Team as a permanent entity, and have done so. In the future, the team plans to recruit more members and continue educating our staff, so that the program will benefit from it even after we graduate.
In 2021, our staff discovered that several repost sites were taking some of our pieces and posting them without proper permission. I worked with our legal team to file two DMCA takedown notices in regard to my work.
