Codes of Ethics for advisers as established by the Journalism Education Association:

• Model standards of professional journalistic conduct to  students, administrators and others.

• Empower students to make decisions of style, structure  and content by creating a learning atmosphere where students will actively practice critical thinking and decision making.

• Encourage students to seek out points of view and to explore a variety of information sources in their decision making.

• Support and defend a free, robust and active forum for student expression without prior review or restraint.

• Emphasize the importance of accuracy, balance and clarity in all aspects of news gathering and reporting.

• Show trust in students as they carry out their responsibilities by encouraging and supporting them in a caring learning environment.

• Remain informed on press rights and responsibilities.

• Advise, not act as censors or decision makers.

• Display professional and personal integrity in situations which might be construed as potential conflicts of interest.

• Support free expression for others in local and larger communities.

• Model effective communications skills by continuously updating knowledge of media education.

Student journalists make ethical decisions daily, whether in advertising, design, information gathering or reporting. It is essential and ongoing.

A number of excellent resources exist for helping students, their advisers and those in their communities make those decisions. Administrators help students and their advisers with this task through positive reinforcement of journalism activities. One point is important to note: Ethics are only guidelines. They do not represent standards for punishment or discipline.

Administrators should follow two basic practices with student media:

“Student media are designated public forums, and free from censorship and advance approval of content. Because content and funding are unrelated, and because the role of adviser does not include advance review of content, student media are free to develop editorial policies and news coverage with the understanding that students and student organizations speak only for themselves. Administrators, faculty, staff or other agents shall not consider the student media’s content when making decisions regarding the media’s funding or faculty adviser.”

                                   — Society of Professional Journalists’ Campus Media Statement


Laws indicate what journalists must do while ethics indicate what they should do.

Rooted in ethics, responsible and free journalism adheres to applicable laws and operates using professional standards to enhance student media’s reach and impact.

Journalism, truly the cornerstone of democracy, starts at the scholastic media level, where students learn the legal and ethical implications of free media that make the United States unique among nations.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects free speech and press freedom of all Americans, including students in school. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear these rights are not unlimited, it has also affirmed neither “students [nor] teachers shed their Constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

In fact, free expression has long been regarded as the foundation of U.S. democracy. Thomas Jefferson perhaps said it best: “Our liberty depends on freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

The first direct experience most Americans have with press freedom, and the censorship that limits it, begins when they are in school working on student media. That’s why journalism educators, judges and First Amendment advocates have urged schools to support and foster student free expression because it is key to persuading young people “that our Constitution is a living reality, not [just] parchment preserved under glass.”

Selecting the best candidate to advise a student media program involves a range of considerations. Finding journalism teachers with the necessary background and training helps to ensure students will have the best knowledge and skills to produce quality products. Those products are created for an outside audience rather than just teacher assessment within the classroom.

Teachers with the knowledge who know how to create excellent publications help students be responsible staff members — ones operating with accuracy, truth and integrity