Ethics and Hazelwood: What Student Journalists Should and Can Write

Lance T. Dillahunt
East Hampton High School
East Hampton, New York

Themes

• Ethics
• Ethical Codes
• Hazelwood and Tinker

Questions

• Topic
  • What are ethics?
  • In life, what are some of the things you shouldn’t do?
  • Are ethics important? For journalists?
  • What is the Tinker case? What was argued? Who won?
  • What is the Hazelwood case? What was argued? Who won?
  • What are three situations where a principal can prevent a story from being published?
• Critical
  • What happens to a journalist if he or she doesn’t follow the code of ethics?
  • Why is it important to have a Code of Ethics?
  • Why was the Tinker case important?
  • Why was Hazelwood Important?

Activities

Activity 1

• Have students look at the SPJ code of ethics and compare them with their school’s code of ethics.
• What is similar and what is different? Students should write down two similarities between the two.
• After, the students will look at the code of ethics from other countries and organizations.
  • Where are the similarities?
  • Which ethics are the most important?
  • The least important?
• Discuss. Students will collectively decide which ethics they would like to adapt to their own code of ethics.

Activity 2

• Each group will get two or three situations where a journalist is or isn’t behaving in an ethical way.
• The students are to identify which ethics he or she is breaking and then rate it from 0-10 on the ethical meter. (Of course, each ethic broken is a 10.)

Activity 3

• After students have read about Hazelwood and Tinker, I will distribute the “Is it Hazelwood/Tinker?” chart from the SPLC book.
• After going over the chart with the students, we will collectively go over situations and decide if it is covered under Tinker or Hazelwood.

Assessment

• Students will choose five items in their code of ethics and explain why each one should be there.
• Given another three situations, the students must decide whether it would be covered under Hazelwood or Tinker.

Resources

• “Journalism Today” by Donald Ferguson and Jim Patten
• “Law of the Student Press” Student Press Law Center