Tags: print
July 22, 2002
The Washington Post misrepresents Silver Chips article
On July 22, a Washington Post article about a homeless student's fight to attend public high schools misrepresented a Silver Chips story about students illegally enrolling at Blair.
In its article, the Post cited an article by "the Montgomery Blair High School newspaper" and implied that Silver Chips' story mentioned a homeless student's name, focused on his fight to get into Blair, and caused him embarrassment and distress. The selections used by the Post suggested that Silver Chips was biased against the student.
Silver Chips and Silver Chips Online have a strict policy of not printing the names of upstanding students who could suffer serious embarrassment or punishment if named. Exceptions to this rule may happen in the rare case where a student is arrested and charged as an adult, as in the story Students stabbed during lunch.
The Post also cited an incorrect headline in its story; the headline used, "Wannabe Blazers get crafty," was an inside-page headline. The story was actually headlined Beating down the door.
In its article, the Post cited an article by "the Montgomery Blair High School newspaper" and implied that Silver Chips' story mentioned a homeless student's name, focused on his fight to get into Blair, and caused him embarrassment and distress. The selections used by the Post suggested that Silver Chips was biased against the student.
Silver Chips and Silver Chips Online have a strict policy of not printing the names of upstanding students who could suffer serious embarrassment or punishment if named. Exceptions to this rule may happen in the rare case where a student is arrested and charged as an adult, as in the story Students stabbed during lunch.
The Post also cited an incorrect headline in its story; the headline used, "Wannabe Blazers get crafty," was an inside-page headline. The story was actually headlined Beating down the door.
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I think the Post story was fair and well-balanced in terms of its reference to Silver Chips coverage of Brandon Haynes case. As for yours, maybe you could do a follow up story that actually talks to some homeless kids about their experiences in school, as opposed to people just talking about them.
"Brandon's odyssey began in April 2001, when his family was suddenly evicted from the three-bedroom house in Silver Spring that had belonged to his grandmother and where he had lived all his life. His grandmother, a longtime teacher on an Army base in Germany, had lost the house through complicated legal proceedings that mystified his mother and took the family by surprise."
Mabye it's just me but it sounds like they either weren't able to pay the rent or the were really annoying the neighbors, thoses are the most comman causes for eviction. However, it sounds like some evil land-loard who desperatlly want to ruin thier lives got a team of lawers together to find some obscure loophole in the housing laws and then force this poor unsuspecting familly out of thier home and on to the streets. I doubt that anything like that happend but, that is the image you could get from reading that paragraph, espically if you are very emotial. (granted I exagerated some here to make my point.)
The rest of the story keeps a similar tone, this poor inocent child despertly trying to fight aginst a bunch of evil burcrats to get a decent education. It seams to me that many stories in the post are like that, very emotionally with some person trying desperatlly to overcome these evil and powerfull people who will stop at nothing to crush them.
That said, I am fed up with Silver Chips writing stories about itself. A journalistically honorable newspaper never directly toots its own horn. Saying on your homepage, "most popular student newspaper in the country --Yahoo.com" and discussing winning the Marylander award for best newspaper in state umpteen times on your front page just simply seems wrong. We know that SC is a great paper, and that online staff works their butts off, But when you write stories about how SC was wronged in some way or that SC is the best paper on earth, they scream conflict of interest. A major rule for journalists is to never write a story involving themselves/family/friends. How much different is it for a paper to write a story about itself?
Surprisingly, SC's staff seems to realize its own folly. In the Seniors' funny paper this past year, Silver Dilver, they made fun of SC's continual self praising. So why continue this conflict of interest???
As for the Post story, the information it quoted about the Chips story was correct. It just wasn't complete. The aim of our story was not to shame the student, just to talk about a real problem that exists. That said, I think Mary Otto has a great suggestion for a future story. It would be good to put a human face on homeless students and students forced to leave because of reregistration.
As to Zack's charges that Chips has a conflict of interest because we print stories about ourselves: that's ridiculous. How, exactly, does it compromise our integrity to report some unbiased judges' opinion of us? If you can name one professional newspaper that doesn't write stories about itself winning major awards I'd be shocked. We do it because it reminds readers that what their reading is something special, not your average high school paper. You might already know that (because you know people on the staff), but most people don't.
I just realized I kept referring to myself like I'm still on Chips. Sadly, that is no longer the case :)
What I am saying is that it is OK for a school to toot its horn about its amazing paper, but an honest, professional newspaper does not brag about itself or its members. If its under a SC heading, it shouldn't involve SC.
Last time I looked at...any professional paper, I do not remember seeing any bragging (or anything even remotely involving the paper itself or its writers) on the front page. The farthest the post goes in its entire A section is to write "An Independent Newspaper" over its Editorial section.
After W+B broke Watergate, did the post write a self-congratulatory story about how they had scooped everybody or how W+B were amazing? It did not.
Bottom line: As a professional-quality student newspaper, especially one (like most others) that is the only one in the school, Silver Chips has done nothing out-of-line in reporting its own news. I'm not sure I could say the same for your perplexingly antagonistic claims to the contrary. And "honesty" is really not at question.
Also, The Washington Post ran a story about the New York Times' amazing number of Pulitzers this year and plugged themselves and the LA Times in the same article.
But tell me that headlining a story "The Washington Post misrepresents Silver Chips article" doesn't sound a little wrong...and weak. And whiny. That was my gut reaction when I saw it. Why are they writing a story about this--it isn't newsworthy. I didn't mean to question you as people, only to ask, "why whine about what the big bad post did?"