Law, Ethics, and News Literacy
Photo by River Boyle
As a leader, taking accountability is something that's very important to me. The Trail does a very good job with this by actively using the Journalist Code of Ethics in the classroom and following our policy manual. In my role, I’ve run into a couple situations where I didn’t know how to act, but I always contact my adviser and my editors, then go from there.
Crafted Statement
As a student-run publication, sometimes we make mistakes. But it's important that whatever it was that the mistake is fixed and the publication addresses the situation and takes accountability for it. One incident happened in fall of 2025, where the Trail made a post of a protest going on in out community against Vice President, JD Vance who had visited our town that day. In the post, was a protestor who was making an inappropriate hand gesture. This was something that was very small in the photo and simply missed by our editorial board. I immediately crafted a statement to post on our platforms regarding the incident. Even when our publication makes a mistake, The Trail makes it a priority to take accountability for it and make sure we fact check, because we value the importance of being correct, even if we aren't the first to break the news. This was a very important lesson for the staff and helped me better understand the actions I would like to take as an Editor.
Using Code of Ethics
The Trail regularly uses the Journalist Code of Ethics for every story, social media post or multimedia project we publish. In addition to using these ethics standards, me and I regularly teach students the best strategies to find fair use photos, correct ways to source information and reminders about photo consent. To ensure that our stories are both seen as ethical and legal, If we ever run into a situation we don't have the solution to, the Student Press Law Center is who we contact. If one of the codes doesn’t align with our pitch we usually do not continue to publish the story.
