Emiliana Sandoval, managing editor for standards at the education nonprofit Chalkbeat, tells a couple of stories to explain why Chalkbeat’s code of ethics calls on reporters to “use special sensitivity” when they write about students.
In one instance, Sandoval said, Chalkbeat ran a feature about an American community rallying around a family of seven siblings who had arrived in the U.S. from an African country without their parents. The oldest of the siblings was 21 and agreed that he and his brothers and sisters could be quoted by name in Chalkbeat’s story and depicted in a family photo that accompanied the piece. But about six years later, Sandoval said, one of the younger sisters contacted Chalkbeat to ask that her name be removed from the piece. She told Chalkbeat that she’d been too young, at the time, to understand all of the implications of her family’s public exposure. Chalkbeat, Sandoval said, agreed to remove a quote from the sister.
In the second incident, a parent whose child had been featured in a Chalkbeat story about services for disabled students reached out with an unusual request years after the piece originally appeared. The parent, who had agreed to be quoted by name in the story, had no problems with the article, Sandoval said. But the child, now old enough to find the story in a Google search, was worried about being identified as disabled whenever anyone searched for their name and found the article. Chalkbeat, Sandoval said, ended up changing the child’s first name in the piece.
What those anecdotes show, Sandoval said, is that the standard ethical practice of obtaining consent from a parent or guardian before identifying a child, may not suffice when you’re writing about vulnerable kids. (Or teachers, for that matter, but that’s a different story.)
“We’ve been more protective in the last few years,” Sandoval said. “We are really intentional about not doing any harm, especially with students.”
Parents and guardians, she said, may not have the media savvy to realize that in the Internet era, stories are long-lived and widely circulated, so exposure from on-the-record quotes and descriptions can linger for years. Chalkbeat now encourages its journalists to be sure that parents and kids understand these potential consequences before agreeing to be identified by name in its articles.
That’s particularly important, Sandoval said, when Chalkbeat is covering migrant or disabled students. In a profile last year about newly-arrived migrants from Latin American countries, Chalkbeat decided from the outset that it would not include identifying details about the students, Sandoval said, to avoid putting their families at risk.
This heightened sensitivity doesn’t mean that Chalkbeat masks the identity of every vulnerable student. A few years ago, Chalkbeat decided to use the real name of a student who sued to block Tennessee’s law restricting participation of transgender athletes in middle and high school. The 14-year-old student had sued in his own name, Sandoval said, and both he and his parents assured Chalkbeat that they fully understood and accepted the potential fallout from public identification.
“The point is, we are making the best decision we can in consultation with the parents and student,” Sandoval said.