• Vision Statement
• Advisers Code of Ethics
• Prior Review
• Position Statement on Photo Manipulation
• Internet Freedom of Expression
• Internet Free Expression Alliance Mission Statement

• 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.
  
• Ensure students have a free, robust and active forum for 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 to provide students with sources of legal information.
  
• 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.
  
• Counsel students to avoid deceptive practices in all practices of publication work.
  
• Model effective communications skills by continuously updating knowledge of media education.
  

• violates the concept that it is the school's responsibility to teach and maintain, through example, the principles of democracy;
• gives school administrators, who are government officials, the power to decide in advance what people will read or know. Such officials are potential news makers, and their involvement with the news-making process can interfere with the public's right to know;
• contradicts every principle of sound journalism education and constitutes blatant but indirect censorship;
• negates the educational value of a trained, professionally active adviser and teacher working with students in a counseling, educational environment. Prior review simply makes the teacher an accessory, as if what is taught really doesn't matter;
  
• establishes the possibility of viewpoint discrimination which destroys a free marketplace of ideas where a community can be fully informed and undermines all pretext of responsible journalism;
  
• leads toward self-censorship, the most chilling and pervasive form of censorship in schools. Fear like this can eliminate any change of critical thinking, decision making or respect for the opinions of others.

• a newspaper serves its readers only when it is editorially independent;
  
• good journalism occurs when a qualified faculty adviser, clear publications policies and professionally-oriented journalism curriculum exist;
  
• rights, not authority and discipline, prepare students for roles as citizens in a democracy;
  
• the potential for abuse is not sufficient reason to withhold a right or privilege;
  
• a student publication is a forum for ideas, and with ideas there is no clear right or wrong;
  
• a constructive criticism helps improve education;
  
• students become more aware of the country's values through a free press;
  
• students who make important decisions also strive to learn the history behind the country's principles and issues.
  Learning must be a dynamic process, one in which an adviser helps students adjust to change. Censorship interferes with this change and is the last resort of an educational system failing its present and future citizens.
  

1. THE VIEWFINDER TEST Does the photograph show more than what the photographer saw through the viewfinder?
   
2. THE PHOTO-PROCESSING TEST A range of technical enhancements and corrections on an image after the photo is shot could change the image. Do things go beyond what is routinely done in the darkroom to improve image quality-cropping, color corrections, lightening or darkening?
   
3. THE TECHNICAL CREDIBILITY TEST Is the proposed alteration not technically obvious to the readers?
   
4. THE CLEAR-IMPLAUSIBILITY TEST Is the altered image not obviously false to readers?
   
5. If any of the above tests can be answered "yes," JEA urges student journalists to:
   
   • not manipulate news photos
     
   • not publish the image(s) in question, or
     
   • clearly label images as photo-illustrations when student editors decide they are the best way to support story content.
     

• endorses the Student Press Law Center's revised Model Publication Guidelines that include statements on use of the Internet and urges journalism programs and school systems to adopt the SPLC model;
  
• joins with the Internet Free Expression Alliance in working to ensure the Internet is a forum for open, diverse and unimpeded expression;
  
• strongly opposes the use of filters or blocking software that interfere with the legitimate gathering or authoring of information protected by the First Amendment and recent Supreme Court decisions. All current blocking and filtering software consistently has been shown to restrain more than unprotected speech, taking from educators valid educational decision making and often giving it to unknown parties with unknown rationale;
  
• recommends communications teachers assist administrators, parents, students and others in their understanding the importance of free expression on the Internet;
  
• urges teachers, advisers and students to be fully informed of their rights in use of the Internet, Web sites and acceptable use policies; and
  
• urges communications teachers and advisers to be the leaders in the shaping of their systems' Internet policies and decision making.

• ensure the continuation of the Internet as a forum for open, diverse and unimpeded expression and to maintain the vital role the Internet plays in providing an efficient and democratic means of distributing information around the world;
  
• promote openness and encourage informed public debate and discussion of proposals to rate and/or filter online content
  
• identify new threats to free expression and First Amendment values on the Internet, whether legal or technological;
  
• oppose any governmental effort to promote, coerce or mandate the rating or filtering of online content;
  
• protect the free speech and expression rights of both the speaker and the audience in the interactive online environment;
  
• ensure that Internet speakers are able to reach the broadest possible interested audience and that Internet listeners are able to access all material of interest to them;
  
• closely examine technical proposals to create filtering architectures and oppose approaches that conceal the filtering criteria employed, or irreparably damage the unique character of the Internet; and
  
• encourage approaches that highlight "recommended" Internet content, rather than those that restrict access to materials labeled as "harmful" or otherwise objectionable, and emphasize that any rating exists solely to allow specific content to be blocked from view may inhabit the flow of free expression.

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