Law, Ethics & News Literacy

In a world where journalistic integrity is constantly questioned, our program strives to cover pertinent content in an informative and thoughtful way. We aim to write the story, not be the story. We write articles not because they are controversial, but because they are relevant to our community. Regardless of the style of content, I constantly stress to our staff that we must prioritize ethical reporting.

It all starts with J1.

Our beginning journalism class taught us about the expectations a journalist is upheld to, instances when rules about integrity were broken and how to always be fair when covering controversial topics.

  • The 10 rules of journalism

  • Staying ethical when you write

  • The Zenger Trial

  • The infamous rule-breakers

Rules to live by

The ReMarker has a strong set of rules and policies covering our expectations and what happens if they are broken.

  • Showing sources stories

  • When rules are broken

  • Clarifying perspective

  • When we mess up

Abiding by our community’s expectations.

Being a journalist at St. Mark’s is a privilege. Our administration gives us the liberty to write about anything we want to, however we want to. No topic is off-limits, and we have covered some very controversial topics over the years. But we don’t cover stories because we want to be controversial— we cover them to make an impact on our community.

As smremarker.com started, writers were not sure of the parameters of the content we would share on it. I stressed to our staff it was important to keep our standards— we don’t put a story on the website for clicks. We never sacrifice good content for silly additions that might draw in more readers. The readers will come when we produce good journalism. I am usually known as a light-hearted person around the journalism suite, but not when it comes to this. We owe it to our readers to maintain a higher standard of journalism.