Interviewing Important People in My Life

When I was growing up, I was influenced by a lot of my close family members. Everyone in my family is known for our strong opinions in politics and ethics. They like to express what they believe in at family gatherings and through emails.

My grandfather used to work in advertising and public relations. He spent some time writing ads for companies as well as drawing and taking photos for the advertisements. When I got into the journalism and communications magnet at Manual, he gained a huge interest for journalism and politics. He doesn't work, so he spends a lot of time researching things on his laptop.

"Journalism is a very important aspect of our lives. It never really was a huge thing when I was growing up unless something really dramatic happened," he said. "But what you're doing, writing about current social issues, really means something."

After we discussed journalism and what goes into it, I wanted to ask him about journalistic right specifically.

We talked about how most of the documents and things that journalists reference are public records. I remembered a lesson we had in journalism 1 last year when we talked about how journalists are simply the conveyors of information, we don't tell you what to think, we tell you what to think about. He said that all the things that journalists do, regular people can do too if they try hard enough.

"Regular people have rights when it comes to accessing public records and talking to people who have something to say, so why shouldn't journalists?" he questioned.

I then talked with my father who agreed with my grandfather that journalists should have rights. They are people too and their job is to be loyal to the public. How can journalists do their job if they have no simple rights to a freedom of speech.

A lot of my close friends are also in the journalism and communications magnet at Manual so we share some similar values. All being student journalists, we want our constitutional rights to stay constitutional and we want them to be enforced by the people who say that they want to fight for what's right. We look up to the journalists and the people that point out when our rights are not being respected.

What I Already Know and What I Want to Know: the fourth estate

A social issue that I think really applies to all three categories of community, health, and wellness is student journalistic rights. Being a student journalist, I think that our rights are just as important as any other journalist.

Everyone who is an American citizen is granted the freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, petition, and freedom of speech. Freedom of the press and free speech are the two biggest ones in my world. Journalism is writing that expresses the news and events that have long-lasting effects, normally by making the important interesting.

Professional journalists get treated as professionals. There are a lot of things that go around in politics, especially right now with Trump and Clinton arguing back and forth, about how the media only reports on the bad things and how they want to paint these ugly pictures of people of power in the minds of the public. Which I don't think is true. It's our job to report with the truth and to be loyal to the people.

A lot of professional journalists do not face prior-restraint and prior-review before publication like a lot of student journalists do. Last year in Journalism 1, our class did a mock trial about a high school newspaper. The school's mascot was the redskin and the newspaper refused to publish the word because of its negative connotation. The newspaper is real and so was the principal's act of prior-restraint. This is just one example of how student journalist rights were violated.

I want to know about more cases of when student journalist rights were violated. And more specifically, at Manual. Being a student journalist, it is important that I know that I can write about controversial topics and won't have to worry about the article being taken down or edited by an administrator to make sure that the "wrong" reaction is not spurred. I want to discover why people think that student journalist rights are not as important and on the same level as professional journalist rights.

This social issue can be related to community and wellness. There is an entire community of student journalists who care about what they publish and who want to be treated as real contributors in the world of journalism. For this specific issue, I though about wellness as more of the term well-being. I think that it has to do with the well-being of the public. Because of prior-restraint/review, the public doesn't get the full story and it can effect them in the long run.