I’m at home, in my home town, in western piedmont North Carolina. I was just reading a movie review in the Charlotte Observer about Fractured, a suspence thriller that Brenda and I went to see last weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed.
The review was right on, reporting just enough of the plot, the ease at which Anthony Hopkins played the confident but obviously guilty murderer, and Ryan Gosling as the over confident and unlikely hero.
At the end of the article, the reviewer was described as a 12th grader at a Charlotte high school — and they provided a picture of her. This confuses me in about seven different ways!
Not a good idea from the cyber safety perspective: readers now have the girl’s name, face, area of residence, approximate age, and school district.
Aren’ there now nine intelligences to confuse us?
Extremely short sighted on the part of the newspaper. Acknowledging the author is one thing. Publishing a picture of a school-age girl is wrong. However, sports sections do it ALL THE TIME! Which school would balk at that type of recognition?
Newspapers and television stations have been routinely publishing first and last names of students – right alongside their pictures/video for a long, long time. No questions asked. I can cite personal examples going back over a dozen years with my kids. The last time I had a reporter covering an event in my classroom, I said, sure, pictures would be OK, but not names, at least not last names. I was told the newspaper’s policy required the publishing of first AND last name of the student with the picture – or they would not publish it. David, you are right to shake your head. Given the current paranoia in the US around student confidentiality in the online world, how does this make sense? – Mark
Even worse, our local paper periodically publishes a birthday page, a full page or two, with pictures, full names and ages and birth dates of local children, ages 1 and up. I have been appalled.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 year olds are listed by full name, birthday, and town!
“Hey, Jianna, your mom told me it was your birthday. I’ve a special present for you…”
Shudder.
Please feel free to protest: http://www.pressenterpriseonline.com/
I hope I’m not the only one who has a different take on this… first of all, she’s not 12. She’s a 12th grader, most likely 18 at this point in the year.
Secondly, if newspapers reporting on students using full names and pictures is so normal, why is it so bad online?
I think it’s downright weird that a bunch of cutting edge ed tech folks are so concerned about a picture in the paper.
Don’t we want kids to be able to enjoy their name and picture in the paper – and online? Aren’t we only extra careful about it because the percent of a percent of a percent (or whatever small chance it is) that somebody malicious will misuse the information? And aren’t we only more careful online because the nature of the medium lends itself to ever so slightly easier abuse?
Personally, and this is not the cyber safety presenter speaking now, I think the few malicious types are going to find who they want to find regardless of the medium and I think its too bad – no, a tragedy – that all of us feel like our students have to tip toe around the internet anonymously.
That being said, there is still a lot of room for helping kids learn to be safe online (and in the face-to-face world). I just think the reaction (in these comments) to this article David posted about is a bit sad. Of course, Mark Ahlness did say “given the current state of paranoia in the US” and maybe that’s the real problem.
my sentiments too, Mark.
1) I assumed she gave permission to the paper; or
2) If she is under contract to do reviews, it is probably in the contract.
3) When one does this for a living, isn’t that practically standard practice?
I’m with Mark. While we need to be safe it is important that this desire for safety is not everything. In New Zealand we regularly publish pictures of children both online and in print.
Is an 18 year old at any more risk than a 22 year old? If we spend time worry about the risk then we would do nothing. We need to help people learn about the risks and how to mange them not shut the door and double lock it completely.
I agree with Mark, Cathy, and Brian. She’s probably 18, and quite possibly was paid to write her review. I expect that she granted permission, and that she is probably excited to have the recognition (as well she should be). An 18-year-old is able to make that decision for herself.
I know that my picture and full name were published in the local paper for an award I received when I was 12 or 13. I do realize that the world is not quite the same place now as it was two decades ago, but certainly someone could have found me then. My parents’ names were probably published as well, and our phone number and address were listed in the phone book. It would have been pretty easy if someone had wanted to find me.
Children are still more likely to be abused or kidnapped by family members than by strangers. Yes, we should take precautions, but we should keep some perspective too.
Sorry to disagree, but we’re supposed to be modeling safe internet – and social networking – skills to students. I can see the dilemma, since we do regularly publicize student athletes and valedictorians, etc. as well. When I was a child, I routinely rode my bike all over town (with no helmet); such behavior by my own children, at a similar age, would have horrified me. How do we achieve the balance between freedom and safety?
I’d like to see some evidence that the danger to a person is increased significantly (or at all) by the publication of their name and picture in the newspaper.
The greatest source of danger for children continues to be their own family and family friends, not strangers. The greatest danger for an 18-year old comes from someone she knows, not some stranger.
It seems to me that the raising of concern about publishing a name and a photo reveals not only a certain sense of unjustified paranoia, but also a real misdirection regarding the source of potential danger.
Given that this misdirection is so evident, one wonders why it would be perpetuated.
At first glance at your post I thought this could definitely be a safety issue. As I read the comments, I moved to horror as I realized my child was one of those sports pics with full name and school. As I continued to read the other comments, I calmed down bit as I realized that I couldn’t think of an instance where a perpetrator had targeted a victim from a photo in our local newspaper. But then I thought that just because I haven’t read about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. And finally I decided, I really wish I hadn’t read your post. Challenge the minds of your young people at YouthPlay.
I’m still interested. We have discussed the safety issue but that leaves six more sources of confusion, I think. What are they?
My sources of confusion…
1. My community leads me to be afraid for the 18 year old movie reviewer
2. The educator in me knows how motivating this type of attention can be to learners
3. Why is the news paper using child writers (probably for free), and not professional journalists (They can’t afford it)
4. Journalism is one of those industries that is especially vulnerable to the disruptive nature of the revolution in information
5. Education is just as threatened — from the stand point of our students
6. Why do we want to be afraid? Why do we look for things to be afraid of — invent things to be afraid of? Why don’t we DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? Why are we willing to tolerate aspects of a society to generates sexual predators? Why do we keep watching CNN?
Wearing a helmet DOES make bike riding safer in desmonstrable ways.
Photos in the newspaper do not demonstrably make people less safe and are a common feature in our culture for more more than a century.
Besides the mentioned fact that we don’t know if consent was granted by the journalist in question, we make children less safe by allowing our paranoia (fueled by the government and media) to create a society in which they are over-protected.
Here’s a parallel example “ripped from today’s headlines…”
We built suburbs without parks. School yards were the only places to play. Over the past decade or so boards of education have prohibited playing on their playgrounds outside of school hours. Where are kid to spend their time?
The mall of course!
My local paper in Torrance, California reports that the city is ARRESTING citizens, under 18 years of age, for walking out of a movie theatre after 10 PM (a previously unenforced curfew on the books). They’ve even asked the movie theatres to start films earlier.
Why? Because children (up to age 18) should ALWAYS be home by 10 PM. (according to local authorities)
ZERO increase in crime has been reported, but why let that get in the way of denying civil liberties. The city is upset that their police officers are “babysitting” teens. It apparently has not occurred to anyone to ask the business owners profiting from teenagers to pick up the tab. No, we’ll harass and alienate teenagers because of adult delusions.
In an effort to “protect” children, we are criminalizing childhood.
Gary Stager you are spot on, as is Mark Wagner. We are going through these sort of issues constantly at our workplace in Shanghai as our students invcreasingly bolg and I think it is sad that we are passing down our paranoia to students at such a young age. Growing up for me involved learning about ‘stranger danger’ etc but it wasn’t something that took over my life. I believe in teaching our students about safe on and off line protocols but due to government hysteria that leaks down through the cracks, it is true that we sometimes end up ‘criminalizing childhood’ as Stager so accurately points out.
When I was a senior in high school, I wrote for the local paper, providing school-related news. I was paid; it was a job like any other, and a great experience for me. Maybe this student is going to go into journalism and this is her first step, who knows? (Maybe we should call her high school and ask to speak to her?)
The main question your entry raised for me is, where do we draw the line as far as “it’s now ok for someone’s details to be published”? It is likely, as someone else mentioned, that the student in this case is 18 by now. Did it become ok to publish her picture in the newspaper the day she turned 18? A week or a month afterwards? And would there be as much concern if the student was male rather than female?
I have seen many Internet safety sites and overheard countless educators reminding kids to never share their personal information online. And yet we as adults do it all the time – we have to, or we’d never make any professional connections. How do we teach our kids the boundaries that still have to be held when one crosses into such a gray area?
I hardly think a movie review in a local newspaper will catch the attention of a predator. I’d wager a bet that the predators are much more likely to be at the movie theater on Friday night, not reading the news while casually consuming Saturday morning breakfast.
I am also curious to know if the same level of concern would have been expressed if the newspaper author had been a male. My first inclination would be a big, fat NO.