Risk Management Questions for News Reporting Classes

Abstract

A college student assigned as part of news writing class to cover state fair decided to do first-person story on bungee jumping. He buckled himself into harness, climbed 50 feet up ladder, plunged into space attached to giant rubber band and bounced just above the ground. Another student fulfilled her class assignment to write profile by writing about police officer after riding with him on the night shift. When the officer ran after an armed robber, he hollered, You can come. She did. Both students wrote stories with such strong verbs and description that they earned praise and top grades in their classes. What if those same students had been injured? Would the court hold the university and/or the professor liable? Though no court decisions directly involved students injured on journalism assignments, an analysis of rulings on similar issues shows that student over the age of 18 may be considered an adult responsible for his or her own decisions on how to best complete an assignment, but postsecondary institutions may have to warn, to help neophyte reporters realize the dangers of some assignments and understand alternate actions that could be taken to avoid such dangers. Literature review Research of the law shows that the key tests of the extent of liability for failure to safeguard the student is the foreseeability that the student could be harmed by the activity and the precautions taken by the institution and its staff to safeguard the student. Most rulings involving this issue have come from the lower courts in the federal and state systems. Though such rulings are not law across the land, they provide useful guide. Therefore, for the university and its faculty, forewarned is forearmed in society that has become dangerously litigious. This study points out the need for journalism professors to develop policies to reduce liability and minimize risk for students sent on assignments. study concludes by offering methods of risk control. In determining liability, central question is the extent of the institutional duty to protect the student from harm. Historically, the duty of care has fallen on continuum from the traditional concept of in loco parentis to the exercise of due warning and minimum care. concept of in loco parentis was set aside by 1979 ruling in the landmark case Bradshaw v. Rawlings(1) in which student became intoxicated during sophomore class picnic sponsored by the college, drove car, and caused an accident that severely injured passenger. A federal appeals court held that college students were adults able to take care of themselves and make their own choices, therefore university did not owe special duty of care to students. U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, essentially upholding the lower court's decision. Since then, courts have been reluctant to impose liability on institutions for injuries to students participating in curricular or extracurricular activities, but where they have, the liability appears to hinge on the foreseeability of the events that led to injuries and the safeguards taken by the institution to offset danger. James P. Murphy (1980), professor who writes about higher education and the law, sees the courts' approach on duty of care evolving toward rule of duty defined by foreseeability. The most that the foreseeability test requires is that one exercise reasonable care, Murphy said, a reasonable care founded not in the intricacies of privity or the metaphysics of the action-inaction variation, but in ethics--that people exercise the same reasonable care towards others that they expect others to exercise towards them.(2) In other words, the golden rule applied with common sense, perhaps, as Murphy pointed out, based on the moral axiom set down in Thomas v. Winchester(3) in 1852: So highly does the law value human life, that it admits of no justification where life has been lost or injury suffered due to the carelessness of another. …