Policies and Procedures

Ethical Journalism

Our Ethical Guidelines, Values, and Practices

All views expressed in The Lion’s Roar are those of the author and, if unsigned, those of The Lion’s Roar staff. These views should not be interpreted as the views of the administration, faculty, staff or students of Southeastern Louisiana University.

The Lion’s Roar is a designated public forum. Student editors have the authority to make content decisions without censorship or prior approval. The Lion’s Roar also defends the rights of student journalists to freedom of speech and press as stated in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

The Lion’s Roar is distributed through the Office of Student Publications, part of the Division for Student Affairs at Southeastern Louisiana University.

The editors and reporters working for Student Publications, The Lion’s Roar, Le Souvenir, and their related media platforms at Southeastern Louisiana University are governed in their journalistic activities, operations, and decisions by the Associated Collegiate Press Model Code of Ethics and the Society for Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

The goal of The Lion’s Roar is to cover the news unbiasedly and treat readers, news sources, advertisers and others fairly and openly, and be seen to be doing so. The reputation of The Lion’s Roar rests upon such perceptions, and so does the credibility of its staff members. Thus The Lion’s Roar and its staff members share an interest in avoiding conflicts of interest or an appearance of a conflict while providing accurate news media to our community.

For nearly a century, editors and reporters of The Lion’s Roar have vigorously guarded the outlet’s integrity. The current staff’s first duty is to ensure the integrity, credibility, and accuracy of The Lion’s Roar are not diminished during our stewardship.

Conflicts of interest, real or apparent, may come up in many areas. They may involve the relationships of staff members with readers, news sources, advocacy groups, advertisers, or competitors, with one another, or with the news outlet or the university.

In keeping with its solemn responsibilities under the First Amendment, The Lion’s Roar strives to maintain the highest standards of journalistic ethics. Staff members are expected to share that goal. However, The Lion’s Roar also recognizes that staff members are students. And should be free to do creative, civic, and personal work and earn extra income separate from their work at The Lion’s Roar and Student Publications. Before engaging in such outside activities, though, staff members should exercise mature judgment and consider the potential conflicts that could arise with their position as working journalists on our staff.

Three core values guide our work: truth, independence, and fairness. All staff members are responsible for ensuring our work lives up to these ideals. The Lion’s Roar does its best to ensure that everything published is accurate and true to the facts. The Lion’s Roar maintains high reporting, writing and editing standards to produce work that is as error-free as possible. While The Lion’s Roar values timeliness, particularly in service to our constituents on deadline, accuracy is valued more. The Lion’s Roar encourages others to seek and report the truth by example. The Lion’s Roar believes that information should be presented honestly and accurately to the community, with accuracy paramount in gathering, reporting, and interpreting such data. Student editors have the authority to make all content decisions without prior consent or approval from the university. Our staff should work free of obligation to any interests other than the public’s right to know. The Lion’s Roar recognizes the unique responsibility of ensuring that public business is conducted in the open and that government records are available for inspection. The Lion’s Roar seeks to ensure that all community members are treated ethically and as individuals deserving of respect. Information, content, and images should never be distorted to reflect one viewpoint over another. All staff members should avoid any bias or obligation in their work, whether real or perceived.

The advisers and editors maintain a comprehensive staff manual that details all duties and responsibilities governing the actions of the editors and reporters working with Student Publications. It is updated regularly and incorporated into staff training continuously.

No single document can address all the questions about ethics, sources, and funding, especially in an educational setting with multiple partnerships and relationships. However, these guidelines describe the fundamental values, standards, and practices The Lion’s Roar staff pursues in journalism. It is a living document that The Lion’s Roar expects will mature and evolve with the work of the staff.

Corrections Policy

While The Lion’s Roar strives to be 100% error-free, the reality is that mistakes can, will, and do happen. Sources are human beings, as are the staff. That means errors occur from time to time. The responsibility of a journalist is to minimize any possible chance for errors and admit and correct them when they happen.

As a news media organization, The Lion’s Roar upholds journalistic standards, including accuracy, in all mediums. Therefore, the current policy is to immediately review each issue on a case-by-case basis upon becoming aware of a potential error or need for clarification and resolving it as quickly as possible.

The editorial staff may update content for typos, numerical, grammar, and minor factual corrections. However, there may be no need to note the change.

The editorial staff will most likely place a correction notice at the beginning of an article, significantly if the content has been updated for corrections or the addition of substantive facts that change the story. Decisions will usually involve the Editor (s) and the reporter. After posting revisions, the editorial staff should notify all distribution mediums in which the article has been published or broadcast.

Correctable errors involve a significant factual mistake or materially changing the implication or connotation of the reporting. Current policy does not cover minor factual errors, such as minor statistical mistakes, inadvertent and immaterial misidentifications, minor inaccuracies in a developing story, or font errors that don’t impair the readers’ understanding of a story. Occasionally readers, sources, and former staff members may request content be retracted, changed, altered, removed, or “taken down” for various reasons. These requests often occur with recent articles, images, or graphics but may include past or archived works. The editorial staff will evaluate these requests on a case-by-case basis. To preserve the integrity and historical accuracy of The Lion’s Roar, the editorial staff strives not to retract, change, alter, remove or “take down” content except when necessary to correct significant factual errors or to protect the safety of sources. This policy includes but is not limited to all content, articles, illustrative graphics, and photography that appears on the website, social media accounts, and other outlets affiliated with The Lion’s Roar.

In most cases, unless the requested change meets the correction criteria noted above, these requests will not be honored. However, the editorial staff may determine that the request does indicate a significant factual correction is warranted. In that case, the editorial staff will handle it like other corrections described in this policy.

At The Lion’s Roar, reputation and credibility with readers, viewers, and listeners are of paramount concern. The primary goal of The Lion’s Roar is always to be accurate and fair; occasionally, it will present an erroneous assertion of fact. Significant errors of truth will be corrected clearly and timely, with appropriate prominence.

Each medium utilized will implement this policy in a manner applicable to its medium.

The Lion’s Roar welcomes complaints about The Lion’s Roar that warrant correction. Messages on news coverage can be emailed to [email protected] or by calling 985-549-3527. Readers may also submit Letters to the Editor for publication here. Finally, you may also use this form to bring any inaccuracies to the staff’s attention.

Comments & Moderation Policy

The Lion’s Roar student staff is dedicated to maintaining a respectful community that actively engages in lively discussions about news stories and other posts. Therefore, please keep the following in mind when writing your comments.

Respect Others

Please be polite to all the members of our community, including other commenters, authors, and the subjects of the articles. Also, keep in mind that real people are reading your comments.

Civil Discourse

Above all, The Lion’s Roar firmly believes that The Lion’s Roar should be a civil and welcoming place for individuals, groups, and ideas. Therefore, the editorial staff may remove insults, threats, hostility, or other over-the-line behavior. Commenters may lose their ability to comment.

Moderation

Our team may moderate comments before or after posting to the site to provide the best place for civil discourse for our community.

FAQs

Q: What are the Comments and Moderation Policy of The Lion’s Roar?

A: The Lion’s Roar has a thriving user community and encourages commenting on news stories and other posts. The Lion’s Roar is dedicated to maintaining a respectful, engaging, and informative conversation. To that end, The Lion’s Roar website has basic community standards for commenting to maintain a civil atmosphere. Comments, submissions, and letters to the Editor are welcome. Still, The Lion’s Roar reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity, libel, and available space or refuse publication without notification. These standards are supported by a moderating system that features a team of staff moderators. If readers wish to participate in the community, The Lion’s Roar asks that commenters follow the community standards below and the spirit of the community they seek to create:

1) If your comments make this community a less civil and enjoyable place to be, the editorial staff may exclude you and your comments from it.

The Lion’s Roar promotes a receptive, transparent, and civil atmosphere for comments and users. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinions regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion, or agreement with other community members, the author of the post, or staff members as long as those opinions are respectful and constructively add information to the conversation. However, this community does not tolerate direct or indirect attacks, name-calling or insults, nor does it take intentional attempts to derail, hijack, troll or bait others into an emotional response. The Lion’s Roar reserves the right to remove these types of comments where warranted. Individuals who consistently or intentionally post these types of comments may lose their ability to comment and, if deemed necessary, be permanently excluded from the community.

2) Comments may be moderated.

To maintain a civil atmosphere, The Lion’s Roar reserves the right to have our moderation team read comments before or after they are displayed on the site. Review time can vary depending on our team’s workload, so please be patient; The Lion’s Roar will strive to get to all comments as quickly as possible.

3) Be yourself, only yourself, and just one of yourself.

Every person’s opinion is valuable and unique. Pretending to be someone else removes that exceptional value froDon’t or others. Don’t misrepresent yourself or others or spread misinformation. You will make the community less enjoyable and valuable, and misrepresentation may be removed when The Lion’s Roar sees it. All views Lion’ssed in The Lion’s Roar are those of the author. These views should not be interpreted as the views of the administration, faculty, staff, or students of Southeastern Louisiana University.

4) Civil Discourse.

The Lion’s Roar strongly believes it should be a civil place for individuals, groups, and ideas. Purposefully insulting and hostile language or personal threats are not welcome here. If a commenter directly or indirectly threatens the physical or mental well-being of a community member or an individual or group. In that case, the editorial staff may remove the commenter immediately. Also, if a credible threat is made against an individual or group, the editorial staff may remove it. The occurrence is also likely to be reported to law enforcement agencies. The Lion’s Roar will cooperate with them to any extent requested. Commenters should never post identifiable information to The Lion’s Roar comments section for the privacy and protection of all community members. Identifiable information includes but is not limited to exact full names, addresses, physical locations, phone numbers, or email addresses. Any comments that contain this information may be deleted. Individuals wishing to reveal personal information are cautioned to limit the scope and detail of such information. University students and faculty/staff may find it helpful or useful to include their classification and major or title and department information. Still, they should never reveal the following: W#, classification, grades, residence hall, or other private details.

Q: I posted a comment. Why can’t I see it on The Lion’s Roar’s website?

A: Please be aware that not all comments may appear directly on The Lion’s Roar site. Some are removed before posting if found in violation of these community standards. Additionally, editors may decide to turn off commenting on a post for various reasons from time to time. If a commenter feels their comment has been removed in error, or if there is a technical issue, please get in touch with The Lion’s Roar for further assistance.

Q: Why do my posts never appear in The Lion’s Roar comments section?

A: If users have repeatedly posted comments that have violated these community standards, The editorial staff may block their comments from appearing on the site. Examples include inappropriate comments that contain insults, attacks, and abuse towards other users or groups or have trolled or hijacked comment threads.

Q: Is advertising in the comments allowed?

A: Generally, the answer is no. The comments section is only for readers and sources to discuss content, share ideas and opinions, and give context to the subject. Therefore, the comment section is not a place for unsolicited advertising, linking, forwarding, or other commercial activities. Thus, comments not part of the conversation but inserted to direct readers to a service, product, event, or another commercial enterprise will be removed.

Across All Mediums

Although the above information focuses on The Lion’s Roar website and primarily the comments section, this policy applies to all versions of our publication regardless of the medium utilized.

Submissions and letters to the Editor are welcomed, but the Editor of The Lion’s Roar reserves the right to edit all submissions for grammar, libel and available space or refuse publication without notification. Submissions must include the author’s full name and phone number, email, or other contact information (for use as verification by our staff and will not be published). Faculty and staff members should include their titles and department. Students should include their classification and major area of study. The author understands that the editorial staff of The Lion’s Roar will edit the submission by submitting an article for publication.

As previously mentioned above, all views expressed in The Lion’s Roar are those of the author and, if unsigned, those of The Lion’s Roar staff. These views should not be interpreted as the views of the administration, faculty, staff or students of Southeastern Louisiana University.

The Lion’s Roar is distributed through the Office of Student Publications, part of the Division for Student Affairs at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Privacy Policy

General

This privacy policy has been compiled to be transparent about how The Lion’s Roar collects, stores, uses, protects, and otherwise handles your Personally Identifiable Information. US privacy law defines that The Lion’s Roar can use Personally Identifiable Information to identify, contact, or locate an individual. Therefore, please read this information carefully.

The Lion’s Roar newspaper, the Le Souvenir yearbook, and Student Publications (and our various digital entities such as www.lionsroarnews.com) respect the privacy of all those who use the services The Lion’s Roar provides. Therefore, The Lion’s Roar has a simple policy that the staff will not willfully disclose any personal information regarding our users without first obtaining their permission unless required by law.

By using the website www.lionsroarnews.com, you consent to collecting and using your information as outlined in this policy.

Use of Cookies

A “cookie” is a file sent to your browser by a web server and stored on your computer; it contains data that websites use to identify you as a unique user.

Companies that advertise on our site may collect information from you if you click on their advertisements or access their sites. They may do this by using cookies. Due to how the Internet operates, The Lion’s Roar cannot control information collection. However, most web browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can change your browser’s settings to refuse all cookies or notify you each time a cookie is sent to your computer, choosing whether to accept it or not.

If you have any questions or concerns about how information is collected or used by another site, you should contact whoever is responsible for that site directly.

What information does The Lion’s Roar collect?

The Lion’s Roar newspaper, the Le Souvenir yearbook, and Student Publications (through its various digital entities such as www.lionsroarnews.com) does not collect personal information about you (such as your name or email address) except when you specifically and knowingly provide that information. However, in some cases, The Lion’s Roar records the IP addresses from which users access our site. The Lion’s Roar uses this data for internal purposes and to analyze how people use The Lion’s Roar site so that the staff can continually improve services. This data also provides us with anonymous and broad demographic information about those using our site.

To help us serve you more efficiently, The Lion’s Roar may ask for your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, or other details. Then, when you fill out a contact form, sign up for our newsletter, or browse our website, The Lion’s Roar collects information from you. This information may help us serve you better and provide you with your requested services.

Does The Lion’s Roar disclose information to anyone else?

The Lion’s Roar may share information about using our sites (such as www.lionsroarnews.com) with advertisers, sponsors, content providers, and other third parties. However, The Lion’s Roar will only disclose aggregate, anonymous information about our users and will not disclose any personally identifiable information to any third party without your express consent.

The Lion’s Roar does use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

For example, The Lion’s Roar may disclose the total number of “hits” the site receives or how often the average user visits our site. However, please be aware that The Lion’s Roar will release any specific personal information it may hold about you if required by law.

The Lion’s Roar does not sell, trade, or share your personally identifiable information. The Lion’s Roar does not allow third-party behavioral tracking. Additionally, The Lion’s Roar does not include or offer third-party products or services on our website.

The Lion’s Roar honors “do not track” signals and do not track users, plant cookies, or use advertising when a Do Not Track browser mechanism is in place.

Our digital entities are regularly scanned for security holes, malware, and other vulnerabilities. Your personal information is contained within secured networks and only viewable by a limited number of persons with special access to these networks. These people are required to keep the information confidential.

Email

The Lion’s Roar receives and replies to emails from users regularly. The Lion’s Roar will retain copies of all incoming and outgoing emails for record-keeping. Information in the email it receives or sends will not be disclosed to any third party without the sender’s permission, either expressed or implied unless required by law.

Links

These sites, and our various other sites, contain a large number of links to external sites. Please be aware that The Lion’s Roar has no control over people developing these external sites and is not responsible for their privacy practices. This Privacy Policy applies only to The Lion’s Roar newspaper, the Le Souvenir yearbook, and Student Publications (through its various digital entities such as www.lionsroarnews.com).

The Lion’s Roar encourages users to familiarize themselves with the privacy policy of any website that collects personal information and exercise discretion when providing such information.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

The Lion’s Roar may change this Privacy Policy occasionally at our discretion and without notice. However, if The Lion’s Roar updates its policy, an updated version of this Privacy Policy will be made available on this site so that you remain aware of the data collected, how it is used, and under what circumstances it is disclosed.