Investigative reporting on campus sexual assault : navigating FERPA
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The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, is meant to protect students' educational records. But the law is often cited incorrectly by universities to deny access to records that are hardly educational in nature. Chronic misuse of FERPA has become a major hindrance to transparency and to newsgathering, and it has become so common that it's a generally accepted reality for journalists reporting on the higher ed sector. This qualitative study uses semistructured interviews with seven journalists and two media lawyers, to record their experiences navigating FERPA while investigating campus sexual violence. This study also explores additional barriers to obtaining important records from universities, including exorbitant fees and special exemptions to state open records laws. These findings will inform journalists of the most effective strategies for gathering information from universities, as well as alert them to an urgent trend: that overreach and misuse of FERPA may be so great that it undermines the notion of a free press.
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M.A.