Scouting America · Merit Badge · Kia Kima Scout Reservation
"Facts are stubborn things." — John Adams
Anyone can publish now. Almost nobody verifies. This badge is about the difference — how to gather facts, tell them straight, and know the law and the ethics that come with the privilege.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Forty-five words. Five freedoms. Notice what it does not say: it doesn't grant you the right to speak. It forbids the government from taking a right you already had. That distinction is the whole ballgame.
Freedom of the press means you may gather information, publish it, and criticize the powerful without asking permission first and without being punished by the government for it.
You don't need a license to be a journalist. You don't need a degree. In the United States, the press isn't a profession the state approves — it's an activity any citizen may do. A Scout with a phone and a notebook has the same First Amendment rights as The New York Times.
Freedom of the press is freedom from prior restraint and government punishment. It is not freedom from responsibility.
Freedom of the press, fact vs. opinion, libel, slander, defamation, fair comment, public figure, privacy, malice
Four sources, one event, one day — or tour a real newsroom
The five W's and an H — then write the story
Two styles, broadcast scripts, or a photo essay with captions
Three jobs in journalism; pick one and dig in
Everything in here comes down to one habit: check it before you say it.
Counselor note — Matches the current official requirements. This deck runs requirement 2 option (a), print and online, and gives you everything you need for the discussions.
The test that never fails: could two honest people check this and agree? If yes, it's a fact — even if it turns out to be wrong. If it depends on taste, values, or prediction, it's opinion. Opinion belongs on the editorial page, clearly labeled. Facts belong everywhere.
"Journalism is a way of thinking. It is a system for gathering and distributing information that rests on the faith that, as John Adams put it, facts are stubborn things… We report; society decides. Above all is a commitment to the integrity of facts, without fear or favor. If the outcome is more important to you than the facts, you are an advocate but not a journalist."
— Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor, The Associated Press
In pursuit of the facts, journalists risk their lives in dangerous places and their careers in confrontations with the powerful. They do it because they believe their work is a service to society.
Every media outlet has one.
Not because journalists are villains — because every outlet is made of humans who must choose. What goes on page one? Which quote survives the edit? Which expert gets called? Which story never gets assigned at all?
Those choices are the bias. There is no view from nowhere.
Advocacy is not a bad word.
But it's also tricky.
Gathers facts and presents them straight. Their own view stays out of it. "We report; society decides."
Argues for an outcome — openly and labeled as such, while still sticking to true facts. Honest and useful.
Advocacy disguised as reporting. When opinion wears a news costume, readers can't tell what they're getting.
The line — An advocacy journalist can be completely honest: adhere to the facts while urging an outcome. What's never OK is bending the facts to fit the outcome. That's when you stop being a journalist.
Lots of junk food out there.
Nobody eats only candy and expects to feel good. Same with information. A healthy diet has primary sources, real local reporting, and at least one outlet that annoys you.
Section B
Seven words requirement 1 wants you to explain: libel · slander · defamation · fair comment and criticism · public figure · privacy · malice. They sound like lawyer noise. They're actually the rules that let a free press survive contact with real people who can sue.
Defamation is communicating to a third party a false statement about a person, place, or thing that damages their reputation.
Both halves matter. If it's true, it isn't defamation, no matter how much it hurts. If it's false but harms nobody, there's no case. Truth is the great defense.
Definitions and penalties vary a great deal between countries and jurisdictions — including whether it's a crime at all, and how far proving the facts protects you.
Defamation you can point at: printed, posted, tweeted, captioned, broadcast from a script. It lasts, spreads, and is easy to prove existed.
Memory hook: Libel = Literature
Defamation said out loud and not written down — a comment at a meeting, a remark on a livestream.
Memory hook: Slander = Spoken
Actual malice is the standard the Supreme Court set for libel cases involving public officials and public figures. It does not mean "being mean."
It means publishing with knowledge that a statement was false, or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
Public officials cannot win a libel case without proving it.
Landmark case
Decided unanimously, 1964
Before Sullivan, an honest mistake in a story about a powerful official could bankrupt a newspaper. Reporters would simply avoid covering officials at all — the lawsuits weren't worth it.
The Court's answer: a democracy needs "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate, and that debate will inevitably include some errors. So officials must prove the publisher knew it was false or didn't care.
Why it matters to you: this case is the reason journalists can investigate mayors, senators and presidents without a lawsuit ending the paper.
Politicians and others with "pervasive fame or notoriety" in all contexts — famous everywhere, all the time.
Presidents, senators, global celebrities. They must prove actual malice in essentially any story about them.
Someone who voluntarily entered a public controversy to try to affect its outcome.
A parent who leads a campaign at school board meetings is a public figure for that controversy — and a private citizen for everything else in their life.
Rare. Someone swept into an event of overriding public importance without choosing it — for example, the air traffic controller on duty during a major plane crash.
Courts are cautious here, because this person never asked for attention.
The principle — Courts give the greatest protection to people who never put themselves in the public eye. Private citizens have far more protection from libel than public figures and public officials do. Point a camera at a senator and at a random classmate, and the law treats those two acts very differently.
Privacy is the protection of one's innermost self by determining who or what enters our personal life space.
In an era of networks, cameras and searchable everything, an ethics of privacy is urgent. And it isn't mainly a professional question — it's a general moral one. The center of it isn't the journalist's decision; it's the subject's need to control information about themselves.
A reasonable public decides whether, when, and how information about someone gets communicated to others.
The reporter's question isn't "can I publish this?" It's "does the public's need to know outweigh this person's right to be left alone?"
A privilege that lets the media — and the general public — publish opinions about public officials and public figures without fear of a libel suit.
It's why a restaurant review can call the soup terrible, why a columnist can call a policy foolish, and why you can post that the coach made a bad call.
The catch: it protects opinion, not invented facts. "The mayor's plan is stupid" is fair comment. "The mayor stole $10,000" is a factual claim — and you had better be able to prove it.
Fair comment is the legal home of the Fact-vs-Opinion test you just played.
You just defined all seven terms requirement 1 asks for, in context. The through-line: truth is a defense, opinion is protected, private people get more protection than powerful ones, and "I didn't check" is not an excuse.
Verify before you publish. Name your sources when you can. Never fabricate — not a quote, not a detail, not a photo.
Real people live inside your story. Show compassion, especially to the grieving, the young, and the inexperienced.
No gifts, no favors, no secret loyalties. Disclose anything that could look like a conflict.
Correct errors quickly and openly. Explain your choices. Invite the audience to hold you to it.
These four principles are the backbone of the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics — and they map almost perfectly onto a Scout who is trustworthy, kind, brave, and courteous.
"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
— old Chicago newsroom proverb
On a single day, read about the same event in a local newspaper, a national newspaper, a newsmagazine, and (with a parent's permission) an online news source. Clip them. Compare them.
Then tell your counselor how long each story is, how fair and accurate each is in presenting different points of view, and how each source handled it differently depending on its purpose and audience.
Alternative — Requirement 2(a)(2) lets you instead tour a newspaper, magazine or news-site office: editorial, business, and printing. Ask a business-side executive about management's relationship with reporters, editors and photographers — and what makes a "good" news organization.
What to look for in each
Names actual neighbors. Knows the street. Explains what it means for here. Shortest reach, deepest roots.
More reporters, wider context, national stakes. May get a local detail wrong.
Days or weeks later. Less "what happened," more "what it means." Analysis and narrative.
Fastest — and most likely to be updated, corrected, or rewritten under the same headline. Note the timestamp.
Count the paragraphs. Count the named sources. Notice who gets quoted first — and who never gets quoted at all.
Hard news
Damage estimated at $400,000; camp to open on schedule
A fire destroyed the dining hall at Kia Kima Scout Reservation early Saturday, causing an estimated $400,000 in damage, fire officials said. No one was injured…
Feature
Every meal, every summer, since 1985 — and he has never once been late
The rope is worn smooth where his hands go. Ray Whitfield has been reaching for the same spot since the summer Reagan was president…
Requirement 3 assignment — Choose a current or unusual event that interests you, then write either a hard news article or a feature about it, geared for print, audio, or video. Share it with your counselor.
Six questions, roughly 150 years old, still undefeated. If your story answers all six, it is a complete story. If it's missing one, a reader will notice — and that missing answer is usually the one that mattered.
Let's prove it on a story you already know. →
Breaking · Local
Brick house holds · By a Kia Kima Scout, Staff Reporter
Three area pigs escaped injury Tuesday after a wolf allegedly destroyed two of their homes and attempted to force his way into a third, according to eyewitnesses at the scene.
Each pig had constructed a house out of different materials — a straw house, a stick house and a brick house. The wolf is believed to have destroyed both the straw and stick homes at various times throughout the day. The first two residents were able to flee to the brick house, where they remain at the moment.
Apparently the Big Bad Wolf was trying to eat the pigs. Several eyewitnesses recall the wolf taunting the residents before he destroyed the straw and stick homes, chanting, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in." The pigs apparently scoffed at the wolf's idle threats, saying, "Not by the hair of our chinny, chin chins." It's believed this angered the wolf and led to him blowing the houses down.
It would appear the first two homes were not built to withstand the wolf's powerful breath. The incident inside the brick house is still being investigated, but early indications suggest the wolf fell into a boiling pot of water when trying to enter the house through the chimney. We're still waiting to hear from local authorities.
Selected
Tap one of the six questions to highlight its answer inside the article.
Notice the language — "allegedly," "is believed to have," "early indications suggest." A reporter hedges because the investigation isn't finished. That isn't weakness — it's honesty about what you actually know.
Newspaper editors needed to cut stories to fit the page — from the bottom, fast, without rewriting. So reporters learned to load everything essential into the first paragraph.
Full storyCut for space
As it would run
Three area pigs escaped injury Tuesday after a wolf allegedly destroyed two of their homes and attempted to force his way into a third, according to eyewitnesses.
Each pig had built a house of different materials — straw, sticks and brick. The first two residents fled to the brick house, where they remain. The wolf reportedly taunted them before the houses came down.
Neighbors described the chanting as "unsettling but rhythmic." The straw house had been featured last spring in a local home-and-garden column.
Still makes sense?
Words remaining
That's the whole trick — Cut a chronological story from the bottom and you lose the ending. Cut an inverted-pyramid story from the bottom and it still works. Requirement 4(a) asks you to write the same event both ways so you feel the difference.
The lead (spelled "lede" in old newsroom slang) is the first sentence, and it does more work than the rest of the story combined. Most readers never get past it — so it has to carry the news by itself.
Buried lede
"The Kia Kima Scout Reservation held its annual winter camp last weekend. Scouts participated in a variety of merit badge sessions. During the closing campfire, a small fire spread to the dining hall, which burned to the ground."
Fixed
"Fire destroyed the dining hall at Kia Kima Scout Reservation during Saturday's closing campfire, ending the camp's winter session. No one was injured."
Same facts. One of them tells you the building burned down in the first four words.
Write two articles about the same event — one in inverted pyramid, one told chronologically. Feel how differently the same facts land.
Write it for the ear instead of the eye: short sentences, present tense, words a person can say out loud without tripping.
Shoot a series that tells the story — news photos and feature photos — then write a brief synopsis of the event plus a caption for every image.
Present tense. Identify everyone left to right. Say what's happening and why it matters. Never describe what's obvious — add what the picture can't say.
"Ray Whitfield rings the camp bell Saturday for the final time before the dining hall fire, a routine he had kept every summer since 1985."
If you're also working Photography, this requirement is a crossover: news photos capture the peak moment; feature photos capture the human one. Shoot both, caption both, and one afternoon at a public event can serve two badges.
Beat reporting, investigations, sports, city hall. Chronically curious; allergic to unanswered questions.
Assigns, questions, cuts, and takes the heat. The last person between a mistake and the public.
Tells the story in one frame. Often the first to arrive and the last to leave.
Anchors, field reporters, producers — writing for the ear and the camera on a countdown clock.
Finds the story inside spreadsheets and public records. Half reporter, half analyst.
Long-form narrative journalism for headphones — one of the fastest-growing corners of the field.
Verifies every claim before publication. Unglamorous, unbelievably important.
Pick one and find the education, training and experience it requires — then tell your counselor why it might interest you.
How to start now — Write for the school paper or yearbook. Cover your troop and send it to the council newsletter. Start a blog or a podcast. Nobody is going to ask for your credentials before you report your first story; they're going to ask whether you got it right.
Editorial
A democracy runs on people who can tell a fact from a feeling, who check before they share, and who are willing to be the one person in the group chat who says "wait — is that actually true?" That job doesn't require a press pass. It requires the habit.
Go find out. Then tell it straight.
"—30—" is how reporters have marked the end of a story since the telegraph era