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Ethics
Even with this basic honesty and a determination to "do right," journalists encounter situations that are ambiguous and challenge their ability to apply moral certainties. One means of resolving these situations is for journalists to develop an understanding of the loyalties they are expected to have. Those loyalties include the ones they have to their news organizations, their colleagues, the news consumers who depend on them for information and themselves and their own moral principles.
Notes
An honest mistake -- or something more. When the CBS News show "48 Hours" aired a segment a couple of weeks ago about a murder in Columbia, Mo., it altered a picture of the front page of the Columbia Daily Tribune the show used as a graphic. CBS has acknowledged the mistake, although it has not explained very well how it happened. But there is evidence CBS still doesn't understand the seriousness of its action -- particularly given the conclusion the show drew about the case.
More (Posted Feb. 26, 2006)
The question of deception. When the Spokane Spokesman-Review recently exposed nefarious behavior on the part of Spokane's mayor, the newspaper used some deception in its reporting. The reaction of many editors would lead you to believe that "Thou shalt never deceive" is one of the most sacred of Journalist Commandments. But it's not. Deception isn't always a good idea, but it has a good history and support from one of the profession's major codes of ethics. More. (Posted May 16, 2005)
Raising ethical standards. This spring has seen a spate of ethical lapses by journalists, so it might not be evident that our ethical standards have actually gone up during the past 20 years. Yet, this is probably the case.
More (Posted May 2, 2005)
Conflict of interest.
One of the basic tenets of journalistic practice is that a journalist should be independent. That is, a journalist should not work for any person or organization except the news organization that he or she represents. That tenet holds for editorialists as well as reporters. An editorial writer or columnist may express opinionated or partisan points of view, but there should always be a distance between the journalist and those who are being covered or commented upon. Armstrong Williams apparently did not understand this tenet of journalist (or he did understand it and chose to ignore it), and that has landed him in hot water with his professional colleagues and one of his employers, Tribune Media Services. Williams accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration to espouse favorable opinions about Bush's No Child Left Behind educational plan. (USA Today: Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law) He did not disclose that fact and is now facing blistering criticism from other journalists, such as the National Association of Black Journalists. Williams has been dropped as a columnist by the Tribune Media Services, which distributes his newspaper column to many newspapers around the nation. (TMS statement terminating its contract with Williams.)(Posted January 8, 2005)Update: Williams appeared on the Washington Post’s Live Online discussion on Monday, Jan. 10, and took responsibility for his ethical failure: “I'm a principled columnist and commentator but yet I'm ashamed that my bad judgment has cast a black shadow on my name. Where I go in the future depends on my credibility and never violating journalistic ethical standards again. I've learned from this, the most important thing being it is far more important to maintain my integrity and ethics as a media pundit than to concern myself with generating dollars as a entrepreneur (sic).” Williams said he did not think he had done anything illegal: “Simply bad judgment that crossed a gray area of ethics. My bad judgment was an omission but I never intended to deceive or mislead anyone.” It's hard to believe that Williams did not know what he was doing when he took the money to conduct the interviews with the Secretary of Education about No Child Left Behind, but that's what he says. (Posted Jan. 10, 2005)
Naming rape victims. One of the stickiest dilemmas news organizations have is how to handle rape cases. Rape is a crime that involves extreme invasion of privacy, and many victims of rape do not want their names published. But what happens when the person accused of rape is famous and the case draws a lot of publicity? That happened in 2003 when Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant was accused of rape by a woman in Colorado. Bryant was a highly popular basketball star, and his supporters quickly found out who the woman was and posted her name (and later picture) on a number of web sites. That posed a difficulty for mainstream news organizations that, for the most part, refused to publish her name. If you would like to read more about how the news media handled this situation, the Poynter Institute has a section on the whole topic on its web site.
SPJ Code of Ethics. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is one of the standard ethical references for the field of journalism. Take a careful look at the code. Are there provisions that are unclear or open to question? Are there provisions that discuss situations that would rarely occur? Has anything been left out of the code that you think should be included? Another ethics statement worth reading is that of the Associated Press Managing Editors organization. It does not substanitally differ from the SPJ code, but there are differences in emphasis.
Case studies of journalistic practice. One of the situations with which the chapter begins is that of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The newspaper developed solid evidence of NCAA violations by the hometown University of Minnesota basketball team in 1999. The newspaper had this story just before the team was set to play its first game in that year's NCAA tournament. An extensive description of this case -- how the newspaper got the information, how it made the decision to run the story, and what the fallout was -- can be found at the Journalism.org web site. Another case that makes for good reading and good class discussion is that of Richard Jewell, the man originally accused of planting a bomb in a crowd in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic games. That case is also described in full on the Journalism.org web site.