To run, or run from, a story: Publishers tackle tough questions

O. Reid Ashe Jr., president and chief operating officer of Media General, Inc in Richmond, Va., fairly recoiled at the thought of running the story. Jean Fox-Alston, vice president of diversity for the Newspaper Association of America, thought it would be valuable if executed correctly. And some of the other newspaper executives? Well, they had looks on their faces that said: "Please don't let something like this happen on my watch. "

The journalists, all attending the American Press Institute's first Publishers' Forum on Ethics and Responsibility, were reacting to a hypothetical situation in which a newspaper reporter in a conservative, religious town writes a story about oral sex among middle and high school students.

The questions put to the managers were: Would you run the story? Would you include direct quotations from the teen girls? Would you identify the girls' school?

The question about the oral sex story was part of a facilitated group discussion fashioned by ethicist Michael Josephson during a 12-hour intensive look at personal and business ethics at API's Reston, Virginia, headquarters.

Much of Josephson's presentation involved instilling personal responsibility and character and transferring it to the workplace. As he does in many of his seminars with business leaders, Josephson presented his message with many aphorisms about personal responsibility and ethics. For example: "Being truthful is more than telling the truth, " or "Nothing good may come of admitting wrongdoing, but it gets a lot worse when you don't. "

Josephson, who is a lawyer and former law school professor, brought his skills at cross-examination into play when he grilled the newspaper executives about how and why they would make crucial decisions about covering controversial issues such as the oral sex story, or how they would cover stories about their own organizations. He also asked them to come up with innovative ways to find out about the character of a potential employee without violating privacy rights.

"We have a real problem in this county with consequences, " Josephson said. "Either we are too mean or we are not mean enough. " He told the group to use three criteria when deciding how to punish ethical abusers.

First, how will the misdeed affect the performance of the person's job? For example, if a driver is working drunk, the effect is huge.

Second, to what degree does the mistake embarrass or discredit the institution?

Third, what message do you wish to send to the rest of the employees? Is your goal to reform the person or to deter others from following suit?

"Seek consistency, " Josephson said. If you find yourself meting out lenient punishment because one writer is better than another, you have a problem. He also counseled compassion and avoiding "zero tolerance " policies because they do not allow managers to give second chances.

The 20 executives attending the forum came from newspapers across the nation -- Boston, Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia and Kansas, to name a few. The gathering came on the heels of a similar session with Josephson in June for top editors.