Don't Mistake Tradition for True Ethics

At an ethics seminar about 12 years ago, a journalist complained that her newspaper's advertising division wanted a copy of the story budget for the travel section.

The ad staff wanted to encourage advertisers to buy ads in the travel section, which happens to be what we pay advertising sales people to do.

The journalist was appalled. But a colleague, interestingly, a more veteran journalist, asked what difference it would make. She groped for an answer, and in the end, all she could come up with was the old standby argument against the appearance of impropriety.

I submit that nobody in our audience that we're purporting to protect but other journalists would perceive anything of the sort. If we don't pervert our journalism to satisfy an advertiser, we uphold our ethical standards, whether we share a story budget or not.

It was about the time of this seminar that I stopped worrying about perceived conflict of interest and kept worrying about real conflict of interest. One matters; one doesn't.

Our business is steeped in tradition and ethics. Unfortunately, we too often get the two confused.

We've been practicing journalism this way for about 50 years. As if we can't trust ourselves to be honest, we play by a bunch of rules to avoid the slippery slope, the foot in the door. The rules are implicit condemnation of our own integrity. Knowing what journalists and journalism used to be like, it's not surprising that we found ways to police ourselves. The traditions were created to protect our ethics.

But we can have ethical journalism without the old rules straightjacket. Instead of being tradition bound, we simply need to be bound by our ethics.

Now, I assume somebody out there will cite the infamous Staples incident in which a great American newspaper entered an unholy alliance with an advertiser. I would submit that the crime in this case was a failure to disclose. If the readers knew that both the newspaper and the arena were getting a share of advertising profits, the readers could fairly judge the newspaper content.

If you're too ashamed to tell somebody what you're doing, let that be a hint: You probably shouldn't be doing it.

Our integrity doesn't depend upon the rules. We're honest or we're not.

At the same seminar long ago, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter told the group that she would read back or show portions of stories to people she was writing about.

I would bet most journalists would gag at that idea. But this reporter wasn't giving license to someone to change her work. She was making sure what she was writing was right.

Journalists refuse to join community organizations. Some reporters won't take news contacts to lunch.

Which is worse, somebody's perception that a reporter has been compromised or a reporter being too distant to know what the hell he or she is talking about?

Uh, wakeup everybody. The people who think journalists are biased think that way anyway.