For particpants, nothing routine about revisiting ethics in Reston

New York Times Assistant Managing Editor Michael Oreskes speaks about lessons learned from the fallout of Jayson Blair's time at The New York Times Photo by Mark Regan

The agenda for 31 newspaper editors and executives attending an API/ASNE forum seemed forthright and even mundane: "Newsroom Reporting and Editing Standards. " But lately that's been a riveting subject, loaded with controversy and emotion – both for journalists and for the public.

The participants began their 1 ½-day conclave in Reston, Virginia, listening to the tales of three editors whose papers were involved in ethical lapses that have fueled the national focus on newspaper credibility: The New York Times' with its array of Jayson Blair sins; The Salt Lake Tribune's in which two reporters sold information about the Elizabeth Smart abduction case to the National Enquirer, and The Boston Globe's forced resignations of columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith over fabrications.

William L. Winter, president and executive director of the American Press Institute, said at the outset that the forum's goal was to use the incidents as teaching tools to improve the fact and perception of newspaper credibility. Sadly, the industry is revisiting these issues, noted Robert Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, in a dinner speech.

"This is not a new story. We have been here before, " Giles said, citing efforts after incidents such as the Janet Cook "Jimmy's World " fabrication in 1981 to encourage every newspaper to have written standards that are enforced.

By the seminar's end on Tuesday, participants had discussed and vowed to take action in their newsrooms on issues that they feel contribute to credibility crises. Among the areas of concern are: ethical lapses, accuracy, public confidence, arrogance, Balkanization in the newsroom, overwork, ratting out colleagues, anonymous sourcing, tracking reporters' lapses throughout their careers, lack of communication among editors, misunderstandings about corrections and clarifications, print journalists as television personalities, and the creation or coddling of "stars " in the newsroom.

By the end of the seminar there appeared to be unanimous support for written standards for every newspaper. There was a sense that the discussions, which sometimes took the form of commiserations, had eased a bit of the pain caused by the bruising credibility incidents.

At the outset, though, there was a sense of despair after James Shelledy, former editor of The Salt Lake Tribune; Michael Oreskes, assistant managing editor of The New York Times; and Walter "Robby " Robinson, investigative spotlight editor of the Boston Globe, told stories of lies, management mistakes and, often, arrogance.

Carol Stevens, editorial page editor at USA TODAY, referred to police department internal affairs divisions that police unruly officers. "Are we at the stage where we need an institution (like that)? It's a sad question to ask, " she admitted.

Other participants noted that an IAD within a newsroom would "do serious damage " to a newsroom culture, but clearly the controls that exist aren't effective.

"We have the internal systems. Good editors watching carefully ought to be able (to see these things happening.), " Robinson countered, adding that those existing systems must be made to work.

Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of The Washington Post, said he believes that recent credibility problems are rooted in management, which sets the tone of a newsroom. He also expressed his concern that reporters believe that managers "are impervious to criticism, " that they don't want to hear complaints or suspicions about others on staff. He insisted that they do.

That sticky issue, at least when it comes to setting the record straight, has been addressed by The Wall Street Journal, said Byron "Barney " Calame, deputy managing editor of the paper. He said his organization has been encouraging reporters to print corrections to the errors in their stories. "You say that correcting mistakes is the only way the archive gets fixed and that two doors down your best buddy may use those archives and get screwed up, " Calame said.

Several other participants noted that their papers have a policy that punishes reporters – sometimes with an unpaid day off -- after a certain number of significant corrections appear. Many participants said that this method actually discourages the reporting of errors.

For Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian in Portland, investing more authority in copyeditors and line editors, enforcing standards uniformly, making sure that "editors talk to people face to face, " and bringing more people into conversations are chief concerns.

In a spirited discussion, participants tackled the issue of quoting anonymous sources and, if using them, making sure the reporter reveals those sources to at least one editor. Shelledy quipped that a close reading of The Washington Post would indicate that "nobody here has a name. "

Several editors suggested banning blind quotes, likening the process to an addict going cold turkey. "If we just pull the needle out of our arm, we'll all go through withdrawal, " said Linda Cunningham, executive editor of the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star. But, she concluded, the industry will be the better for it.

Coleman said anonymous sources are a way of doing business in Washington, where the business is government and "where that's the way the game is played. " Sure, he said, "there must be levels of sourcing. I am not going to impose the same rules of the game I would impose on a Fairfax county reporter that I'd impose on Bob Woodward. I don't want to know his sources. Somebody does . . .. (Besides) I don't think Woodward loses credibility when he uses anonymous sources. He loses credibility when he is wrong. "

Reporters who appear on television and radio are a modern fact of life, but they have introduced new problems into newsrooms. Reporters often earn more than their newspaper salaries from guest or regular appearances on television. The ASNE/API participants felt there was an immediate need for more written guidelines regulating the practice, which often results in a supposedly objective reporter expressing his opinion on a subject he or she is covering.

One overriding concern, said William Milsaps Jr., executive editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is with big money offered to reporters who might not make huge salaries from their print work. The money confuses the issue of "who is your master? "

Bhatia noted that the many pieces of the credibility puzzle cry out to a need for better leadership. "This always bears repeating. What we are talking about is leadership, how we do that more effectively. "

Oreskes agreed. Referring to the Jayson Blair incident, he said: "Absolutely this is a management issue. We have no excuse for what happened . . . Proper management really manages. You can write all sorts of ethics, but a lot of things are really done in the details . . .(you must) make sure people are responsible for those details. I can't stress that enough. "