Chapter 6
Journalism Ethics
By David Krajicek

			In this chapter
			• Introduction • Ethics and Integrity • Issues of Ethics    Fairness and Objectivity    Sensationalism and       Integrity    Breaking Laws    Who Counts?    Anonymous Sources    Naming Names    Equitable Sourcing    Sexual Assaults    Balancing Justice    'Don't Print That'    Plagiarism, Phantom       Sources    Miscellany • Conflicts of Interest    Favors and Gifts    Point of View    Personal Relationships • Libel    Causes of Libel    Reporter Privilege    Internet Libel    Corrections

Introduction
Journalism ethics can seem as simple as those what-I-learned-in-kindergarten platitudes:

• Be honest and fair.
• Don't lie or steal.
• Don't take advantage of people.
• Don't fabricate.
• Accept no gifts and promise no favors.
• Be considerate of your power and responsibility.
• Maintain integrity and good taste.
• Show compassion.
• Keep an open mind to criticism, and correct mistakes.

• Do we intrude on grief when we pursue the loved ones of crime victims?
• Should we cover suicides, beyond those of prominent people or those committed in a public place? If three students die of suicide in your city in one semester, is this a legitimate trend story, even if school officials caution about copycats?
• As a reporter, are you compelled to explain the potential ramifications when a juvenile or feeble-minded person consents to an interview?
• Does your news organization report arrests or citations for soliciting prostitution? If not, what if a prominent person is cited? If so, what do tell a man who complains that he stands to lose his family or job as a result of a line or two of agate type?
• Is it ethical to make deals with police sources – for example, to hold a story for a few days in exchange for the exclusive first call after an arrest or major break? And what if public safety is a consideration? Police often ask reporters to hold stories they believe might spook a suspect in serial crimes, including rapes. What do you do?
• Is it ethical to do "favor" stories for sources who solicit them – a feature about a judge's aspiring actor son, or a "positive" piece about the police union's annual Christmas donation drive?
• How does your news operation choose its crime stories? Are decisions based upon socio-economics, race, gender or celebrity? Does geography play a role? Will a homicide in a gated suburb get more play than one in a "transitional" neighborhood near downtown? If so, does a life have more news value in the suburbs?
  · Are some stories so important or competitive that you are willing to bend ethics or break laws? And how is that different from the "Dirty Harry Syndrome" or "noble-cause corruption" in law enforcement?
• When you have named a crime suspect in a story, do you always follow through on the case, whether it leads to dismissal or conviction?

Pat Doyle, a late and legendary New York crime reporter, was famous (or notorious) for an old Front Page-style reporter's trick. He would call an outlying police precinct and identify himself as "Doyle from Downtown," as in police headquarters, and press for inside skinny about a crime. Who could blame cops on the other end of the line for assuming that Doyle was a police kahuna, not a mere scribe?

The gimmick was not technically dishonest; he was Doyle, and he was downtown. But ethics go beyond technical honesty to morality.

Retired journalism professor Melvin Mencher offers four good suggestions about moral decision-making in his book News Reporting and Writing:

• Be wary of treating people as a means to an end.
• Believe on the basis of facts, not hope.
• Be committed to a value system but be free from ideologies and commitments that limit thought.
• Be wary of promising to help a source in return for material.

Ethics and Integrity
Many news organizations publish policies on ethics. (For a sampling, see the resources sidebar.)

The New York Times offers a practical ethical primer in its "Guidelines on Our Integrity." It reads in part:

"Our greatest strength is the authority and reputation of The Times. We must do nothing that would undermine or dilute it and everything possible to enhance it. At a time of growing and even justified public suspicion about the impartiality, accuracy and integrity of some journalists and some journalism, it is imperative that The Times and its staff maintain the highest possible standards to insure that we do nothing that might erode readers' faith and confidence in our news columns. This means that staff members should be vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of interest and thus threaten the newspaper's ethical standing. And it also means that the journalism we practice daily must be beyond reproach. No one needs to be reminded that falsifying any part of a news report cannot be tolerated and will result automatically in disciplinary action up to and including termination."

The Times guidelines include these points:

• Quotations. Readers should be able to assume that every word between quotation marks is what the speaker or writer said. The Times does not "clean up" quotations.
• Other People's Reporting. When we use facts gathered by any other organization, we attribute them. This policy applies to material from newspapers, magazines, books and broadcasts, as well as news agencies like The Associated Press…Attribution to another publication, though, cannot serve as license to print rumors that would not meet the test of The Times's own reporting standards.
• Corrections. The Times recognizes an ethical responsibility to correct all its factual errors, large and small.
• Fictional Devices. No reader should find cause to suspect that the paper would knowingly alter facts. For that reason, The Times refrains outright from assigning fictional names, ages, places or dates, and it strictly limits the use of other concealment devices.
• Masquerading. Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story. We may sometimes remain silent on our identity and allow assumptions to be made – to observe an institution's dealings with the public, for example, or the behavior of people at a rally or police officers in a bar near the station house. But a sustained, systematic deception, even a passive one – taking a job, for example, to observe a business from the inside – may be employed only after consultation between a department head and masthead editors.

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