In the wake of the Blair and Kelley scandals, editors, news directors, and journalism educators seem to be reacting as they often do in such crises of credibility: they conduct high-minded seminars, search their collective souls, and declaim against a woefully flawed younger generation. Together we launch ethical jihads, issue ethical fatwas, then the sheer dailiness of our responsibilities overcomes us and we carry on as usual.
In journalism schools our usual approach to professional dishonesty involves instruction in ethics, strategies for detecting malpractice, and punishment. However, this approach to crime and punishment doesn’t always work as we would like, mainly because students live in a culture that seems to tolerate cheating. We have formidable problems convincing students that there are post-graduate consequences for those who plagiarized, fabricated, or cheated during college. They believe their sins and punishments are private, buried in a university file.
They’re right. News media recruiters base their hiring decisions mainly on clips or tapes and an interview. They seem more interested in product than in process. They seem less interested in applicants’ record of character, integrity, and professional behavior.
Here’s an approach that might make a difference.
Recruiters base their hiring decisions mainly on clips or tapes and an interview … They seem less interested in applicants’ record of character, integrity, and professional behavior.News media professions could help journalism schools prevent and cure professional dishonesty if they required applicants for internships and jobs to send a form to their deans similar to the form many law schools require of their applicants. This one-page form asks the dean to certify that the student was in good standing. It also asks whether the student had any disciplinary problems and, if so, what they were. The dean has to send this completed form to the law school as part of the student’s application materials.
Note that applicants must get this form from the law school and send it to the dean of their undergraduate school. So applicants for admission know that law schools will know about their behavior as well as about their GPA and LSAT score. Applicants know that law schools will take into account any disciplinary problems they may have had.
If news media organizations such as ASNE and RTNDA, in cooperation with academic organizations such as AEJMC and ASJMC, could develop and adopt a similar form, requiring applicants for internships and jobs to send the form to their deans and denying interviews until they received a completed form from their deans, they would send a powerful message to students.
Employers should not automatically dismiss an applicant from consideration for an interview on the basis of this form. The infraction may not be particularly serious. Or, if serious, the student may have learned from the experience. Employers could discuss the incident in the interview, probing whether discovery and punishment had made any impact on the student’s character, integrity, and sense of personal responsibility.
Students must understand that professional misconduct matters, not only in college but in life. It matters especially in a profession whose lifeblood is public credibility. At the start of a career of service to democratic life, great clips and tapes and a winning personality should not be as important to editors and news directors as their ability to trust their reporters and writers and to know that their trust is well-placed.
No one-page form will prevent or cure dishonesty. But if journalism schools can tell students from the moment they enter college that their dean will have to submit this completed form about their personal conduct to an employer, they may pause before they knowingly plagiarize, fabricate, or cheat. They may come to believe that crime does not pay.
Does this notion have merit? Is it worth trying? Let’s hear from you.
Trevor Brown is Dean of the School of Journalism at Indiana University and a member of The Poynter Institute’s Board of Trustees.
