I would like to begin by reading part of a newspaper story to you. As I prepared my presentation for this evening I have been thinking hard about this title I have chosen -- "Good Decisions and Great Journalism: The Marriage of Ethics and Craft."
I believe this story speaks powerfully to this title.
The writer is Erin Hoover Barnett. She is a staff reporter at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. In late 1998 the paper published her four part series called "Brian’s Journey." It told readers about the pending death of a man with cancer and his connection to Oregon’s Physician-Assisted-suicide law that took effect in 1997.
This is how Erin’s story began on November 22nd, 1998, under the headline: "Choosing how to die" ("Cancer at age 35 forced a painful question on Brian Lovell: Can someone with so much to live for make a choice to die?")
<READ first part of story>
I read you this passage from the "Brian’s Journey" story because I believe the work journalist Erin Hoover Barnett did on this story speaks powerfully to that "Marriage of Ethics and Craft" that I headline tonight.
Her four-part series was by all accounts a compelling newspaper story. It was very well received by the readers and it was honored as a finalist in the non-deadline writing category by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in last year’s Best Newspaper Writing awards.
It’s clear that the "craft" was excellent. The reporting, interviewing, writing and editing, combined with fine photographs and layout, speak to the highest standards of our profession.
The story was about a significant public and social policy issue – physician assisted suicide – and it was also a story of our times. Readers were drawn to this article because they could relate to it as a tale of life and death, of hopes and agony. It was a story, in many ways, about their lives, albeit viewed through the lens of one man and his journey to death. It was a story that told readers about the many shades of gray that exist between the polarized black and white extremes on the assisted suicide debate.
I hold this story up to you not just as mark of excellent craft, but as an example of how "good decisions" help produce "great journalism."
Reporter Erin Hoover Barnett, along with the photographer on the series, Ross William Hamilton, and their editors at The Oregonian paid considerable attention to journalism ethical issues at every step of their reporting to publishing process.
Early on they recognized the many ethical land mines in a story of this nature, from concerns over privacy and intrusion to the challenge of reporting on a complex and often volatile public policy issue. The journalists at The Oregonian had to work their way through a thicket of thorny concerns about exploitation, fairness, accuracy and context. They had to decide whether their approach to reporting the story was overly intrusive on Brian and his family or meaningful and compassionate. They had to decide if the words and images they would use in the story would inform or offend readers. They had to avoid being unduly influenced or even manipulated by Brian Lovell’s advocacy for assisted suicide. They had to figure out how to respectfully weave opposing views into the fabric of one man’s story. The journalists also had to grapple with their own feelings and beliefs on this complex and contentious issue. And, they had to think through all of the potential ethical issues they might encounter along the way that might draw them from the role of a detached journalist into the conflicts posed by some other participating role. What, for instance, would the reporter do if a family member objected at the last minute to the assisted suicide? What would the photographer do if the patient took the fatal dose of medicine but instead went into painful convulsions rather than dying? Should he intercede?
The reporters and editors at The Oregonian sought outside guidance on covering a story of this nature – I had the opportunity to assist them in that process – and they constantly used a measuring stick in balancing competing values. They focused on their journalistic duty, on their responsibility to be independent, and on the need to be respectful and sensitive to a range of stakeholders involved in the story.
Erin Hoover Barnett and her colleagues modeled that marriage of ethics and craft. They produced powerful, compelling stories with great responsibility. Good decisions connected to great journalism.
In the end, Brian Lovell died of his cancer. He was near the end of the mandatory, 15-day waiting period before he could use the assisted-suicide option when the disease claimed his life.
This marriage of craft and ethics --the goal of Good Decisions producing Great Journalism -- is more than an ideal. It is a very practical necessity, because what journalists do in our society is too important to fall short.
The role of journalism is to serve citizens by disseminating information that helps them function well in a democracy. It’s also to provide other forms of information that help people carry out the routines of their lives.
It’s the journalists’ duty to help us understand what is going on at city hall, at the state capital and in the halls of congress, even when what is happening in that governmental arena seems routine and mundane.
It’s the journalists’ duty to help us grapple with the contention and discomfort surrounding race relations and to struggle with the public policy issues embedded in our views on abortion.
It’s the journalists’ duty to help us make sense of the important issues surrounding DNA, HIV, HMO’s and IPO’s, as well as keeping track of the FBI and the CIA.
It’s the journalists’ duty to help us weave through the rhetoric on the political campaign trail; to give us more issues and less horse race numbers; to probe the positions of McCain, Bush, Gore and Bradley; to hold them accountable by reporting what they say and, just as importantly, what they don’t say.
It’s the journalists’ responsibility to provide us with meaningful information about the decreasing incidence of violent crime in America and the increasing incidence of suicide among teens and the elderly. It’s the journalists’ responsibility to report meaningful statistics about housing and jobs and gross national product, and tell us about trends in religion, faith and spirituality. It’s the journalists’ responsibility to help us understand what is truly a medical breakthrough and what is merely slow progress, what is proven scientific fact and what is just laboratory hypothesis.
Of course, journalists must also offer us the other slices of daily life, as we know it, from the ball scores to the weather forecast to the city council meetings. And, to be sure, journalists should give us some of that "good news" as we call it about triumphs and heroism, to balance all the coverage of tribulations and horror in our world.
Whether on the front page or the perspective section, whether the lead story in the newscast or a feature at the end, journalism is storytelling about the people and places, the issues and the events in our small communities, our metroplexes and a much larger world beyond our borders. Journalism is storytelling about education and health care and public safety; about transportation and energy and politics; about religion and environmental and economic issues. At least journalism should be about that.
It’s a challenging role and a great responsibility, even in the best of times. The journalist’s duty in our society is both unique and essential. Nobody else does what journalists do. Not doctors nor teachers, not lawyers nor judges; not bakery workers nor architects, not airline pilots nor police officers.
And, it is because the role of journalism is singular in our society that journalists have a profound responsibility to be very good at what they do, to strive for excellence every day in every byline, every photograph, and every newscast.
In fact, at the seminars I lead at the Poynter Institute and in newsrooms across the country, I stress that point. The most significant ethical responsibility for a journalist is to strive for excellence. That’s not to diminish the values of accuracy and fairness, for instance, but to embed them within the application of the craft itself. Accuracy and fairness, and independence and compassion and other ethical values are part and parcel of the many craft skills journalists must practice every day.
I suggest there's nothing easy about being a journalist. In fact, it’s a pretty tough job. To be sure, it’s important to note that there’s nothing easy about being a kindergarten teacher, or a beat cop or an emergency room nurse. Let’s recognize journalism for what it is, but also acknowledge that it is not alone as a difficult job and profession.
That said, we only need to look at some of the current stories in the news to see what challenges journalists face.
The primary obligation of journalists is to seek the truth and report it as factually, contextually and fairly as possible, and, given consumer and public interest, as quickly as possible. That responsibility is not simple.
Take the news coverage of Alaska Airlines flight 261. The public has a real need to know what happened with this airline crash. What went wrong? What caused the plane to dive into the Pacific Ocean? How do we sort out the hard evidence from the speculation? How do we give credence to the eyewitness accounts, the theories from experts and the NTSB’s conservative public statements? It’s inevitable that we wonder about mechanical failures (and in some crashes like EgyptAir flight 990 about terrorism). Granted, we probably don’t need to know the answers to what happened right this minute, but we do need to know pretty darn quickly. Airline safety is important to all of us, and it’s part of the responsibility of the news media to help us understand what happened. It’s also important for journalists to monitor the investigation to see if the responsible agencies are measuring up as expected. In the case of EgyptAir 990 it was important to find out if coordination problems between the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that marred the investigation of the TWA flight 800 crash had been rectified.
News organizations have another responsibility in covering stories like these air crashes. As difficult as it is for journalists to do so, and as uneasy as the public is about that happening, reporters have a responsibility to tell stories about the people who died and those who grieve. There is an inevitable level of intrusion in such reporting, a pressure placed upon privacy and propriety. But, those most affected by these tragedies deserve reports that accurately and fairly tell about the human beings who died. And, the public deserves some level of reporting that allows all of us to share in the societal grief of such tragedy.
The challenge, of course, is for the journalists to do their job very well at times like these, to make sure that their craft and their ethics are in sync and that their professionalism is at its height. Often we succeed. When we don’t, the consequences are profound.
The Seattle Times discovered the perils of balancing craft and ethics in their coverage of the Alaska Airlines tragedy. As the paper’s executive editor, Mike Fancher wrote last week, "Seattle Times coverage of the crash was a study in journalistic compassion, but we are haunted by some mistakes we can’t undo."
The paper published dozens of informative and sensitive profiles on the victims, many with Seattle connections. The purpose, editor Fancher said, "was to describe for others, in very human terms, the loss that was being felt, family by family, neighborhood by neighborhood."
And, while the paper for the most part carefully walked that line between compassion and exploitation, between showing respect and re-victimizing, they also stumbled. They included in one profile of an area businessman information from the paper’s file of old stories, information that was accurate but because of its pejorative nature was, as the editor admitted, "inappropriate in the context of a story intended to describe the loss to his family, friends and community."
And, the Seattle Times, despite an attempt to accurately tell the story of the plane crash, tripped on another matter. The paper failed to properly source a story raising concerns of mechanical failure on a previous flight leg for that same airplane. That problem with sourcing led to misinformation and to a story that did not measure up.
It’s an example of the problems that occur when craft and ethics are not properly connected at every stage of the reporting process. By the way, to their credit, the Seattle Times admitted their journalistic and ethical faults and apologized to family members and to their readers. While that does not eradicate the errors of judgment and journalism, it does speak to another level of craft and ethical responsibility. Their forthrightness is a model for other news organizations to recognize and follow.
The challenges journalists face in covering a tragedy like the crash of Alaska Airlines flight 261 reflect the significant task of blending ethics and craft. We can look to other examples to see how important it is for journalists and their news organizations to be as skilled at ethical decision-making as they are at writing, reporting and editing.
Take the story out of Cleveland, Ohio, where South High School was shut down when rumors circulated about a Columbine High School-style massacre. Then four white ninth graders were arrested and charged with planning a racially motivated rampage of bombs and gunfire.
Journalists walk multiple thin lines in covering a story of this nature. How do you report what happened, clearly a legitimate news story, without being the catalyst to stupid, copy-cat actions by others teens who may be inspired to plan or pretend such school violence? How can you accurately report this story and still be fair to the four boys accused of the crime? How do you meaningfully deal with the race issues without inflaming race relations? How can you honor privacy concerns for young people and their families? Stories of this nature require journalists to constantly and carefully balance their obligation to pursue the truth and their responsibility to minimize harm.
There are other examples, some close to home for you folks:
Take the story of the police investigation into the death of that 3-day old boy in Far North Dallas on December 8th. The boy’s mother, 24-year-old Aruna Kavali, had been telling police a stranger grabbed her newborn and beat him to death. That story took another turn late last week with charges of capital-murder against Mrs. Kavali, who police say killed the infant and tried to cover it up with the story of the intruder.
This case brings back the memories of the Susan Smith case in South Carolina, the distraught mother who accused a black man of kidnapping her two sons. We learned, of course, that Smith fabricated that story, and she in fact had sent her boys to a watery grave.
There’s nothing simple for journalists in covering these stories. How do you report the facts as provided by police agencies while still retaining your independence to question elements of an investigation? How do you report the concerns police have about the veracity of those facts? How do you treat someone like Mrs. Kavali with compassion while still reporting doubts about her story? How do you prevent potential harm to others – the black men who became suspects in the Susan Smith case, for instance – while honoring the facts of a story? How do you carefully and knowledgeably report the cultural elements of a story like this one – Mrs. Kavali’s Indian heritage – and the issues of language barriers. How do you protect the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused while honoring the First Amendment responsibilities of the press? There’s nothing simple about the journalistic duty on such stories and it requires the marriage of ethics and craft.
I could cite a handful of other stories currently in the news that have journalism ethics pressure points. How to be sensitive in covering the tragedy that claimed the lives of four athletes at Prairie View A&M. How to accurately cover the cyber-terrorism that has plagued the Internet in recent days without glorifying the culprits or giving others ideas or information on how to replicate the deeds. How to cover the saga of young Elian Gonzales, the Cuban boy whose case of fractured family and tenuous Cuban-American relations has become a national and international cause celebre. How to analyze the campaign ads of the presidential candidates to tell the public what is blarney, what is baloney and what is factual information.
Take your pick of stories and issues and you will find journalists significantly challenged on the ethical front. That said, just because it is a difficult job, that’s no excuse for not measuring up.
Perhaps the greatest weakness in American journalism is that we are not good enough at what we do. That may be our greatest ethical failing.
Oh, sure, we, in journalism, can be faulted for being overly intrusive into the private lives of public officials and the private lives of private folks. And we can be blamed for excesses in coverage, even for being sensationalistic at times. Fair enough. We should be faulted when we go too far.
But let me flip the coin. I suggest that what journalists should most of all be held accountable for is failing to be good enough at what they do. Good enough at ferreting out important stories about chicanery in the halls of government; good enough at revealing racial discrimination in major corporations; good enough at providing the context on complex stories; good enough at informing us about important international issues that affect life here in the states; good enough at covering the important issues in our local communities.
Journalists should be faulted for not reporting more meaningful stories about children and senior citizens; for not writing clearly enough about economics, technology and science; for missing stories about successful local businesses, innovative teachers and hard-working firefighters.
When we fail to measure up in our work, when we are not good enough as journalists, that is an ethical failure. When our professional skills and competence are not what they should be, that is an ethical failure. When we miss important stories, from around the corner, across the nation or around the world, that is an ethical failure.
When I lead ethics seminars, I generally start out by asking the journalists to talk about "What do you stand for" as a journalist. I ask them, "What are the ethical principles and values that guide you?"
That "What do you stand for? Question takes us to the very core of who we are and what we are about. If we can’t answer that question with precision and conviction, then we easily find ourselves troubled by the state of ethics in our profession. Our moral compass is too often out of whack and our moral gyroscope too frequently spins wildly.
Indeed, ethical principles and values provide the moral compass and the moral gyroscope that give us direction and balance. And, that direction and balance is essential in this era of intense economic pressure. A moral gyroscope is needed as we sail the choppy seas of new media products, partnerships and inter-media competition. A moral compass is essential as we travel roads littered with dangerous land mines reflecting the range of complex and controversial issues we must cover, from race relations to gun control to school violence. Simply put, we need clarity on our principles and values more than ever.
But, good intentions and high ideals are not enough. We must also increasingly develop the ability and capacity to turn our good intentions into action and results. We must be as skilled at our ethical decision-making as we are at writing, interviewing and producing newscasts. If not, if our good intentions are thwarted by the inability to act responsibly, then we fail both as journalists and as human beings.
You might expect an ethics guy to focus on all that’s wrong with our profession. To fire criticism and condemnation and spotlight the vultures and vixen of our field. To highlight the vice we perpetrate and the victims we leave in our wake.
Indeed, when the topic of journalism ethics surfaces, it’s easy to think in negative terms. I have no doubt that you folks, as readers, viewers and listeners of the news media, have plenty of concerns and complaints about "how bad journalism is and how unethical journalists are." And, to be sure, journalism does have its share of ethical warts and even some tumors.
I’ll talk about some of those less than laudable matters in a few minutes, but let me begin by addressing journalism ethics in another way, one that is just as important.
Yes, journalism ethics is about accuracy and fairness, about honesty and compassion, about balance and wholeness of coverage. All true, but let me suggest that the core embodies something else.
Journalism ethics is about the unique and essential role of the press. Journalism ethics is about truthtelling -- the duty to inform, educate and engage the public in a clear and compelling way on significant issues. Journalism ethics is about independence -- our responsibility to guard vigorously the essential stewardship role of a free press in an open and democratic society.
When individual journalists and news organizations fulfill these responsibilities and duties, they are acting ethically. They are honoring the principles and values that are at the core of professional, principled behavior.
Allow me to offer some examples:
When the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reveals systemic wrongdoing, including beatings and sexual assaults, at juvenile detention centers around the state, that is principled professional journalism. It holds the powerful accountable and gives voice to the voiceless.
When the Raleigh News and Observer in North Carolina publishes stories revealing the failure of state government to properly regulate the hog processing industry, and the environmental dangers that result, that is professional and principled journalism.
When National Public Radio takes us to Rwanda, East Timor, Yugoslavia and Chechnya to hear the agonizing sounds of genocide, that is powerful and principled journalism.
When The New York Times publishes its continuing series of stories on the scourge of AIDS in Africa, that is both compelling and ethical journalism. Those stories take us, albeit figuratively, to a place we need to go to understand the dimensions of this highly important global issue.
When the broadcast stations and newspapers here in your area gave the public informative, thoughtful and measured coverage of the tragedy last fall at the Wedgewood Baptist Church, that is professional and principled journalism.
When the Winston-Salem Journal (again in North Carolina) tackles one of the most complex and contentious issues of all -- race relations -- and publishes an 8-part series that informs and educates its readers, that is excellent and ethical journalism. The Journal’s series, "Dividing Lines: Race Relations in Forsyth County," tackled race relations through the long lens of history and the microscope of daily life in schools, businesses and community gathering places. That series, like ones in recent years in New Orleans and Akron, accomplished many things including sparking a lively conversation among the people of the community.
We must not ignore such examples of excellent, courageous reporting that measure up to the highest standards of our profession. It’s essential to recognize how often we do things quite well, how frequently we serve the public interest and democracy with meaningful, high quality, and ethically sound journalistic work.
Look at the brilliant medical writing of Laurie Garrett at Newsday. The insightful political commentary of David Broder. The thoughtful coverage of migrant workers by Anne Hull of the St. Pete Times. The analytical business and economics coverage by Mike Jensen of NBC News. The wonderful writing by Bartholomew Sullivan of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis as he weaves stories about the trials of Ku Klux Klan wizards, devastating tornadoes and country music legends. The powerful reporting and writing on poverty and children by Isabel Wilkerson and Jason DeParle of the New York Times. The probing reporting on national security issues by Jack McWethy of ABC News.
I could go on with other examples of first class journalism and principled journalists. But, just as we judge our physicians and our accountants and our architects and our teachers by the full scope of their work, not just by their meritorious moments, we must hold ourselves accountable on the wide range of our work as journalists. And, when our vice overwhelms our virtue, our credibility is seriously damaged.
Thus, we must go beyond praising the success stories, to probe deeply into the cases where something went quite wrong; to examine the instances where land mines exploded; to perform the post mortem on the cases that shattered our confidence and rocked our foundation.
We must acknowledge those times when our craft and our ethics are not in sync and when the product of our work fails to measure up.
And, quite importantly, we must figure out how to minimize the problems that erode our quality, corrode our credibility and devalue the role journalism plays in our society.
If we look behind us to the past few years we see a journalistic landscape littered with such celebrated cases as Chiquita, Tailwind, Dark Alliance, and the shameful shenanigans of columnists Barnicle and Smith who took fabrication and deception to new levels of dishonor.
There’s the balky coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr tragi-comedy where the screw-ups sometimes overwhelmed the substantive reporting. We saw the Dallas Morning News trip badly when they failed to honor their own policies and protocols for sourcing stories. We saw CNBC and CNN slip down the slippery slope into a banal talk-show mentality that rivals the pathos of professional wrestling. We saw too many news organizations get trapped in reporting more about Clinton’s sordid sexual soirees than on his failures of leadership and corrosion of personal character.
We can look back on the skewed coverage of high profile criminal cases from O.J. to JonBenet. We can see, in our rear view mirrors, the journalistic skid marks in coverage of the tragedies of Princess Diana and the American prince, John Kennedy, Jr.
Throw in the legacy of Richard Jewell coverage, see the reporting screw-ups in the coverage of the Dallas Cowboys stars when they did things stupid but not illegal. Look back on the troubling ABC-Food Lion case; note the Los Angeles local TV coverage of the freeway suicide. Sadly, we have a landscape littered with casualties and road kills.
Of course, those high profile cases are not alone in the instances that have troubled both journalism professionals and the public. There was the LA Times’ "Orphans of Addiction" project and the Raleigh News & Observer’s story on the influx of Hispanics to North Carolina. Both were examples where well intentioned journalism created a strong backlash against the reporting and publishing decisions that greatly impacted vulnerable individuals.
Then we have those local television stations in San Antonio that seriously misused their tools in reporting a "shooting" at a local elementary school one morning in November. KENS-TV and KSAT-TV both broke into regular programming around 8:30 A.M. with reports of shots fired and children injured. Turns out there was no shooting at the school, that the television stations jumped too quickly when they heard police and emergency services scanner traffic about an investigation into a shooting involving a school custodian that occurred far from the school. Despite some efforts to verify the story, these stations continued to misinterpret the facts, hyped the story with breaking news live coverage, and scared the daylights out of many parents and other citizens.
Hopefully those stations learned some important lessons in how to use both their journalistic and ethical decision-making tools on such stories. They needed to ask more and better questions, more quickly of themselves and others. They needed to better weigh their desire to rapidly report information with their responsibility to get it right.
They needed sharper tools that morning in November. Let’s hope they’ve done so since.
Taken as a whole, these cases magnify the challenges we face when it comes to our professionalism and our ethics.
I believe these cases of ethical failures tell us that too often
• Our seemingly well developed systems for newsgathering, editing, publishing and broadcasting fail when we are put to the test.
• Our best people still get tunnel vision that diminishes their logic and skill and damages their work products.
• Our super-stars are as prone to egregious and unethical behavior as our rookies, and maybe more so in some respects.
• Our talented leaders can get complacent, over-confident or caught off guard. Then they get trapped, making decisions from a restricted range of less-than-ideal choices.
It’s true in some of the high profile cases that the system failure happened with investigative journalism, where the work takes place in an ethical and legal mine field, where danger exists at just about every step.
But, it’s not just in investigative reporting where we risk peril.
Journalists here in Texas and across the country go about their daily work skirting ethical potholes and pitfalls that can cause serious problems. Sometimes these ethics issues are embedded in feature stories or routine interviews. The problems can be as basic and yet as profound as a misidentified suspect in a criminal case or an out-of-context quote in a political story.
Journalists used to operate in an arena where the morning or afternoon newspaper and the evening newscasts determined deadlines and agendas. That was a relatively simple era compared to the current landscape where breaking news is likely to be intensely covered by the Internet and wall-to-wall by satellite live shots. Journalists increasingly operate in a mixed-media maelstrom where decisions are made in the matter of seconds. It’s a wacky world with great promise but with plenty of peril. And, watching and waiting along the way are plaintiff’s lawyers with very sharp knives and corporate accountants and Wall Street analysts with beady, dollar sign eyes.
A good carpenter knows sharp tools are essential. They distinguish the craftsman from the amateur, exceptional quality from the ordinary. Sharp tools speak of care, precision and the quest for excellence.
This notion of tools, preparation and quality certainly translates to journalism. Good journalists spend considerable time sharpening their skills – their tools – for reporting, interviewing, writing, photography, editing, producing, design and research. Their work demands these sharp tools to create first-rate news products.
Ironically, many journalists who consider themselves craftsmen in their skills fail to prepare some of the most important tools in their bag. They head to work without the necessary sharp tools to make sound ethical decisions.
Journalists of all stripes face a range of ethical issues in their work, whether its interviewing victims of a tragedy, editing copy or video tape on deadline, assigning coverage on a complex and contentious issue like race relations, producing breaking news, reporting a story that connects with your advertisers, or designing pages in the midst of a natural disaster. The pressure points are everywhere. Vulnerable people, incomplete information, conflicting facts, graphic images, sources soiled by motives, powerful people trying to avoid coverage, special interests attempting to influence content.
Journalists regularly must make tough ethical calls and it’s imperative that they have the sharpest tools to accomplish their goals. Conversely, dull tools produce undesirable results and negative consequences.
We need look no further than several recent high-profile cases on the American media landscape.
The journalists covering the shooting siege at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, distinguished themselves in many respects with their high quality reporting that served the public. Yet, there were errors made by television stations in the early coverage of this tragedy that were inexcusable. Live coverage of escaping students and of tactical movements by SWAT teams could have produced even more casualties. It was not implausible that the gunmen inside the school were watching TV coverage and, if so, they could have caused even more harm. The same problem arises from stations airing real-time telephone conversations that purportedly originated from students trapped inside the school.
Granted, no newsroom knows what specific ethical challenges await them when a tragedy unfolds. But, it is possible for news organizations and their journalists to sharpen their tools so they are ready for the inevitable challenges that come with making tough calls in real time. The stations in Denver learned that they needed more advance thinking to help them make sound decisions on such stories. KUSA-TV has responded by writing new guidelines for handling coverage of such crises. They have, albeit belatedly, sharpened their tools, and that will help them the next time they must be at their best.
Another case in point:
The news executives at CBS News were using dull ethics tools when they made the decision to digitally alter reality in the now-infamous New Year’s Eve newscast from Times Square. Viewers of the "CBS Evening News" broadcast saw Dan Rather in front of a strategically placed billboard touting CBS. The technology wizards digitally removed a giant NBC logo (as well as an ad for Budweiser) from the video image of Times Square replacing them with their own CBS corporate logo. Clever marketing to be sure, but outright dishonest. It’s a classic case of technological expertise at the expense of ethical principles.
In their zeal to step up the "branding" that is such a hot strategy in television, CBS execs failed to meaningfully address the ethics issues. CBS News President Andrew Heyward told the Associated Press that there was an internal debate at CBS news about this manipulation of reality.
That debate may have occurred, but those involved were using dull decision-making tools. The wrong questions were being asked, no one was really listening or the thinking was strongly skewed by other motives.
Then there is the case of the Los Angeles Times and the explosion produced by a volatile mixture of misguided business motives and tainted journalism product. The paper got itself into a highly questionable partnership with the Staples Center sports arena that compromised The Times’ journalistic credibility. That arrangement involved sharing advertising profits from an issue of the Times’ Sunday magazine that was entirely devoted to coverage of The Staples Center itself. Despite concerns expressed at various stages by some news editors and other managers, the top execs at the paper kept building a seemingly lucrative financial house of cards that was bound to collapse under the weight of conflicts of interest.
The aftermath was significant. There was turbulence in the Times’ newsroom and agitation among journalists nationwide. In the wake of significant negative publicity, Times’ publisher Kathryn Downing admitted to her own "fundamental misunderstanding" of editorial principles. Times’ editor Michael Parks acknowledged that poor decisions were made. Mark Willes, the chairman and CEO of the paper’s parent company, Times Mirror, and the architect of the plan to "blow up" the wall between the paper’s editorial and business departments, conceded he "didn’t realize it was wrong."
To its credit, The Times’ eventually published a highly detailed report on how and why this major mistake occurred and the paper is putting in place measures to prevent a recurrence. Yet, what’s so distressing is that such a "big-time" organization failed in its capacity to make good ethical decisions on such important matters. How is it that a newspaper of such fine reputation can measure so wrong and botch such significant ethical concerns? How is it that the LA Times didn’t have the sharp tools to make sound decisions?
So, what can we learn from these land mine explosions on the journalism ethics front.
First, our standards are not high enough, and even when they are, we are not very good at making sure that everyone that works for and with us knows what the standards are and has the capacity to carry them out.
Second, we need better internal processes at news organizations for the vetting and editing of stories. As we learned in the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors credibility study, accuracy remains a major problem for newspapers. We make too many mistakes and our readers correctly point out that this problem diminishes journalistic credibility. Editors and news directors and executive producers who run newsrooms need to be better coaches and prosecutors in the ethical decision-making process. The coaching is essential at the front-end and the middle of the reporting process. Newsroom execs must exercise their leadership by helping reporters anticipate the ethical challenges to be faced on a story, to recognize the potential consequences of certain courses of action and to search for alternatives that honor the principles of journalism. And, editors, news directors and executive producers must become better at the "prosecutor" role to insure that standards on honesty, accuracy and fairness are being met in every case. The system failure examples I cited earlier speak clearly to this need for more rigorous editorial oversight at every stage of the process.
Third, we must pay serious attention to the principle of journalistic independence. The public knows that news organizations are commercial enterprises and that the desire for profits is part of the operating equation. But, it’s clear that too many media companies are letting an unbridled, bottom-line mentality overwhelm the journalistic mission. We must figure out constructive ways in which those who run media companies and those on the news side can have meaningful conversations about the tension between journalism and business values. Surveys tell us that a large majority of the public believes that advertisers unduly influence news coverage, as well, by the way, by politicians and powerful special interests. Journalists and news organizations cannot effectively serve the public if we are not honoring our principle of independence.
Fourth and finally, we need to be much better at what we do, not only in our craft skills but also in our knowledge base. Sandy Rowe, the highly respected editor of The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, has been saying for years that journalists must get smarter about the issues we cover. Only then can we measure up to demands of reporting on the issues of economics, religion, government, criminal justice, education and all the other subjects and beats we cover. We must identify, educate and hire more of the best and the brightest of the next generation. We must demonstrate our passion and professionalism in a way that excites young folks about the role of journalism in society and the possibilities of a career in the newsroom. And, to be sure, part of that effort must be specifically geared to expanding the number of people of color in our ranks. If journalism is to provide a meaningful, accurate picture of our world in the 21st century, we must have a more diverse newsroom. We must have greater diversity in our leadership ranks. Parenthetically, as we bring along this next generation of journalists, we must heighten our efforts at professional development for those in the newsrooms. We must help our veterans be better and be smarter on craft and ethics.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers to help us solve what many call a "credibility crisis" for journalism. I know that there are thousands of committed journalists around the country who are very serious about "doing the right thing." And, as I pointed out earlier, we can find many examples of principled and professional reporting. But, there can, and often is, a large gap between the good intentions and the ability to carry them out.
What we do as journalists is so very important, that we must pay serious attention to our ethics, every hour of every day. We must strive for excellence in every aspect of our work.
As I close, allow me to share a thought from someone who has been, for over 25 years, one of the best journalists and journalism educators in our country. Cathy Trost was an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter who covered children, families and social issues. She then became in 1990, the founding director of the Casey Journalism Center for Children and Families at the University of Maryland.
Writing recently about those journalists who cover this vitally important beat, Cathy Trost said:
"We’d be nothing without the tough-minded journalists whose hearts are as big as the ocean and whose notebooks are full of stories that really matter in a time when much journalism increasingly does not. Everyone’s got something bad to say about reporters these days, but I wish they could hear the stories we hear at our annual awards ceremonies.
"Pressed for time, pressed for money, often under-appreciated in their own newsrooms where politics and dot.com beats get all the glory, these [children and family issues] reporters stay out all night at seedy residential motels to chronicle the lives of children raised there, or pass endless days in harrowing housing projects to document the real stories of the way poverty and hopelessness are passed from generation to generation."
Those words from Cathy Trost are the bottom line to tonight’s headline: "Good Decisions and Great Journalism: The Marriage of Ethics and Craft."
