Q. I'm a young journalist who recently finished a lengthy internship at a small daily paper. I was not hired by the paper after my internship ended, so I've been freelancing and hunting for jobs for the past five months or so.
I was recently offered a public relations job with a local, small nonprofit outside my newspaper's coverage area, and the employer has told me that it would allow me to continue freelancing for the paper if I took the job.
On the surface, this seems like good news, considering journalism is my passion and I don't want to leave the industry completely. If I took the job, I planned to tell my editor at the paper about the nonprofit and its cause to avoid getting assignments that would put me in danger of having a conflict of interest.
My main concern is the ethics of continuing in journalism while holding a job in public relations. Is playing both sides of the field at once unwise or unethical, even if there's no conflict of interest? What would employers say if they saw this type of experience on my resume? Do you have any tips for staying honest and maintaining credibility in journalism when your other job requires you to make others look good?
Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Alex A. I would make at least one change in your plan, and that is to tell the editor before you accept the job. If the editor is not going to have anything to do with you working in PR, you want to know that before you make your decision.
It is not surprising the PR company would let you work for the newspaper. The company could benefit. Journalism is the side that could suffer if there is a conflict.
You have anticipated the conflicts pretty well, and I don't know that you will necessarily be playing both sides of the fence if you avoid doing any journalism that could benefit or harm your public relations clients. That is more possible as a freelancer than as a full-timer.
The relevant parts of the
Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics say that journalists should act independently. Furthermore, the code says journalists should "be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know; ... avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived; ... [and] remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility."
You have to evaluate your situation in light of those principles.
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