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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 4/6/2007 10:31:24 AM
Title: MarketWatch editor on Francisco's investment
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
Memo from MarketWatch editor-in-chief David Callaway

April 5, 2007

To MarketWatch staff:

I wanted to send this note out to clarify how MarketWatch approaches ethical issues for our reporters, and also to discuss Bambi Francisco's investment in and relationship with Vator.tv.

Unfortunately, in yesterday's article on CNET, my comments about ethics were
presented in a way that some have read to say that MarketWatch somehow has different ethical rules than do other publications of Dow Jones. No one should have that impression: We don't. Every MarketWatch employee, including every reporter and editor, is covered by the Dow Jones Code of Conduct. The point I was trying to make is that "new media" has raised issues that traditional media didn't face, for example blogs, which are frequently built around a particular reporter or reporting team and include far more commentary and "attitude" than most newspapers and networks ever would have published.

But the issue raised by Bambi's investment in Vator.tv isn't new or different or a product of the Internet: It's a pretty straightforward question of making sure that our journalists' financial investments don't affect, or appear to affect, our coverage. Dow Jones doesn't bar reporters from owning interests in other companies, but it does forbid reporters and editors from working on stories about companies in which they have a financial interest or competitors of those companies unless explicitly permitted by their editors. Reporters assigned to a beat cannot own shares of companies whose business is on their beat.

In Bambi's case, it was my judgment that because she is a columnist, and therefore far more able to choose her stories than a beat reporter, we could let her invest in Vator.tv. (She did pay for her interest, by the way - CNET simply assumed that she didn't.) Our ground rules were that she not write about that company, its investors, or the companies using Vator.tv. She also agreed that she wouldn't use her MarketWatch credentials to promote Vator.tv or the companies using it. CNET mentions three columns Bambi wrote, but never claims that any of those companies used or invested in Vator.tv. All of us, including Bambi, continue to look at this because none of us wants there to be any doubt that everything MarketWatch publishes, including Bambi's columns, is the product of our news judgment.

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