by Mark Zieman
Newsworthy 1995

A couple of years ago, a committee of veteran newspaper editors drafted a revised and greatly expanded version of the Associated Press Managing Editors Code of Ethics.

Clearly there was a need: APME, one of the largest and oldest journalism groups in America, hadn't revised its code since the one-page document was written in 1975. Back then you couldn't search millions of documents on a desktop computer, or darken your cover photo of O.J. Simpson with the touch of a button. Newspapers were competing against Walter Cronkite, not "Hard Copy." And journalists still were viewed by most Americans as trustworthy, even a bit glamorous, like those two Washington Post guys in the new book that year, All the President's Men.

Yes, clearly there was a need. So the committee finished its work and the resulting five-page Declaration of Ethics was mailed out to editors in every state for their approval. They sent their responses back to me, we collated the results, crunched the numbers and discovered... editors absolutely hated it.

 

If we make our rules clear, and trust our staff to follow those rules, we believe we'll have fewer - not more - lawsuits generated by errors. Second, we believe that if we are unjustly accused, our policy will actually help us in court, not hurt us, because it demonstrates how far we go to get facts right.

"The lawyers will have a field day if you shove this policy onto the table," wrote an editor from Ohio. An editor from Texas added, "It's too detailed. It dangles too many hooks in the water. There's no telling what sort of legal mess we'd snag."

Other editors called it dangerous, a legal nightmare, and anti-pluralist. They called it overkill, micro-managed and preachy.

Some liked it - about 39 percent - but the rest wanted it changed considerably or killed outright. (A few of the responses made me cringe, like this one: "If one loves God before all others and loves his/her neighbor as him/herself, that's all the ethics code needed.")

At the same time, in town hall meetings in Kansas City and across the country, politicians, business people and a lot of newspaper readers reviewed the revised policy, too. But they liked what they saw. Some even thought it too weak. Some urged that it be printed in their local papers. Some were amazed to learn that newspaper editors considered such things as privacy and fairness before publishing stories.

Why the vast difference? Why do many editors reject ethics policies, or at least ones with substance, when readers clearly want them and polls show that respect for journalists has plummeted? Editors have good reason. Their concerns are genuine. They're grounded in experience. They're legally sound. And they're wrong.

First, the reasons against a code:

The Legal Nightmare: Like any institution that makes people mad, newspapers make excellent targets for lawsuits. Printing the truth is tough work, even if you're ethical. If your ethics policy calls for "systematic verification" of stories, but you get a fact wrong, what then? Why give the guy you libeled the opportunity to shake some ethics policy back in your face during a trial? As Associated Press general counsel Richard Winfield points out, "There's a point beyond which enlightened self-interest prevails over the desire to be explicit and detailed and entirely precise on what the public should expect of you." (Sound like a lawyer?)

The Case-by-Case Basis: It's true. No matter what rules you choose to live by, the reality of reporting is that there's ALWAYS an exception. Yes, your reporter promised his source confidentiality (a legally binding contract, according to case law), but you didn't know the source was going to confess to a murder - a murder another man was convicted of. Yes, you normally rule out deception, but your photographer's hidden camera proves that the meat cutter punctured the bowels of that cow and contaminated the whole cutting line. Yes, you normally uphold the law, but these stolen papers came from the Pentagon and, well.... What do you do if your ethics policy forbids all of the above? And if you run the stories anyway, aren't you headed back to #1?

We're All Different: Newspapers are as different as Bedford Falls and Potterville. Your publisher is a director of a local bank - egad! Mine heads the United Way. You have 30 people on your business desk, so you can take your utility reporter off his beat if his mom works at the gas company. But I have only one business reporter, and I can't help it if she's related to everyone in town. An openly gay columnist might be fine in San Francisco, but here in Sioux City? (APME's policy attempted to cover such controversial issues in sections on community involvement and diversity. And editors soundly thrashed them.)

So are you convinced that ethics policies should be scrapped? Well, don't be. Let's look at those reasons again, starting with the legal concerns.

The Kansas City Star revised its ethics policy in 1993 after a reporter fell into an unfortunate, but not uncommon, ethical dilemma that wasn't mentioned in policies floating around the newsroom. Rather than be thankful that nothing was written down, editor Art Brisbane and I were concerned. How could we expect the staff to behave ethically if there were no clear rules for such conduct? If the problem was a major one, how could we justify disciplining a staffer for breaking a rule no one warned him about? How could we expect new employees to understand the high standards of accuracy, fairness and rigorous reporting expected of them?

Finally, after consulting our lawyers, we came to this decision: If we make our rules clear, and trust our staff to follow those rules, we believe we'll have fewer - not more - lawsuits generated by errors. Second, we believe that if we are unjustly accused our policy will actually help us in court, not hurt us, because it demonstrates how far we go to get facts right. Finally, we figured if we ever did do the wrong thing - just flat-out screwed up royally and got dragged into court - we'd lose anyway, with or without the policy. That's called justice.

As for the case-by-case argument, The Star did what lawyers do - wrote loopholes. Yes, there are exceptions, we say in our policy. In general, we say, one should do this or that. When in doubt, ask a supervisor, we advise. We gave examples where rules might be too restrictive. But just because some areas, like conflicts of interest, must remain a bit fuzzy, that doesn't mean that plagiarism is condoned. (Indeed, even editors who voted against the entire APME code found some sections very suitable, notably the passages on plagiarism, disclosure and privacy.)

In the end I believe it's only on the third point - community differences - where policy-hating editors can make a solid stand. And it was that point that ultimately felled APME's initial revision. Although it was meant to serve only as a guide for newspapers to adapt in writing their own code, most editors ignored that point. A second revision, watered down and shrunk to less than two pages, finally passed last year.

Clearly the resources, community and mission of The Boston Globe are not the same as those of the Atchison (Kan.) Daily Globe, nor should their ethics codes be the same. Their voices are different and so are their values and that's perfectly fine.

But if we, as newspaper people, are to distinguish ourselves in the eyes of our customers from Connie Chung, not to mention Ricki Lake, we need to tell our readers what rules we follow, and why.

All newspapers, if they are any good, have rules, written or not. They preserve our greatest asset: credibility. Our readers keep telling us that they want to know what those rules are.

Our staffs need to know them, too.

Mark Zieman is managing editor of the Kansas City Star