It was reported once more this past weekend that the Washington Post is considering getting rid of its ombudsman position of 43 years. Current ombudsman Patrick Pexson moved the story past the rumor stage with his Sunday column http://www.washingtonpost.com/patrick-b-pexton/2011/02/24/ABkLhYN_page.html  Pexson said newly installed executive editor Marty Baron believes there are plenty of avenues already in place for addressing criticism of the Post and, with tightening budgets, the salary didn’t make sense.

“There is ample criticism of our performance from outside sources, entirely independent of the newsroom, and we don’t pay their salaries,” Pexson quotes Baron as saying.

Granted, ombudsmen have been dying off at a steady rate since the 1970s, but they’ve always had an important and revered position with the largest of America’s newspapers. The Post’s ombudsman has been a position of great inspiration and purpose for one of America’s greatest media institutions.

Herein lie my concerns: First, allowing those outside the newsroom to be the sole source of criticism for your publication isn’t the same as having internal checks and balances with self-imposed accountability. Second, if Baron and others think that they can manage the task of addressing criticism by using in-position editors they are missing the entire value of having an ombudsman. Allowing subjective editors to replace an independent ethicist becomes nothing more than a whitewashing effort to resolve complaints. By allowing the alleged offenders within the newsroom to help serve, even in a small way, as the judge and jury means you are eroding the very credibility you hope to attain with a separate reader advocate.

I’ve learned a lot from my 20 years on the SPJ Ethics Committee. Something that has always struck me as odd is this ill-conceived notion that people who become editors are suddenly bestowed with indelible, sage moral reasoning. You see in many newsrooms editors deemed the best purveyors of ethics.  But, if that were the case, most ethically suspect material would never make it before the public, assuming review by these moral mastodons. We’d have no case studies to analyze; we’d need no code of ethics. We’d simply leave it to the moral attributes of a few who are in power by virtue of their longevity at the workplace or their abilities to get the most of a reporting staff or polish a rag tag piece of copy into a masterpiece of prose.

In this position as chairman of SPJ’s Ethics Committee I field numerous ethical complaints from the public. In almost every incident they call SPJ’s Ethics Hotline because they’ve already pleaded their case with the reporter and an editor but were ignored, spurned or told there was no problem. None of these papers have independent ombudsmen, so the verdict lies with the people who are being criticized. These have included cases where the reporter’s wife is campaign manager for a candidate, where an editor has lobbied in the paper to get a coach fired after he cut the editor’s son during tryouts. They’ve involved cases where they’ve refused to run corrections even after documents were provided to show the reporter made a factual mistake.

We then wonder why our moral currency with the public isn’t of much value anymore. And, now we have a great paper wondering why an independent, judicious voice is needed to lend credibility to its work and image.

Last fall, a young reporter called me saying she questioned her editors’ decision to pay for travel, hotel and meal expenses for a couple who were going to see their son in prison. The story focused on the tribulations of having an incarcerated family member. They asked the couple to be a part of the story. The couple wanted paid, and the paper agreed to send them 100 miles away to visit their son. The couple ran up room, meals and bar bills the paper paid. When this young reporter, a year removed from college, questioned the ethics of the editors, she said she was informed “this is way things get done in journalism” and if she didn’t like it, she might want to look elsewhere for a job. And, if she brought it up again, she’d need to. This type of ethical decision making is more common in American newsrooms than we want to admit. And, this is the moral reasoning we are pleased to show the public whose interests we claim to be serving?

In a journalism world where hollowed-out excuses are readily used as foundational support for ethical decision making, why would a newspaper with the reputation of the Washington Post consider removing the very underpinning of integrity and credibility from its news coverage? Granted the Post is assailed every day for its decisions, just like most of America’s media. But, until now, it has never considered allowing those who could be breaking ethical standards to sit in judgment of themselves.

(Smith is chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee. He served as chair from 1994-96 and 2010-present. He is the former president of SPJ (2009-10). He currently teaches journalism ethics at the University of Dayton.

This post is written by Andrew M. Seaman, who is a member of SPJ’s ethics committee.

The decision by the Knight Foundation to pay Jonah Lehrer, who has admitted fabricating quotes and duplicating material, $20,000 for a speech brought swift ire from many journalists.

I join that disappointed chorus; the Knight Foundation’s choice to use its money in this way is antithetical to its long tradition of advancing the field on so many fronts. But it’s also important to remember that plagiarism and shoddy journalism’s price tag is much higher than $20,000. Thieves and fabricators cost us much more through collateral damage.

Every day, journalists work hard to explain the world. While some of them are bad apples, the vast majority hold true to the Society of Professional Journalists’ first ethical tenet: seek truth and report it.

Admittedly, it’s getting harder and harder to do that, especially with decreasing support from many news organizations that live by the motto: do more with less.

And while most good journalists are recognized internally by their editors and colleagues for their hard work, only a few – Cronkite, Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein – will become household names with the public.

Still, journalists show up each day to do their work and report on everything from local school board meetings to civil wars.

But just because a report is broadcast, printed or posted doesn’t mean people will watch, listen, read or click. No, journalists need to earn their audience’s trust before they do that.

Much of that trust belongs to the individual news organization, but another sizable portion is owned by the entire profession.

For example, when Gallup conducts its annual poll about the media, it lumps all newspapers, broadcasts and websites together under mass media. There is nothing wrong with that, but it means every journalist is responsible for maintaining that trust.

In September 2012, the number of Americans who distrusted mass media reached 60 percent, according to Gallup. That’s the lowest level of trust in over 15 years of available data. The last time the annual poll showed a majority of Americans trusting the media was 2006.

When people like Jonah Lehrer, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Janet Cooke come along, it’s like bomb. It doesn’t just ruin their careers and reputations; it also hits journalism’s collective trust.

Take Stephen Glass, who was caught fabricating stories at The New Republic, as an example. He was not just found out; his rise and fall was also turned into a movie that starred Hayden Christensen.

Jayson Blair, who was caught fabricating stories at The New York Times, had his deceptions chronicled in a lengthy front-page story. The same goes for Jack Kelley with USA TODAY.

There’s nothing wrong with movies or explaining a plagiarist’s or fabricator’s deceptions, but these examples show how easy it is for the average person to start questioning and distrusting every story from The New York Times, USA TODAY or any other media organization.

Some people may offer excuses for what these people did. Perhaps the stress was too much for them? Maybe they couldn’t find the stories they once did? I don’t know why they did what they did, and frankly I don’t care. There is no excuse for deception.

When a person consciously steals another person’s work or invents their own reality, they do not just ruin their career. They damage the reputation of every journalist doing hard and honest work – from those covering the school board meetings to those in the middle of war zones.

I don’t think it’s possible to put a price on that damage.

So, why am I angry that the Knight Foundation gave Jonah Lehrer $20,000 to speak? It’s because I don’t understand why anyone would give money to someone who has already taken so much.

Additional Information:

“Knight CEO regrets paying plagiarist” http://hrld.us/Yj8SvX

Jonah Lehrer’s speech: http://bit.ly/Yj90M2

Jonah Lehrer’s latest tweet:

Here is the text of my speech. I’m deeply sorry for what I’ve done. jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apo…

— jonahlehrer (@jonahlehrer) February 13, 2013

Representatives from some of the most prominent journalism organizations are confronting the industry’s struggle with plagiarism and fabrication. To better understand the issue, we want to hear from the nation’s newsrooms about their policies aimed at eradicating such behavior.

The mission started when Craig Silverman, author of Regret the Error and a Poynter adjunct faculty member, detailed ten episodes of plagiarism during what he labeled “journalism’s summer of sin,” and challenged journalism’s professional organizations to work together to attack the problem.

The challenge was taken up by Teresa Schmedding, president of the American Copy Editors Society, who talked about the idea during her workshop presentation in September at Excellence in Journalism. SPJ President Sonny Albarado committed the society to participate.

Schmedding began her letter of invitation to the committee with a stark assessment, “Plagiarism and fabrication are killing us.”

A committee with journalists and journalism educators, including representatives of the American Copy Editors Society, the Associate Press Media Editors, the American Society of News Editors, College Media Advisers, the Online News Association and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

President Albarado and Ethics Committee Chair Kevin Smith asked me to represent the Society of Professional Journalists on the committee. The committee has been divided into three subcommittees, each looking at a different aspect of the issue.

William G. Connolly, a retired senior editor of The New York Times, is leading the committee effort. Connolly is a founding member of the American Copy Editors Society and has served as the president of its education fund.

The goal is to create an e-book that would define practical guidelines for preventing, detecting and responding to plagiarism and fabrication. The plan is for the e-book to be ready for a summit meeting that will be part of the ACES national conference in St. Louis on Friday, April 5.

Silverman, who is also a member of the committee, asked Poynter readers for help recently:

“ 1. We’d like to collect examples of newsroom policies that talk about plagiarism and fabrication. What do you tell your people about what is and isn’t plagiarism? Do you have ethical guidelines that address these issues? We want as many of these policies as possible.

2. We’d like to hear from newsrooms that have instituted measures to detect and prevent incidents of plagiarism and fabrication. Do you do random checks? Do you use plagiarism-detection services to root out stolen content? Do you call sources quoted in a story? Any examples of internal practices or programs would be great.”

SPJ members who have examples to contribute should email them to Silverman at silvermancraig@gmail.com, and if you have questions or suggestions about the committee’s work, you may email me at farrell@uky.edu

Silverman’s original article, “Journalism’s Summer of Sin marked by plagiarism, fabrication, obfuscation,” including the examples, is available at http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/187335/journalisms-summer-of-sin-calls-for-leadership-transparency/

By Andrew M. Seaman

One of the last moments of Ki Suk Han’s life was broadcast to the world on the cover of Tuesday’s New York Post.

The 58-year-old Queens man was pushed in front of an oncoming Q train in New York City’s subway system on Monday. On the cover, Han is shown clinging to the subway platform seconds before being pinned between it and the cars, according to the Post’s description of events. He later died of his injuries.

The front page caught the attention of several journalists, whose Twitter reactions and judgments were nicely curated by Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman.

“Grim,” “sickening” and “over the line” were all used to describe the Post’s front page.

SPJ’s own Kevin Smith, chair of the Ethics Committee, wrote in a tweet that the Post’s decision showed an “astounding lack of ethics.”

Indeed, the SPJ Code of Ethics is clear that journalists should minimize harm by showing good taste and not pandering to lurid curiosity.

Unlike gut-wrenching pictures that show the human toll of wars or the devastating impact of natural disasters, the photo of Han on the Post’s cover does not add to the public discourse. The picture tells us nothing more than Han was most likely terrified in the last moments of his conscious life.

This is not the fault of the photographer – R. Umar Abbasi – who is now facing public backlash and questions about whether he could have done more to save Han. Like many of the photographers asked by Gawker, I don’t have enough information to weigh in on that argument.

Blame, however, does fall on the editors of the Post, who had time to make the decision to publish the image on the cover – with an oversized “DOOMED” splashed across the bottom.

A quick look at the paper’s website shows that there are other photographs the Post could have used, including exteriors of the subway station and a waiting ambulance. Though they may not be as jarring as the image of Han about to be hit by a train, those pictures are more respectful toward him and his family – another lesson from the Code of Ethics.

In this case, the damage has been done. Others reproduced, linked, tweeted, blogged and disseminated the cover throughout the world.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the Post and other news organizations will learn from the ample public backlash brought on by this cover.

A lot has been made of the word “objectivity” as it relates to news coverage and reporting.
Some people believe it is an attainable value in American journalism, a principle worthy of our efforts. Others think it is nothing short of a myth. The rankling over whether objectivity can truly exist in journalism has been the subject of so much contention over the years, I feel like I can stand before a mirror and carry on a lengthy debate with myself.

I know the rhetoric.

I also know what I believe and how I apply it to my role as chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee.

To the many voices who respectfully say it’s a farce, and to the growing voices who contend it’s nothing more than a concocted standard by which journalists could hang their principled crowns for display for all these many years, I concede this point – we are all biased.

We have favorites and there are those things we do not like. We have a core set of beliefs and we nurture them, guard them and share them, and we feel threatened if we are asked to shift our thinking in another direction, be that politics, religion, social issues or fiscal philosophies.

I use those four constants because they’ve been at the core of a lot of national debate during this presidential year. They will continue to garner attention in the next. Our core feelings of conservatism or liberalism are at odds. We are figuratively crossing swords every day over social issues and how to manage the nation’s finances. The rhetoric is divisive and acidic many times. And journalists are weighing in.

Over the past months the SPJ has been deluged with calls and emails from journalists with questions about political ethics. Aren’t journalists supposed to be objective? Why are they lying and spinning the truth?

One journalist’s blog response could best be summarized by “Get over it. American journalism hasn’t been objective for years. Think Yellow Journalism.” In other words, why are we still having this discussion and why do people still cling to this lame, cockeyed notion that journalism is about impartial, unbiased, objective reporting?

Here’s my retort. I admit up front it’s not objective.

We are still having this discussion and we still harbor hope for objectivity because it matters that much to people who want to believe that the press is the bridge between the lies and the truth. They want to believe that journalists can resist their inner voices and personal feelings and deliver news that has truth and fairness at its foundation. It matters because in a world of increasing distortions and subjective opinions being packaged and sold as “fact” it’s still important to hear information that fairly takes all views into account, even those we don’t personally agree with. It matters because when we stop being objective and fall into the trap of adjusting news to accommodate our sources and not our public, we sell out our reputations and hand over our credibility. Our integrity is gone.

Think of objectivity as the act of holding your breath under water. No one expects you to be able to do it 24 hours every day. They expect that you can do it when the need arises. The consequences of not doing it are dire.

In the privacy of your home, among family and friends, you can choose to breathe as you wish. But, when you are reporting and producing news, you are expected to “hold this breath” and repress those personal feelings, working toward the goal of objectivity, much like the person submerged needs to strive for the goal of staying alive.

You “hold your breath” when you cover an event, create a news story, when someone asks you to wear a political button or erect a sign in your yard. You “hold your breath,” too, when your friends and family ask you to write stories about them, when the publisher asks for a business story about his dry cleaner. The breath holding doesn’t mean you can’t have personal feelings or opinions. In fact, it’s best if you recognize those and admit them to yourself. What it means then is these biases, subjective political, religious, social views should not surface in moments when it can impact your work as a journalist.

You see, attainable or not, it’s still worthy of our strongest efforts. To give in and suggest that journalists can’t reach this platitude is to hand over our trade to the charlatans, the carnival barkers and the mind benders. And that would surely suffocate us, our public and our democracy.

How serious does a conflict of interest have to become before you can call it a conflict of interest? Believe it or not, this conundrum is intended as the start of an ethical discussion.

The SPJ Code of Ethics is clear: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know. The code also advises journalists to “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and to “Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.”

Many news media companies apply that injunction to those who gather, report and edit the news but not to those on the so-called business side of the operation.

So when the president of the University of Cincinnati abruptly announced he was resigning Aug. 21, one of those with a seat on the UC Board of Trustees was Margaret Buchanan, publisher and president of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The reason Greg Williams quit remains a public mystery. As Enquirer reporter Cliff Peale wrote in a Sept. 28 story, “It remains unclear, a month after Williams’ departure, whether he was forced to resign from his $451,000-per-year job six days before the start of fall classes. It’s also unclear why the board decided to award him a $1.3 million severance package.”

Publisher Buchanan announced she has resigned from the UC Board of Trustees. “My news team is reporting aggressively on the departure of UC President Greg Williams and the search for the next president,” Buchanan said in a statement reported Sept. 28 in the Enquirer. “The credibility that is so important to our news team’s work is my highest priority, and I did not want my involvement with UC to make it uncomfortable or confusing for them or for the community.”

Big questions do remain unanswered. First, why should the board of a public university be allowed to preside over a president’s resignation without giving account to the public whose sons and daughters attend there and to Ohio taxpayers who support it? And second, what earned Williams a severance package that looks to be three times his annual salary when so many people are out of work?

Give Buchanan points for recognizing the conflict and resigning her seat. The Enquirer stories I reviewed usually made note of her membership on the board, which would be consistent with the SPJ Code’s statement to “Disclose unavoidable conflicts.” Whether this conflict truly was unavoidable is a bigger question.

I also think it’s fair to question whether she really understands the conflict. Peale’s story also reported that after her resignation from the UC Board of Trustees, Buchanan was appointed chairwoman of UC Health, an affiliated health care company. While she’s off the Board of Trustees and out of that line of fire, she’s still involved with the university. Given the centrality of health care costs and policies, it’s hard to imagine she is not going to be at the center of important decisions that deserve public explanation. How will she and the region’s metropolitan newspaper handle that when news arises?

This is not the first time her community involvements have brought her public attention. City Beat, a local publication, reported in April that Buchanan sits on the executive committee of what it labeled a major real estate development connection and is in charge of overseeing publicity and marketing efforts for the organization.

Her role was not disclosed in a 1900-word Enquirer article that City Beat said lauded the efforts of this development group despite the economic downturn.

I fully understand that being involved with community enterprises is a perfect way for the news company’s top officer to associate with other local leaders, to demonstrate the company’s commitment to the community and to contribute to those efforts that are intended to improve the quality of life of residents. But it almost always raises questions and makes for some uncomfortable moments.

Where is the line when contribution becomes conflict of interest? Should a media executive sit on any board of a policy-setting public university where news is made routinely? Should a media executive take any role relating to publicity for any organization? If an executive sits on a university board, should he or she insist that there be no secrets no matter how embarrassing the event might prove?

This debate is more important than ever, given that most cities now have fewer media outlets than a few years ago. In a one-newspaper town such as Cincinnati, competing voices are unlikely to challenge the role Buchanan played and it will be uncomfortable for Peale or any reporter to dig out those facts.

As someone who served for 12 years as the managing editor of a community newspaper without an on-site publisher, I understand the importance of those community commitments and the potential for conflict.

Publishers and other media executives need to keep asking themselves whether their involvement will improve the community without impeding the community’s access to important information. They also must ask themselves if these positions don’t compromise the credibility of the journalists who work to inform the community.

I also wonder whether making decisions involving millions of public dollars and affecting 41,000 students is an appropriate position for any news media executive. It’s certainly a debate the profession should engage.

In an effort to bring some sense of ethical standards to the unbridled spirit that often accompanies social media, people have traditionally reverted to the default settings of the legacy mediums for a sense of guidance. These codes, based on traditional media practices, can serve as a centrifuge by taking new, technologically driven media and breaking it down into its simplest components of journalism. These components are universal for all media. In SPJ’s ethics code they are truth, fairness, harm, independence and accountability.

The Society of Professional Journalists relies on its current ethics code to be a standard-bearer that can be applied to the varied mediums, rather than addressing social media specifically. This has been a source of debate from external influences, as well as from within SPJ.

The debate comes down to a singular focus – Does the code require rewriting to directly reflect the new technologies, specifically digital and social media, or can it serve this new journalism through a more overarching interpretations of its existing standards? To put it another way, is the code about functionality or inspiration? The answer for SPJ can be both.

To complicate this debate is the code’s existing language. The code does offer specifics as it relates to broadcast news and other times with print. It mentions news teases for broadcasting and headlines for newspapers. It talks about readers, listeners and viewers in a time when newspaper, radio and television were the three legacies. Today we might reference crowd-sourcing where the public provides integrated collaboration with the media. The question that arises is, if the current code was written to take into account specifics in 1996, why is there a resistance to do that same today to acknowledge the differences between old media and social media?

The retort then is to fairly ask why the current language doesn’t serve the ethical concerns of these new mediums sufficiently and provoke the pragmatic question: Must the code need revised every time technology advances and introduces another form of journalism? If we rewrite it today to address the ethics of Twitter, what happens if Twitter disappears? Do we rewrite it to address Twitter’s replacement?

The real test of the current code’s value comes from reading it line by line. For instance, Under Seek Truth and Report It, the first instruction is “Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.” Does this mandate speak clearly enough to the use of reporting via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Four Square, Tumblr, blogs? Is there a discernible difference between testing the accuracy for a newspaper or TV news cast and doing the same for Twitter?  If the answer is yes, then that needs to be explained in a forthright and logical manner. In short, a case needs to be made for how it’s different and why the current code should be changed.  If no, then the code has provided sufficient advice.

In addition:

Identify sources whenever possible. Are the rules the same for all mediums or does it need to change for social media?

What about promising anonymity?
Using undercover tactics?
Differentiating between news and advocacy?
Labeling analysis?
Giving others the opportunity to respond to allegations before publishing?
Showing sensitivity with interviews?
Promoting good taste?
Being judicious about naming criminal suspects, victims?
Disclosing conflicts?
Identifying yourself as a journalist?
Denying favorable treatment?
Showing a reasonable guarding of a person’s privacy?

If these questions cannot be specifically applied to social media reporting practices, then more viable, directed solutions are in order.

As always, the most sensible way to producing a strong code of ethics is to field test it repeatedly. If it comes up short in providing you with reasonable solutions or guidance, then it’s not doing its job.

To that end, my advice is to give the code a chance; at the very least, when in doubt, use it as the default setting. If you are looking for the solution to a social media ethics question and you have any doubts about what is ethical, always err on the side of applying the same standards as those used in other mediums. It may not please you or jibe with your reporting style, but it will almost certainly put in a group with others who follow these standards and give you a defendable position.

Nearly every day I receive phone calls or emails from journalists in the United States posing ethical questions to me. It’s part of my job as chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ national ethics committee to help American journalist make wise decisions about their professional behavior.
In fact, between the journalists and members of the public, SPJ’s ethics committee answers more than 300 inquiries each year. A slow, but steady portion of those calls are coming from foreign journalists. In a recent week, I answered questions from journalists in Denmark, Russia and Pakistan. For a period of time a lot of questions came from Indian journalists. I’ve been interviewed by reporters and editors in Egypt, Iraq, Korea, Japan, Israel, England, Germany, Canada and Vietnam. We are happy to help anyone, of any nation, address ethical problems in this challenging media landscape.
That The Center for International Media Ethics is holding its second International Media Ethics Day is the indicator you need for understanding that media ethics issues abound and they transcend borders and cultures. CIME should be commended for helping support the good fight across the world, much the same way SPJ handles matters in the United States.
SPJ’s ethics code has been the hallmark of our work to secure the highest level of ethical compliance among journalists. It appears in newsrooms, employee handbooks and in classroom notes all over the U.S. There are several thousand in circulation. But, since the very first SPJ-written ethics book was published in 1992, the SPJ code has been translated into 12 languages. Today you can find the code in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Spanish, French, German, Greek and Portuguese as well as English. More are coming. You might want to help. Many of the foreign journalists who call, have the code with them.
Whether it’s SPJ or CIME, the message is the same – we have a moral obligation to conduct ourselves with the utmost ethics so we can secure and maintain our respect and credibility with the public we serve. There is no place for lies, innuendos and sensationalism. Fairness must always be a standard bearer. Conflicts of interest cannot jeopardize our independence, we must strive to minimize the harm we do to others in the quest for information, and we must always remain accountable for our shortcoming and admit our mistakes and correct them.
On Friday, Sept. 21, International Media Ethics Day, the national ethics committee of SPJ will meet during our national convention in Florida to present our goals and objectives for the coming year. I suspect one of those will be to extend our hand in cooperation to more and more foreign journalists and to work closer in cooperation with groups like CIME so that we can help provided the best ethical journalism of our time, no matter where in the world that takes place.
Congratulations to CIME and to all the ethical journalists in the world for this commitment.

Kevin Z. Smith
Chairman, National Ethics Committee
Society of Professional Journalists

By Kevin Z. Smith

When presidential candidate Herman Cain decided to challenge the press coverage of the sexual harassment charges surrounding his campaign, he reached for an interesting source of support: the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

Last week his camp handed out copies to members of the media and mailed copies to the Los Angeles Times among others. He asked the press corps to evaluate how the Politico/Washington Post coverage violated specific tenets of the code. He also took his fight to the airwaves, touting the code on Fox News. Never mind that he blundered on the name and called it the “Journalists’ Code of Conduct.”

Our initial assessment of his claims are articulated in a previous post by Ethics Committee member Irwin Gratz. While we haven’t seen anything that would suggest that the reporting violated ethical standards, there is never a bad time to raise ethical questions. Journalists have standards of professional conduct and often put themselves through the steps of evaluating their behavior and work before it reaches the public sphere. That is precisely what sound ethical decision making is about. Questioning those decisions is fair and legitimate, generally because it creates healthy debate that is usually beneficial to our profession.

What has transpired from some people, however, has been something of a panning of Cain’s efforts, not just because he dared to challenge the press’ handling of the reports, but because he suggested that journalists need to follow “codes of conduct.” Silly, right?

On Monday the defense of the media started, and what’s transpired has proved to be more problematic for the fight for journalistic ethics than anything Cain alleged.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus went after Cain, defending the paper but admitting she wasn’t familiar with the SPJ Code of Ethics. She wrote: “I suffer from the instinctive journalistic aversion to official codes of conduct.” Meaning that most journalists avoid such tripe, contrived codes in favor of what, flipping a coin to make an ethical decision? Consulting the Magic 8 ball on her desk?

Later Monday, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell showed her relative lack of ethical knowledge by snarking to Politico reporter Jonathan Martin, the reporter who broke the original story, “I assume you’ve read the journalistic code of conduct, whatever that is.” His response was equally flippant: “I have my copy well thumbed.”

This dismissive attitude only bothers me in that these people have presumably elevated their journalistic game to the level that they’ve landed employment with major national media outlets and have secured a visibility and reputation for being among the elite press corps in this country.

Well, not with knowledge of ethical standards, it appears.

First, to suggest that most journalists have an instinctive aversion to codes of ethics is wrong. In fact, it’s the minority, as in any profession, who seems to be devoid of knowledge about ethical standards. Second, to treat this code as if you’ve just come across a treasure map and have reservations about its validity shows more of a lack of comprehension on your part than it says about the legitimacy of the document.

The irony to all this, of course, is that every day some journalist or citizen visits the SPJ website and reviews our code. Aside from the home page, the Code of Ethics is the most visited page on our website. And, judging by the number of times “SPJ” and “code of ethics” appear in Google searches, it’s been well noted that our code is cited more than 300 times a year in making arguments for better ethical behavior.

That people like Martin, Mitchell and Marcus haven’t heard of the code shouldn’t be a badge of honor. That they scoff at the notion of a code of conduct should be an indictment about their work, not that of the Society’s for upholding ethical standards for so long. And, it’s likely that the Post, MSNBC and Politico have internal codes of ethics that guide their journalists’ work. Are they unaware of those as well?

Our code has been translated into 16 different languages and has long been the gold standard for ethical conduct in the profession. It has been copied, emulated and revised by news organizations for internal use here in the U.S. and around the world.

This summer a copy of SPJ’s new ethics book and the code made its way into the hands of British Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron is creating a committee to evaluate the ethical standards of the British press after the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The code could play a helpful role in establishing or reaffirming standards in that country.

And, the same day Mitchell and company were joking about this code, I received an email from a Knight International Journalism Fellow who is going to Haiti to work with journalists. She asked if SPJ could give her a copy of its new ethics book and some codes of ethics. I’m mailing those to her this week. That very shortly Haitian journalists will learn professional ethics using our code while certain Washington press members sit back and joke about it shouldn’t be lost on the thousands of journalists who have it posted in their newsrooms, or the thousands of college students who are taught professional ethics with the code as the backdrop.

Cain’s allegations aside, the last thing the press in this country needs are self-inflicted wounds over ethical standards.

Kevin Z. Smith is a past SPJ national president and current chairman of the Ethics Committee

We appreciate the efforts of the Herman Cain PAC to publicize the standards and practices contained in the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics. The Cain PAC has been fighting back against allegations of sexual harassment circulating in the media. But we think it’s important to point out our code is not “the Journalists Code of Conduct,” rather SPJ’s attempt to model a Code of Ethics for journalism organizations. Many such organizations promulgate their own codes of ethics, a practice we heartily endorse.

Our code does indeed recommend journalists “Identify sources whenever feasible.” It goes on to say, “The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.” And it suggests journalists, “Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity.” And, “Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information.”

However, in this, as in many areas, SPJ’s code avoids taking absolutist positions against journalistic practice. We do so because we believe there are occasions when the public’s right to know must be paramount.

Whether journalism organizations have handled the allegations against Mr. Cain ethically can be a matter of debate. The SPJ code can help frame the terms of that debate. But nothing in the code should be used to pre-judge the outcome.

Irwin Gratz is a past national president of SPJ and current member of the Ethics Committee. He is “Morning Edition” host for Maine Public Broadcasting.