If you haven’t already, look at MSNBC.com’s extensive report on journalists across the country who donated to political, candidates, parties and movements. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485) I mentioned the report to my editor and he thought I was making it up. What reporter would do that? he replied. MSNBC.com found more than 140 such people in the news business (including reporters) and gave them a chance to explaing themselves. Several journalists defended their political contributions by saying they’re private citizens outside of work and are merely supporting candidates or causes they believe in. The problem with that is it’s incumbent upon us journalists to separate whatever views or biases we may have from our work and to give the public confidence that we can. Impartiality isn’t a nine-to-five uniform we wear. We can’t be firmly, publicly, unabashedly pro-Democrat (look at the heavy slant in political contributions in the MSNBC.com report), then expect anyone to believe we can be fair and even at work. I wouldn’t trust my news from a journalist whose partisan feelings are so strong he has to donate money to a political cause. Would you?

It has troubled me for some time that SPJ’s most cherished goals are often in conflict — expecially, recently, FOI and ethics. So far, SPJ has not been prepared to acknowledge the conflicts, but I think we must. A few recent examples:

Exhibit A is Judith Miller. We fully supported her willingness to go to jail to avoid becoming a journalistic tool of the government. BRAVO! But Judith Miller also admitted to what most of us would consider serious abuses in the use of her sources. For example, she wrote in the Times that she had been willing to mask Scooter Libby’s identity — calling him a former Hill staffer — which she assumed he would want to do to keep the administration’s fingerprints off the story he was giving her confidentially. In other words, she knew he was trying to mislead the public, and she admitted to being willing to go along.

Then there were the BALCO reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle revealing grand jury transcripts from the baseball steroids case. They refused to acknowledge the source of the transcripts and came damn close to going to jail themselves to do so. We fully supported their defiance. Again, BRAVO. But once again, that laudable FOI action led them into some dangerous ethical terrain. The source of the transcripts turned out to be a defense attorney who was publicly blaming the other side — the government — for leaking the transcripts; he asked that the case be dismissed on those grounds. Naturally, the Chronicle reporters knew his charge was phony — they knew who their source was — but they printed the phony charge anyhow, and subsequently made further use of his transcripts.

In cases like these, it seems to me that we must continue to support the important First Amendment principles involved. But we must also be unafraid to criticize other practices of the people we’re supporting. After all, we’re supporting the principles they espouse, not the reporters themselves.

Finally, it seems to me that both cases suggest we should be giving a lot more attention to the process of granting confidentiality. This is the reporter’s choice, not the source’s, and we should insist that the conditions be both narrowly drawn and include an assessment of the importance of the confidential information to the public. That way, some of these conflicts could be headed off before they became constitutional issues. Too often confidentiality is given out by rote, with no clear aim or definition. I’ll close with a quote from an AP story on the North Korean nuclear talks breaking down, temporarily:

“A woman from the publicity department at the Bank of China, who would not give her name, said she had no information on the issue.”

Peter Sussman
Member, SPJ Ethics Committee

Where have all the minority newspaper reporters, editors and photogs gone? I attended a statewide awards banquet sponsored by Connecticut’s SPJ Pro Chapter last month and there was not one black face in the room. There were a couple of Asian reporters, one or two Spanish speakers and a Native American. No other minorities. That should make some publisher’s faces red. We have all heard the debate over the years. All reporters should be able to cover any story. We should be “color-blind.” On the other hand, we’ve heard that we need more black and brown faces in the newsroom because it improves our news coverage. It seems to me that both are true. But, and it’s a big but, that latter argument carries more weight. We might aspire to be a color-blind society, but we aren’t. Race still matters in the U.S. How do we cover that immigration debate well if some of our reporters don’t speak Spanish or the other languages of those estimated 12-million undocumented workers in the country? How do we cover housing, health care, education or crime properly when most of our reporters can’t communicate with sources? I don’t think we can. My home town paper now has one black reporter among about 80 editorial workers. They had another black city-editor but he became frustrated and left. Another paper “downsized” (I love that word) one of their long-time black editors. The black and Latino graduates of the program where I teach are often choosing other professions. They realize the starting pay is much better in other fields and don’t think they can make the financial sacrifice to stay with journalism. They often have the most potential. That is tragic. The SPJ Ethics Code says journalists should: “Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so. Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others. Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.” News companies need to assert themselves in hiring and promoting more minority reporters. It’s good for the companies, the editorial workers and for the public’s trust in what we try to do.