August 10th, 2010
Code before crisis
By Andy Schotz
There’s no need to wait for a crisis to follow a code of ethics.
And how do we define crisis? Here’s one way, courtesy of Bernstein Crisis Management.
What’s the connection? This post by Jonathan Bernstein, the president of Bernstein Crisis Management, at the Huffington Post.
He talks about why journalists should use the SPJ Code of Ethics and suggests how someone can counteract unethical actions of journalists.
Tags: Bernstein Crisis Management, Huffington Post, Jonathan Bernstein, SPJ Code of Ethics
August 11th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I would suggest everyone take a look at PRSA’s Code of Ethics, http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/CodeEnglish/index.html, and if they want to hold us to ours, we’ll hold them to theirs. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
August 13th, 2010 at 4:01 am
I don’t think we need to be as confrontational as Donald Meyers suggests. Anyone is free to cite the SPJ code as they wish, of course, and one of the reasons to have a code is to collect in one place a set of commonly accepted, fundamental journalistic principles to which anyone can refer, not just professional journalists. We should be held accountable, as the code says, and everyone has the right to do so (which doesn’t by itself make critics’ comments accurate or justifiable). The PRSA Code of Ethics is not relevant to how we function ethically as journalists.
That said, although I welcome Bernstein’s appreciation of SPJ’s code, I think he may be implicitly portraying it more as a set of “rules” that can be “violated” (he refers to “violations”) than what we intended in writing the code: a set of ethical guidelines or principles that must be taken into consideration and weighed against each other in individual circumstances (especially when those circumstances entail conflicting ethical obligations). The Code is a document intended to facilitate the dynamic process of journalistic and ethical self-checking that every reporter, commentator and editor/producer should perform almost instinctively before disseminating a news report or analysis. It is also a set of guidelines to help news consumers and other journalists evaluate a news story’s credibility. What it’s NOT is a set of legalistic rules that can be unambiguously and definitively applied or “enforced” in all conceivable specific circumstances; a standard for litigation; or a convenient and pliable weapon for furthering some aggressive, extraneous agenda (“hoist[ing] a news organization on this petard”). I am troubled that Bernstein cites the code to combat specific journalistic practices that are not mentioned in it.
Peter Sussman
Member of SPJ’s Ethics Committee and a co-author of the SPJ Code of Ethics
August 17th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
I am not against accountability. My point was that Bernstein wants to use the code as a cudgel to attack journalists who write unfavorably about his clients. If you read his website, he seems to define “ethical” journalists as ones who will swallow whatever corporate party line he’s peddling at the moment. In his book, seeking truth and reporting appears to be a cardinal sin.