“Being Flip About Journalism Ethics is More Appropriate than Violating Them”

Professor Smith needs to look a lot closer to home for “wounds inflicted” on the nations’s press.
Public expressions of disagreement over journalism standards is far from being the “last thing the press in this country needs.”

The last thing the press in this country needs is the deliberate violation of its standards by its most visible elements – in order to discredit and censor individual reporters who do the daily work of informing the people.

The Ethics Committee offers no such thing as an ethical self-examination to those reporters, Professor Scarp.
In fact, as Professor Smith can attest, such reporters who appeal their concerns all the way to the president’s office will be dealt with by being simply — ignored. As in, forever.

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Almost two years ago, the most prominent and influential free press attorney in the nation lied to an obscure Midwestern reporter facing a contempt conviction and expecting jail time. The fabrication was repeated several days later to the AP and to the state’s leading daily.
Three months of persistent struggle on the part of the reporter resulted in the memo below. The omission of several tangental sentences unrelated to the hard facts does not in any way alter their meaning.

Lucy Dalglish Says:
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm

This memo is to clarify misperceptions regarding the circumstances surrounding Claire O’Brien’s refusal to appear before a Kansas inquisition on February 10, 2010.
Ms. O’Brien was subpoenaed to testify in Dodge City, KS, in a murder investigation. She had written a story in the Dodge City Daily Globe regarding an October 13 jailhouse interview that also included statement from an anonymous source.

It was my understanding from talking to a GateHouse representative before the scheduled testimony that the company had told Ms. O’Brien that it would provide an attorney for her at the Feb. 10 proceeding, but that if she refused to testify regarding her anonymous source, its financial support for her legal representation and subsequent potential fines would end that day.

Lucy Dalglish

Executive Director
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A question of ethics? You tell me.

– Three months proved more than enough time to sink the reporter’s reputation securely in the mud, weighted down by innuendo, rumor, and gossip. Only the desperate threat of litigation prompted the statement’s author to post it on the RCFP site .
But no one ever saw it, because it was “posted” in the RCFP archives, at the bottom of a long list of comments responding to a story posted over a month earlier.
At some point after August, 2011, it disappeared entirely from the site – and all questions/concerns about the matter are now completely ignored.

The only other place it was posted was in the SPJ FOI blog, again buried as a comment, toward the end of about 20 others. Then, the topic was closed.

Now, the statement is buried even deeper – no longer filed in Reporter’s Shield Law, but in Uncategorized.

The SPJ has actively censored this issue, which is NEWS by any standard. It has ignored requests to take a position and/or to examine its own role, chilled online discussion, and advised members with questions to contact its FOI officer privately, rather than insist on transparency.
It censored the reporter’s rights to free speech, to defend herself, and to seek the support of her fellow journalists when it cancelled her discussion of the issue at a regional conference – at the last minute.

What the hell is ethical about this? What kind of ethical framework is so driven by power differentials as to render itself meaningless? It’s SUPPOSED to be hard to do the right thing – that’s what ethics are for.
There’s nothing abstract about this reporter. She’s a person. She’s suffered greatly, and she has a family that’s been damaged.

Beat reporters who risk their personal liberty and their careers to safeguard the traditions you teach them are not attorneys with national spheres of influence. They are not college professors with tenure who take positions, write letters – then publish the fact that they have taken positions and written letters.
The vast majority of them do not write for the NY Times or the Washington Post. They work at small to midsize papers for low wages for the privilege – and it is a great one – of keeping unimportant people informed about the dynamics of power that shape their lives.
They are vulnerable. Of course they expect state and corporate interests to attack them. But they don’t expect to be ambushed and thrown under the bus by their defenders and allies. The RCFP and the SPJ sent a message to working reporters when they did this.
And they also sent a message to the state.

This memo is to clarify misperceptions regarding the circumstances surrounding Claire O’Brien’s refusal to appear before a Kansas inquisition on February 10, 2010.
Ms. O’Brien was subpoenaed to testify in Dodge City, KS, in a murder investigation. She had written a story in the Dodge City Daily Globe regarding an October 13 jailhouse interview that also included statement from an anonymous source.

It was my understanding from talking to a GateHouse representative before the scheduled testimony that the company had told Ms. O’Brien that it would provide an attorney for her at the Feb. 10 proceeding, but that if she refused to testify regarding her anonymous source, its financial support for her legal representation and subsequent potential fines would end that day.

Lucy Dalglish

Executive Director
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Speaking of ethics – the nationally known and influential author of the statement above agreed to post it on the RCFP site after discrediting an obscure reporter who had, in fact, truthfully represented the situation it references to the press.
No one ever saw the statement, however, because it was “posted” in the RCFP archives, at the bottom of a long list of comments responding to a story posted over a month earlier. At some point after August, 2011, it disappeared entirely from the site – and all questions/concerns about the matter are ignored.
The only other place it was posted was in the SPJ FOI blog, again buried as a comment, toward the end of about 20 others. Then, the topic was closed.

Now, the statement is buried even deeper – no longer filed in Reporter’s Shield Law, but in Uncategorized. The SPJ has actively censored this issue, which is NEWS by any standard. It has ignored requests to take a position and/or to examine its own role, chilled online discussion, and advised members with questions to contact its FOI officer privately, rather than insist on transparency.
It censored the reporter’s rights to free speech, to defend herself, and to seek the support of her fellow journalists when it cancelled her discussion of the issue at a regional conference – at the last minute.

What the hell is ethical about this? What kind of ethical framework is so driven by power differentials as to render itself meaningless? It’s SUPPOSED to be hard to do the right thing – that’s what ethics are for.
There’s nothing abstract about this reporter. She’s a person. She’s suffered greatly, and she has a family that’s been damaged.

Beat reporters who risk their personal liberty and their careers to safeguard the traditions you teach them are not attorneys with national spheres of influence. They are not college professors with tenure, whose idea of defending a free press is to take positions, write letters – then publish the fact that they have taken positions and written letters.
The vast majority of them do not write for the NY Times or the Washington Post. They work at small to midsize papers for low wages for the privilege – and it is a great one – of keeping unimportant people informed about the dynamics of power that shape their lives.
They are vulnerable. Of course they expect state and corporate interests to attack them. But they don’t expect to be ambushed and thrown under the bus by their defenders and allies. The RCFP and the SPJ sent a message to working reporters when they did this.
And they also sent a message to the state.

Emil Dansker, 60-year member, 50-plus-year reporter, editor and publisher and and teacher of journalism and combat correspondent in Marine Corps, which, by the way, was 236 years old November 10-