by Jerry E. Bishop
It's understandable, even expected, that scientists--or politicians or any other news source--will frequently cry "irresponsible" or "unethical" whenever a reporter and his or her publication runs a story that they don't like. The story is "unfair," "incomplete," "biased," and a "disservice to the public," goes the familiar refrain followed, often, by assertions that the press has an "obligation" or a "responsibility" to the public to "tell the whole story," etc. For most reporters, especially science and medical reporters, such outcries come with the beat and are rarely distressing.
What is distressing is when someone within the press community itself, suggests that reporters and their publications can be "irresponsible" or "unethical." In her President's Letter of the Summer 1996 issue of ScienceWriters Laurie Garrett suggests there are "bottom-line ethical standards" that all members of NASW agree upon. She offers four scenarios in which, she suggests, reporters and public relations people should decide on "the rules of propriety. . .
"Unfortunately, Laurie joins an increasing number of reporters and editors who blithely talk of "journalistic ethics" and "the responsibility of the press" as though such concepts actually existed and were subscribed to--or should be--by most reporters, editors and publishers. In fact, codes of ethics have never worked in American journalism and would never work if anyone tried to impose them.
A code of ethics would be an insidious form of censorship. An ethical code means that someone, perhaps a yet-to-be formed American Journalism Association, has decided that for the public good there are certain news-gathering practices that should be followed and others that should be avoided, that certain information should be published--and certain other information should be withheld. It follows that anyone who fails to follow these practices is "unethical" and isn't functioning in the public interest. The public interest requires such unethical journalism be exposed so that readers or viewers can discount or avoid it. The penalty for unethical journalism is an attempt by other journalists to drive readers away from the offending publication.
When some journalists disparage the "supermarket press" as being "unethical" and "irresponsible" they are implying that such publications are detrimental to the public interest. In many countries this would be tantamount to demanding the publications be censored or banned, but in the US proponents of ethical journalism must be content with publicly censuring the offending publications.
These concepts of "responsible and ethical" journalism seems to be of fairly recent origin and not grounded in the history of US journalism. I happened to have started a reporting career in the days before reporters had to have a college education, before they began calling themselves journalists and before journalism schools tried to put a patina of professionalism on what is essentially a craft (a craft requiring considerable skill but a craft nonetheless--and a low-paying one at that). There was no talk of "journalistic ethics" and the only mention of the "responsibilities of the press" came from politicians who didn't like a newspaper supporting his opponent.
True, editors pounded into each new reporter's head that his or her story had to be factual, free of opinion and bias and as accurate as possible--but not from any sense that the newspaper had an obligation to publish such stories or that it was for the public good. Early in the century, editors and publishers had discovered that newspapers that provided readers with unbiased and accurate news reports sold more newspapers than competitors who stuck to the "yellow journalism" of the 1890s. Soon, editors were idealizing accuracy and objectivity as "good" journalism--but they meant good for selling newspapers and for the profits of the owners.
In the l930s and 1940s the Associated Press began to put a high priority on accuracy and objectivity but, again, not because of any sense that it was morally or ethically desirable but because the AP was (and is) a cooperative that had to satisfy editors and publishers of a wide spectrum of political and social hues. Soon the AP style and practice was being held up as the model that young, new reporters should aspire to.
By the 1970s, however, what had originally been a paradigm for selling newspapers had gained a kind of sanctity, as though it had been handed down on the mountain; the AP approach had become holy writ. Many editors and reporters bathed themselves in the reflected glow of the Watergate exposure and began to talk of the duties, obligations and responsibilities of the press as though the First Amendment, instead of being a prohibition on the government, had anointed them as guardians of the public good. There were increasing references to ethical journalism although no one had ever specified exactly what the ethics were, much less written a code of ethics.
Many newspapers do have codes of conduct for reporters and editors, sometimes referred to, mistakenly, as codes of ethics. My own paper, The Wall Street Journal, prohibits reporters from owning stock in any of the companies they cover. It also prohibits reporters and editors from speculating in the stock market by "in and out" trading of any stock and prohibits them from accepting any fees from any corporation up to and including free-lance fees from "in-flight" magazines published by airlines.
The Journal's code of conduct is imposed on Journal reporters, not because the owners think they have a moral responsibility to the public, but because it enhances readers' trust in the accuracy and objectivity of the Journal's stories. If the Journal were to lose its credibility it would lose its readers.
No one I know has ever argued that the Journal's code of conduct should be imposed on all newspapers, that all reporters on all publications should subscribe to it. In fact, it would be to the Journal's advantage if competing publications did not have such codes of conduct since the Journal's credibility would be enhanced in comparison and its circulation would benefit accordingly.
Each publication determines its own code of conduct and whether a reporter violates it is an issue solely between the reporter and his editor/publisher, between the employee and the employer. If ABC Television believes it's all right for Sam Donaldson to accept few thousand dollars for speaking to groups of businessmen or industrialists, that's ABC's business judgment. After all, it is ABC's credibility that's at stake. If some publication ,say, Newsday, decides that a story that Sam Donaldson accepts large fees from such groups is the kind of story that people are buying Newsday to read, then that's Newsday's news judgment. Whether I or anyone agrees or disagrees is irrelevant. In neither case, however, is it a question of morality or responsibility, and I would be presumptuous to accuse Donaldson, ABC or Newsday of being "unethical."
This isn't to say that reporters shouldn't have and practice their own personal morality or ethics or exercise their own sense of social responsibility. There are certain things I personally will not cover or write about because I think it would be improper. I once passed up a chance to break a story that a fairly famous and controversial political figure was dying of AIDS because it seemed comparable to hitting a man when he was down. But that is my personal ethic, not a journalistic ethic; it is not imposed on me by my editor, my colleagues or anyone else, and I have no reason to try to impose it on other reporters or publications.
Fortunately, the American press has never fallen into the trap of a code of journalistic ethics. The high-flown talk of ethics and responsibility is usually betrayed by actual practice. Take the case of alleged rape in a highly publicized case in Florida involving one of the Kennedy family. Many editors, reporters and newspapers praised themselves highly for their "responsible journalism" in withholding the name of the woman who brought the rape charge. But when a supermarket publication printed the name, this highly touted responsible journalism suddenly evaporated; the rest of the press immediately printed the woman's name. Instead of maintaining their high ethical standards most newspapers "lowered" themselves to the level of the supermarket press.
In the Florida rape case, the issue wasn't ethics or responsible journalism at all, of course; it was old-fashioned competition. If, say, The New York Times refrained from printing the woman's name while The Daily News printed the name, readers might be tempted to pick up the The Daily News the next morning to find out who this mysterious woman was. If this kind of thing happened very often, many New Yorkers might eventually realize that the Times wasn't printing all the news and would switch to buying the News every day.
A Wall Street Journal editorial titled "The Function of a Newspaper," written in 1952 by its editor, Vermont C. Royster, states it succinctly:
"The primary function of a newspaper is to tell people what is happening in the world, be it good, bad, or neither. . .We do it not to perform a duty but to fulfill a function. We have no duty to print a newspaper at all, but if we do and fail to carry out the function of one we would quickly find the readers going elsewhere.
"A newspaper editor who becomes overwhelmed with his sense of duty and decides that some news ought not to be printed because it would be bad for the public to know about it will quite likely find one day that he has no newspaper to be editor of. The graveyards are littered with the wreckage of newspapers that tried to censor news instead of printing it."
Jerry E. Bishop is deputy news editor of The Wall Street Journal.