In Search Of Journalistic Ethics

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2000 by Marianne Jennings

This is deeply troubling, especially since television is the primary source of news in the world today. As syndicated columnist Richard Reeves points out, it is a form of mass media that is fraught with ethical problems, since millions of viewers believe that the camera doesn't lie.

Independence. Journalists should avoid conflicts of interest. One such conflict occurred in 1998, when the Walt Disney Company, which owns Capital Cities/ABC Inc., killed an ABC television news magazine series on lax security and pedophilia in amusement parks. Another transpired when ABC newswoman and celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters ran a flattering profile of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber just before his musical "Sunset Boulevard" opened on Broadway in 1997. What Walters failed to disclose and what the New York Post revealed the following week was that she had invested $100,000 in the show. Ironically, Walters responded to the charge like the typical businessman who is so often the target of "20/20" ambush interviews: "How could you ever think that I would compromise my integrity for money?"

Fairness. While it could be argued that the troth by definition is fair, 19th-century British poet William Blake was right when he wrote, "A truth told with bad intent/Beats all the lies you can invent."

The "truth" in the profile of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the Jan. 25, 1999, issue of People was meant to wound: "Among the controversies [surrounding Rehnquist] were reports that covenants on his house in Phoenix and a vacation home in Vermont prohibited their resale to racial or ethnic minorities." A parenthetical note followed: "(Rehnquist claimed he had been unaware of the covenants.)." The obvious implication was that the Supreme Court is led by a closet racist.

As the author of a real estate law text, I can assure you that there are very few properties in the U.S. that don't have racial covenants hidden somewhere in their history. Such covenants were declared unconstitutional in the 1950s, but to require property owners or clerks to strike them physically from all the land records in the nation would be an immense undertaking. We don't have the resources or the funds to do so, and the idea is plain silly anyway since the covenants have been declared invalid. Furthermore, covenants often appear only in chains of title and not in the deeds. So, property owners are not likely to know that they even exist.

Fairness is also endangered by personal bias. Journalists may agree with the individuals, organizations, and causes they are covering, so it may be hard for them to report anything negative. Similarly, they may disagree and find it hard to say anything positive.

Scan any newspaper for stories about, say, the environment, and you will discover that many journalists are predisposed to consider environmental activists the "good guys" and oil company presidents and loggers the "bad guys." Or watch all the television news specials about pesticides, food additives, breast implants, nuclear power, and global wanning. Reporters are reputed to be natural-born skeptics, but they almost never challenge alarmists on these important issues.