One of the most common stories a reporter encounters is the missing person report.
Though it appears simple, such reports are fraught with peril. Relatives are distraught, urging reporters and police to act fast so the public can help search for a loved one. Journalists sometimes are accused of dragging their feet with the passage of time, or accused of bias for reporting some missing cases and not others.
These cases can become highly emotional, and seen as a matter of survival for the missing person.
Missing person defined
A missing person is defined as a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed.
More than 600,000 people go missing in the U.S. every year, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database. That’s about 1,600 every day. Another 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered every year. Just trying to decide which of these cases to cover is part of a reporter’s dilemma. There are so many of them.
The United States has what may be the world’s highest number of missing persons. By far the most common reason a person is reported missing is kidnapping, particularly of children under the age of six. The vast majority of missing persons cases are resolved.
Managing editor calls
AdviceLine got involved in such a case when the managing editor of a New York State daily newspaper called for ethics guidance.
A 23-year-old woman was last seen in a hotel, but family members lost contact with her over the weekend and considered her missing. Her father posted information about her disappearance on his Facebook page. A reporter interviewed him.
“He told us that she had been on anxiety medications,” said the managing editor, “and had exhibited bizarre behavior during a Skype phone call.” The father also said he spoke with his daughter’s best friend, who said the missing woman was off her medications.
Some reservations
“We had some reservations about publishing all this information about her, but we went ahead and published it anyway,” said the managing editor. The missing woman was found a few hours after the print edition hit the street.
This is usually the reason editors hesitate to go to print too soon with missing person reports. As luck would have it, the missing person turns up shortly after her name appears in print. Complications ensue.
“Subsequently,” said the managing editor, “we received a phone call from the young woman’s best friend, in which she claimed she had communicated with her friend’s father in confidence, and would not have spoken so freely had she known that her statements would find their way into print.”
Second thoughts
She said her friend, the formerly missing young woman, would be greatly upset to see such private information about herself made public, and that it might do her some harm. The caller asked the managing editor to redact the online story to remove references to the missing woman’s medical condition and what the friend had told the woman’s father.
The managing editor asked AdviceLine: “Do we let the record stand? Or do we redact the online story in some way?”
In his written report on the case, Hugh Miller, the AdviceLine advisor, wrote: “We spoke at some length about the conflict between refusal to alter an already-published story and the ‘minimize harm’ issues raised by the case. The most troubling bit had to do with the communication of the woman’s best friend to her father being made public. But the whole question of her privacy, particularly regarding sensitive personal medical information, was an important one.
Private individual
“She is a private individual, with a greater presumptive right to privacy and consideration of that privacy from journalists. Future employers doing an internet search for her name, for example, might come up with the story in its unedited form, and it might raise unnecessary red flags for her.
“The issue is: Does she have a particularly strong case for special consideration here? Would the public be harmed if the information about her medical condition were to be deleted? Did it really need to know that information at the time the story was first issued? We did not come to a decisive conclusion.”
The managing editor was left to make up his mind. “But our conversation served to highlight the ‘minimize harm’ issues in the case,” wrote Miller.
What would you do, if you were the managing editor? What is the least damaging way to handle this case, the least damaging to the formerly missing woman and the least damaging to the newspaper’s reputation?
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
Stories involving children who allegedly are sexually molested by church leaders are among the most sensitive and emotionally charged that confront journalists.
That was the kind of story a California reporter was covering, and he called AdviceLine for some guidance. He was covering the trial of a church youth leader accused of having a sexual relationship with a boy.
The boy is now 18, but was younger at the time of the alleged relationship. He is identified as John Doe in court, but his mother, the first witness in the case, is using her full name. The reporter wants to know whether to print her name, thereby indirectly naming the boy. They live in a small town. The reporter is concerned about the potential harm to the boy from being identified.
“I brought up the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code, in particular pointing to the relevance of seeking truth versus minimizing harm,” said David Craig, the AdviceLine ethics expert who handled the call from the reporter. “I asked if the news organization has any policies or precedents that are relevant?” The reporter said there were none.
“I also asked about whether any other news organizations were reporting on this (not that this should decide it, but it might be relevant.) He didn’t know of any other outlets, at least mainstream ones. I also asked him whether not using the name would create any difficult precedents if other people in sensitive legal situations want their name left out of stories – trying to think of a counter-argument in favor of using the name.”
Craig consulted with another member of the AdviceLine team to get a second opinion on this since the boy is now at the legal age of an adult and his mother is allowing herself to be named. The second team member agreed with Craig’s inclination to err on the side of caution since there seemed to be no compelling reason to identify the youth. Even though he is 18, he is still young and warrants some additional protection.
“That’s in keeping with what the SPJ code and ethics scholars would say about being sensitive to vulnerable parties, including young people,” said Craig. When he called the reporter, Craig learned that the reporter consulted further with his editor and they had come to the same conclusion.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
It’s generally recognized that keeping the news side of a media company separate from the business side is the ethical way to do business.
The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics is very specific on that point: “Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage.”
Yet AdviceLine occasionally gets calls or emails from journalists worried that their bosses are crossing that bright line.
One of those callers was an online editor working for a trade publication.
“She wrote a brief item that drew a complaint from sales staff because an advertiser was not mentioned,” wrote David Craig in his case report. “She said her editor is pressuring her to add information about the advertiser even though she does not think it fits with the original story. She was looking for confirmation that this is an ethical problem and trying to decide how to respond.”
This editor is like other journalists who contact AdviceLine: She has a hunch she has an ethics problem and wants confirmation to be sure. And like others, she wants guidance on how to tell her bosses they are straying from good ethical practices – a very delicate situation.
“We talked about the SPJ code and I agreed that there’s an ethical problem here based on the principle of acting independently,” Craig went on in his report. “She was considering quitting her job, so I asked her whether this kind of request was part of a pattern or an isolated incident, and whether the incident itself was serious enough to justify quitting now versus making her case for ethical conduct.
“She said this had not happened before but she is troubled by the support for the advertiser’s view.”
The online editor explained that she had drafted an email to her supervisor asking for the removal of her byline from the story in question, and that she thought the decision to add information about the advertiser was unethical.
Craig suggested that she explain why she thought it was unethical and that her position was based on the SPJ code of ethics, “so it was clear this was not just her individual judgment but reflected the standards of the profession.”
The caller decided to raise the point about acting independently and to include a link to the SPJ code in her email to her editor.
AdviceLine has no further information on this case, so the outcome is not known. But journalists who contact AdviceLine often express appreciation for having someone to call in cases like this and to talk about the issues involved. The discussion often leads to some ideas on how to overcome the ethics dilemma.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
Photographers usually like credit for the work they do.
It seemed strange, then, when a seventeen year-old freelance photographer refused a byline on a photo he submitted to an Arkansas newspaper. It showed the inside of a private business that had been gutted by fire.
The teenager hangs out in fire and police departments that tip him off to newsworthy events, giving him access that is not available to other media. Developing contacts usually in considered a smart way to operate in the news business.
But the newspaper’s weekend editor called the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, asking if there is something unethical about that exclusive arrangement between the young photographer and the police and fire departments. Especially troubling was the photographer’s refusal to take a photo credit.
“We’re not sure if it’s because he fears reaction from the company (that had the fire) or from the firefighters who let him inside the scene,” said the editor. “Our questions are: Should he have taken the photo in the first place? Should we run his name with it since he did take it, and is it unethical not to accept the photo credit? And, if a journalist has an advantage such as this over other media outlets through a volunteer or organizational system, is it okay to use it to the paper’s advantage?”
The AdviceLine advisor responded by asking a few questions, which produced these results:
“Turns out the seventeen year-old is the grandson of the general manager of the paper, a paper which is one of three sister papers,” reported the advisor. “No one had talked to him (the photographer) about why he did not want a photo credit.”
The advisor and the editor discussed being transparent and accountable.
“The bigger issue, however, was that there were no guidelines at any of the newspapers for how to deal with bylines and credits. I found out that none of the papers in this group follow a code of ethics of any kind. “
As a start, the advisor encouraged the editor to consult the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics because it contains guidelines that would be helpful in her case.
“These papers are small and some newspaper personnel work for volunteer fire departments then take photos while they are on the job – photos that eventually appear in the paper,” wrote the advisor in her report on this case. The editor and the advisor talked further about conflicts of interest.
After the discussion with the AdviceLine advisor, the editor and the newspaper’s staff planned a meeting to create guidelines and discuss the SPJ code of ethics.
The case illustrated the importance of having written standards that are known and understood by the entire staff. They can be carefully thought-out in advance and used as a reference when the need arises, rather than struggling to come up with answers whenever an ethics issue arises.
The case also shows that the news business is not necessarily a cut-throat enterprise as it often is portrayed. The editor was concerned about having an unfair advantage over other news operations through unethical practices. Good for her.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
A student newspaper published a story about one student’s experience and perspective on smoking marijuana to deal with anxiety and stress.
After the story was published, the student who was interviewed complained that she thought her comments would be part of a broader story quoting many students. Further, editors learned that the student was a close friend of the reporter who wrote the story. They would not have published the story if they knew of this conflict of interest.
The student who was interviewed asked the editors to take down the story.
The newspaper’s managing editor said she was considering leaving the story up, but including an editor’s note acknowledging the lack of transparency and conflict of interest. Or taking it down, but including a note explaining why.
The managing editor contacted the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, asking for advice on the best course of action.
“I made clear to the managing editor that it was not my role to tell her what to do, but I considered and applied the relevant principles from the SPJ code of ethics to lay out the relevant considerations for her,” said the advisor, David Craig.
As for acting independently, they discussed the conflict of interest of the reporter being close friends with the story subject. But the advisor also pointed to the difficulty of setting a precedent of taking stories down when sources are unhappy with them.
Craig advised against apologizing if they do take down the story, only explaining the reasons.
They discussed the reporter’s lack of transparency, and taking responsibility in some way for the unethical conduct of the reporter.
“The principle of minimizing harm also informed the discussion of impact on the subject of the story. As we left it, she was going to confer with other editors on how to proceed.”
Among her considerations was how to balance accountability and transparency with the possible impact on the credibility of the publication if they took down the story. The managing editor was giving further thought to the issue of setting a precedent in taking down stories that annoy sources.
The newsroom is entirely independent and run by students.
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The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
The Indiana host and producer of a radio show was half-way through recording an interview with a man who photographs abandoned buildings when the photographer said he did not want to be identified in the interview.
The interview had been going on for eight minutes; the photographer knew he was being recorded for radio. He described how he trespasses with the intent of supporting historical preservation.
This posed a dilemma for the radio host, a common dilemma when people being interviewed suddenly get cold feet or did not understand the ground rules for most interviews, which usually means being identified.
The radio host called the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, seeking advice on whether to air the interview with the photographer identified, not identified or simply ditching the entire interview.
AdviceLine advisor David Craig started by emphasizing the importance of telling the truth, and relevance of principles spelled out in the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics.
The radio producer explained that the photographer is one of many people involved in a broader issue in Evansville, Indiana, related to the decay of old buildings, historic preservation and new development.
“Related to minimizing harm,” said the advisor, “she said a lot of police listen to the program and she would feel terrible to put this man in jail (for trespassing) when he is trying to do what he sees as good in the community.
“As for accountability and transparency, she was concerned about letting him be anonymous because of the credibility questions this might create with listeners if they were not transparent about his identity.”
Craig pointed to a model of ethical decision-making in which one question is whether there is an alternative course of action that won’t raise ethical issues. Given that the photographer’s actions connect with broader issues in the community and he is not the only one working for historic preservation and community development, the advisor and the radio producer agreed that a broader story on the topic could be developed, possibly with multiple identified sources instead of airing this story based on a single anonymous person or with identification.
To this discussion could be added the importance of stating the ground rules for an interview at the beginning, including identifying the person being interviewed. If there is any disagreement about this, it should be discussed before the interview starts.
In the Evansville case, it was clear that many people were involved in the preservation campaign. The radio producer could decide whether to proceed with an interview on an anonymous basis if that person was important to the story, or to skip it and find others to interview who would agree to be identified.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
Elections are a backbone of democracy. They offer voters choices.
They can be battlegrounds, the stuff of conflict and divisive bickering. And they can be peaceful transitions of leadership, opening the way for new directions in policy and thought.
Elections of national importance are in the news almost every day.
Less noticed, but also important, are elections at the local level – like electing school board candidates.
These, too, can be controversial and pose questions that can cause a wise journalist to pause and consider. It might not make national news, but it might be important to a local community and to a local news staff.
For example, an Iowa editorial page editor contacted the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists with this question: Should a journalist (in this case a local television anchor) be running for public office (in this case, a local school board)?
This is about as local as local news can get. But it’s important to an Iowa community and, in this case, to journalism ethics.
“There are several professional ethical issues about conflict of interest here,” said the AdviceLine advisor, David Ozar, who responded to the editor’s query.
The news anchor benefits from public recognition, which enhances electability. This, by itself, does not raise an ethical question, said Ozar, since all of the candidates probably are known to the voting public in a small community.
But there is a strong likelihood the public will think the news anchor expects to benefit from the journalist’s high visibility.
“In other words,” said Ozar, “even if the anchor were to refuse to publicly discuss the election and the school board’s business while doing his or her anchor job, there is still a question about whether the appearance of impropriety is damaging to journalism in that place and how much.
“But a more urgent question is how likely it is that a TV anchor can go through a whole election season and then, if elected, his or her term in office without mentioning the election or school board business on the air?”
The TV anchor could choose to be neutral about reporting about the school board election. But if the anchor is not neutral, “then there is no question that doing this would violate the impartiality required of good journalists.”
Viewers will come to their own opinions about whether the TV anchor is being properly impartial.
Journalists might see public benefits in serving on the school board, “but that benefit must definitely outweigh the harm to journalism’s commitment to impartiality for such a judgment to be defensible,” according to Ozar.
These ethical concerns can be heightened if the TV station’s management believes the anchor’s election to the school board is good for the station, such as having easier access to school board news.
“In fact,” concluded Ozar, “it would be surprising that the station acted as if no professional journalistic values were at stake in the anchor’s decision to run.”
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
When professional journalists contact the EthicsAdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics, AdviceLine advisors don’t tell them what to do.
That’s not how AdviceLine works. Journalists engage in a phone or online conversation with experts in journalism and professional ethics who lead the journalists to their own conclusions about the right course of action. The goal of that conversation is to assist the journalist in making ethical decisions that:
Are well informed by available standards of professional journalistic practice, especially the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics.
Take account of the perspectives of all parties involved in the situation.
Employ clear and careful ethical thinking in reaching a decision.
AdviceLine is a free service to professional journalists.
Exactly how this works can be shown through an actual case report on a call from a Massachusetts editor-in-chief. Her newspaper is doing a story on a local bank robbery. Her reporter learned a lot about the robbery through police and court documents, including the name of the person charged, the charges against the defendant and the amount allegedly stolen, about $5,000.
Bank officials begged the reporter and the newspaper to refrain from reporting the amount stolen; they feared disclosing that amount might encourage more bank robberies.
The editor-in-chief asked AdviceLine if the newspaper would be acting unethically by publishing the amount stolen?
Here is the exchange that followed:
AdviceLine advisor, Hugh Miller – This was all obtained from public documents, correct?
Editor – Yes.
Advisor – Is this information newsworthy?
Editor – It certainly surprised me when I read the figure.
Advisor – Then it is certainly newsworthy. If you were surprised, the public will almost certainly be. And the primary ethical mission of journalism is, after all, to report the news to the public. The material is fair game; but you might want to consider the responsibility to “minimize harm.” (Mentioned in the SPJ code of ethics.)
There might be circumstances under which it would be the ethical thing to do to withhold otherwise newsworthy and publishable facts. But, according to the code, and as a general rule, those circumstances should be few and tightly circumscribed. For example, private citizens and especially minors should be treated with greater consideration for their privacy than public individuals, government organizations, or even corporations (which are, after all, chartered creatures of law). Does the bank seem to fall into one of those former categories, or something like one of them?
Editor – Doesn’t seem so to me.
Advisor – In light of the recent controversy about the NSA (National Security Agency) and whistleblowing, are any state secrets or matters of grave national security at stake?
Editor – (Laughing): Hardly.
Advisor – So, what do you think?
Editor – I think we’re good to go with it. Thanks very much!
In his written report on the call from the editor, the advisor added these comments: “I don’t think much of the bank’s reason for asking the newspaper to sit on the figure involved. I think they’re merely trying to minimize embarrassment, and possibly prevent customers from suspecting that their security measures aren’t all they should be, and transferring their accounts to another, presumably more prudent bank.”
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
The furor over the Fox News audience-pleasing, distorted election reports about the 2020 presidential race is only the latest example in a long list in a walk of shame. Notice that journalists are most disturbed; the public doesn’t seem to care much.
That’s because journalists have the most to lose, their credibility, when other journalists are caught fabricating or playing loose with the facts. Although, it might be argued that the bloviating opinion-shouters at Fox News do not qualify as real journalists who follow codes of ethics and keep their opinions to themselves.
It might be argued that the American public never did have a good idea about how objective journalism operates, or where to find it. They look for echo chambers, instead. It’s ironic that segments of the public who accuse media of bias are vehemently biased themselves. If they don’t see their entrenched point of view reported, they consider that bias.
The Fox News fuss still is playing out; remaining to be seen is whether its tawdry performance leads to new legal restrictions on all media in the United States, including softening protections under the First Amendment and standards for winning defamation suits against the media.
Freedom of speech and the press are hallmarks of the American way of life. They could be jeopardized by the Fox News case. But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not the only rotten apple in the barrel. There have been other rotten apples. Over time, we tend to forget them.
Rotten apple awards
Who would get some of the top rotten apple awards? Usually, we talk about the best in the business. The Fox News scandal prompts some thoughts about the worst examples of journalism, even the most shameful. Like any contest, it depends on personal judgment. Some might come to different conclusions. But here are some of the worst that come to my mind:
Janet Cooke and the Washington Post – Never before in the history of American journalism did a newspaper win a Pulitzer Prize, then return the prize because the award-winning story was found to be fabricated by the reporter. That’s what happened in 1981.
Cooke wrote “Jimmy’s World,” a 1980 story that began: “Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks flecking the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms.”
Cooke suckered her desk-bound editors into believing a story so beautifully written, they wanted it to be true. Editors should be suspicious, a trait taught in Chicago journalism, where reporters are told to doubt their mother’s love. Cooke concocted a story that made her editors swoon, with the kind of beguiling details editors love. Here is more of Cooke’s story:
“He nestles in a large, beige reclining chair in the living room of his comfortably furnished home in Southeast Washington. There is an almost cherubic expression on his small, round face as he talks about life – clothes, money, the Baltimore Orioles and heroin. He has been an addict since the age of 5.”
All bullshit.
Staffer doubts
Some staffers had doubts about the story, which was based on anonymous sources. But assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted it for a Pulitzer Prize, and it won for feature writing. It all started to unravel when Post editors were notified that Cooke had fabricated her education background. Post editors then told Cooke to prove Jimmy’s existence, and show where he lived. She couldn’t, and eventually admitted she felt pressured by newsroom competition and wrote the story to satisfy her clueless editors.
Even after Cooke was discredited and resigned, Woodward said: “It is a brilliant story – fake and fraud that it is.” Love of beautifully written words that sway dies hard in journalism, even when they are used for betrayal. It’s a kind of love best understood by journalists. The story winning the Pulitzer Prize, said Woodward, was “of little consequence.”
My next candidate for a blockbuster journalism bad apple is Walter Duranty, a name most journalists would not recognize today, especially young journalists who believe history began with the date of their own births.
This story also has a Pulitzer Prize connection. Duranty was the New York Times Moscow bureau chief for 14 years, from 1922 to 1936. In 1932, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, 11 of which were published in June 1931. Later, Duranty was criticized for denying widespread famine in the USSR from 1930 to 1933, which reportedly caused 5.7 million to 8.7 million deaths. He covered up one of the worst disasters in history.
Stalin’s forced plans
Duranty lauded Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, which forced collectivization of Soviet Agriculture, rapid industrialization which decreased the agricultural workforce and forced grain procurement — all major contributing factors to the famine.
A Stalinist lapdog, Duranty was accused of reporting the Soviet Union’s official propaganda instead of the news, going so far as to denounce reports of a Soviet famine as “a big scare story” and condemn a Welsh journalist, Gareth Jones, who said he witnessed starving in Ukraine. Jones was the first Western journalist to report the devastation.
In a 1933 New York Times article, Duranty was resorting to Soviet-style double-talk. The article said: “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces – the Ukraine, North Caucasus (i.e. Kuban Region) and the lower Volga – has, however, caused heavy loss of life.” Duranty admitted Stalin’s brutality, but defended it. In 1934, Duranty privately reported to the British embassy in Moscow that as many as 10 million people might have died, directly or indirectly, in the Soviet Union famine the previous year.
Despite conflicting stories about the Russian famine, Duranty in his day enjoyed great esteem, although the Manchester Guardian’s Moscow correspondent called him “the greatest liar I ever knew.”
Growing doubts
Since the late 1960s, Duranty’s work came under growing fire for his failure to report the famine. The controversy led to a move in 1990 to strip him of the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. He died in 1957. The Pulitzer Board reconsidered the prize but decided to preserve it. Another challenge arose in 2003, with an inquiry by the New York Times. Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. called Duranty’s work “slovenly” and said it “should have been recognized for what it was by his editors and by his Pulitzer judges seven decades ago.”
Sig Gissler, Puliter Prize Board administrator, declined to revoke the award, saying “there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case.” The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine led to renewed attention in the case. New York Times executive editor Bill Keller publicly expressed remorse that he failed to do more to return the award in 2003, saying: “A Pulitzer Prize is not just an accolade for an isolated piece of work. It at least implies an accolade for the reporter’s performance, and Duranty’s performance was shameful.”
Duranty could be described as a world class liar, one who ignored millions of deaths while reporting falsehoods that benefited one of the world’s most brutal dictators. It is a matter of scale and consequence. What changes in world events might have happened if Duranty told the truth? It is a reminder that journalists have that power to change world history, but Duranty squandered it.
Others
Other rotten apples on this list of liars are not world class like Duranty, but they deserve some recognition.
Jayson Bliar was a New York Times reporter caught lying about stories he wrote and making up quotes and scenes that never happened, including stories about the Beltway sniper shootings. The New York Times called Blair’s long list of fabrications and plagiarism a “low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper” and fired him on May 1, 2003.
Stephen Glass worked for The New Republic from 1995 to 1998 until the discovery that many of his published articles about events and human beings were fabrications.
Rolling Stone Magazine retracted a story titled “A Rape on Campus” after learning that it was false. The story, published in 2014, about a University of Virginia student who said she was gang raped at a fraternity party, was retracted in 2015. After other journalists found major flaws in the report, Rolling Stone issued multiple apologies for the story.
Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News anchor, was lying when he said during a broadcast that he was a passenger on a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003. In 2015, NBC suspended him for six months without pay, sending his career into a tailspin. Williams said he “made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.” He left the network in 2021.
A short list
This is not an exhaustive list, but serves to show that liars have tarnished journalism in many ways, fabrication being one of the most common. Making things up is a lot easier than doing the hard, shoe leather work of digging up reliable information, whether it’s elegantly written or not.
Another list could be drawn of broadcasters brought low by sexual harassment allegations, and payments of millions of dollars to hush them. But that is for another time.
The $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News, meanwhile, makes its way through court.
Toronto-based Dominion Voting Systems contends that days and weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News executives and its on-air stars did not believe voter fraud allegations made by then-President Donald Trump, but promoted those unfounded claims anyway in a strategy to appeal to Trump loyalists.
Fox has accused Dominion of “cherry-picking soundbites, omitting key context and mischaracterizing the record.”
Truth
Whatever the court finds, at least some observers fault Fox News for reporting what it knew was not true.
“It’s really rare, to my knowledge, to have a major news organization, or what claims to be a news organization, willingly broadcast what it knew to be lies,” said Samuel Freedman, a professor at Columbia Journalism School. “It’s an egregious violation of journalism ethics.”
The four key principles in the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics are: Seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable and transparent.
It appears Fox News violated every principle.
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The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
Journalists often become experts on the topics they cover, their in-depth knowledge and experience recognized.
For that reason, journalists are asked to testify on cases in court or at hearings. But should they?
That was the ethics dilemma faced by a journalist in New Mexico. A bill before the state legislature would redact from all public records the names of all victims of stalking and rape.
Request to testify
A lawyer opposing the proposed legislation asked a newspaper reporter to testify at a committee hearing, giving a journalist’s reasons for opposing it and for the sake of informing the public of such crimes.
“My question is whether I should do this and thereby become part of the news myself,” said the reporter, who called AdviceLine for guidance. Her editor said there was value in doing it, not only as a journalist but as an articulate woman since most of the victims of stalking and rape are women. It was not clear if her editor offered an opinion on testifying.
Before calling AdviceLine, the journalist examined the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics, and concluded that passage of the proposed law might cause more harm than her becoming part of the story she was covering. Still, she wrestled with the dilemma and called AdviceLine.
Clarify harm
“I asked her to clarify what harm passage of this legislation would cause,” said the AdviceLine advisor. She answered that, under such a law, it would be impossible for reporters to verify claims of rape or stalking. Correct reporting of such events, even if names are omitted, depends on verifying such claims. The result, she said, would be that the public would not have correct and verified information about the prevalence of such crimes, which is important for the public to know.
The journalist and the advisor also discussed the possibility that, when her testimony becomes news, her impartiality as a journalist might be questioned by the public and by the committee that heard her testimony. She might be seen as an advocate for one side rather than an impartial expert witness.
Alternatives
“I then asked whether she saw any alternatives to what the lawyer was proposing, other than refusing to testify,” said the AdviceLine advisor. One alternative would be to coach the lawyer on views that might be expressed by a journalist. Another possible alternative would be to testify as a representative of a journalism organization, not as an individual journalist expressing her personal opinions.
The journalist did not make a final decision while talking to the advisor, but favored acting as a member of a journalism organization. If that failed, she indicated, she would refuse to testify because of the hazards to her credibility.
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.
Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.
