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By Casey Bukro
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists
Faced with a serious ethics problem, a journalist should talk to someone who knows something about ethics. Get some advice.
Too often, a sweat-drenched journalist might hunker down in fear or panic, trying to decide alone what to do about a story involving children, identifying rape victims or when told by an editor to do something the reporter knows is ethically wrong.
Reaching out and talking to someone about the dilemma is good ethics strategy. Collaboration doesn’t need to involve a terrible dilemma. It could be a matter of looking for another point of view.
A lawyer calls
That’s what AdviceLine advisor Hugh Miller did when he was contacted by a lawyer who was writing an article for a law review. Typically, AdviceLine answers ethics questions from professional journalists. But the lawyer was making an honest effort to be ethical, and he was asking a question that some journalists also might ask:
“Does a reporter/journalist have a duty to inform an interviewee that his answers to questions may be set forth in an article? Is the duty, if any, heightened if the interviewee’s name and title is placed in the article?”
It was an important question about identifying sources in articles, and whether they are aware that they will be identified.
Academic ethics
Hugh Miller answered this way: “This turned out to be not so much a journalism ethics question as an academic ethics one.” The lawyer has been interviewing people for the law review he is writing.
“It occurred to him that, although he wanted to quote his interlocutors by name and title, he had not informed them that he would be quoting them in his piece, and wondered whether it was ethical to do so without seeking their permission.
“I reviewed academic plagiarism with him and told him that he was certainly doing the right thing by citing his sources by name if he had not himself come up with the idea or phrase in question. In academic practice permission is not usually required, but certainly it would be professionally courteous to do so.”
Research ethics
In some academic situations, Miller cautioned, the Institutional Review Board guidelines might apply. The IRB is a research ethics committee that reviews and approves research involving human subjects. Its primary responsibility is to protect the rights and safety of research participants.
But here’s where Miller took a step to reach out to another member of the AdviceLine team, the author of this article, Casey Bukro.
The AdviceLine team consists of four ethics experts, including Miller, who taught or are teaching ethics at the university level. It also consists of two members with experience as professional journalists, Bukro and Howard Dubin.
Critique sessions
The ethics experts write reports on each call for advice to AdviceLine. Periodically, the team meets to review and critique those reports on whether the advice given to journalists could have been better. The role of the professional journalists is to consider whether the advice is consistent with newsroom practices and how journalism operates on a practical level.
That’s why Miller reached out to Bukro, to ask how a professional journalist might answer the lawyer’s question about naming sources.
“Yes,” said Bukro, “an interviewee should be informed that the reason for the interview is to place his comments in an article. The reporter could say something like, ‘I intend to identify you and use your comments in a story.’”
Sophistication
This is especially important “when dealing with people who are not accustomed to talking to reporters,” said Bukro. Public officials, for example, understand why reporters are interviewing them. “So it also is a matter of sophistication.”
“If somebody gets a call from a reporter asking questions, it should be assumed the reason for the call is that the information is likely to be published or distributed,” said Bukro. That might seem obvious, but people who are not accustomed to being interviewed might not think so. Handle members of the public with special care. Miller said he informed the lawyer about the sophistication angle after collaborating with Bukro.
Bukro pointed out that the lawyer wanted to know if journalists have “a duty” to act a certain way, as though they are governed by law.
Code of ethics
Many journalists use the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics as guidelines for ethical conduct. They are standards of fairness and accuracy.
“Probably a lawyer wants to think of the code as mandatory,” said Bukro. “It is not.”
SPJ leaders have long insisted that adherence to the ethics code is voluntary.
“Not everyone is familiar with the code or how it should be applied,” Bukro told Miller, “which is one of the reasons AdviceLine exists.”
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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.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 