The Society of Professional Journalists has had a love/hate relationship with its own code of ethics for a long time.
It loves being praised for having a code of ethics that is admired by professional journalists and considered a “gold standard” worthy of guiding the conduct of all ethical journalists. Wikipedia says the code is”what the SPJ has been best known for.”
It hates being expected to actually do anything about ethics and insists the code of ethics is strictly voluntary, take it or leave it. The society says its code is “a statement of abiding principles” and “not a set of rules.”
I’ve been involved in this push-and-pull tussle for years and called SPJ an ethics wimp for refusing to enforce its own code of ethics. That’s when I learned who my friends really were, and who really believed in free speech.
No ethics cops
Journalists thrive on controversy, but not in their own ranks. They bash everyone, but go easy on fellow journalists, saying they don’t want to be ethics cops.
Seems like a double standard, one for journalists and another for everyone else.
I’ve argued that if journalists don’t face up to their ethics obligations and put their own house in order, someone is going to try to do it for them.
Then this happened: Members of the Hawaii state senate on Jan. 23, 2025, introduced a bill calling for penalties against journalists operating in the state for ethics violations.
Evolving media landscape
“The legislature finds that in today’s rapidly evolving media landscape, the need for ethical standards in journalism has never been more urgent,” said the proposal. “The rise of social media, deepfake technologies and generative AI has amplified the spread of misinformation, posing new challenges for journalism and public trust.”
The statement points to “a significant decline in public confidence in media.”
Hard to deny any of that.
But then the legislators dropped a bombshell. The bill says journalists, editors or news media outlets shall “comply with the code of ethics adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists.”
Horrified
You’d think SPJ leaders would take that as a compliment. But SPJ leaders with a history of doing nothing about ethics except talk about it were horrified.
“The Society of Professional Journalists views this legislation as patently unconstitutional and calls for the Hawaii legislature to remove it from consideration,” said the organization in a statement.
SPJ’s national president, Emily Bloch, had this to say: “While the Society of Professional Journalists is flattered that the Hawaii State Legislature recognizes the SPJ Code of Ethics as a gold standard for journalistic integrity, we must strongly oppose any attempt to use our code as a tool for policing journalists through legislation. Such measures fundamentally contradict the principles of the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”
Unconstitutional
SPJ has long argued that any attempt to do something about unethical journalism is unconstitutional. Worse yet, SPJ shows no ambition for addressing the seismic shifts in American journalism that the Hawaii state senate spelled out clearly.
A trailblazer in journalism ethics, SPJ once boasted of having 15,000 members. Then it lost its way, becoming what a consultant once said was “nice but not necessary.” Today, membership reportedly is down to about 4,000.
Founded in 1909, SPJ once touted itself as the oldest and largest journalism organization in the U.S. It’s website now describes the organization as “the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization” that, among other things, is dedicated to “stimulating high standards of ethical behavior.” An interesting word usage, since stimulating means “to arouse to activity or heightened action.”
Stimulation
SPJ does not want to stimulate the Hawaiian state legislature to act on its code of ethics.
It could be said SPJ lost its way when it went soft on ethics, and might have lost members too.
I’m an SPJ member, and feel personally involved any time the SPJ ethics code is mentioned. I wrote the version adopted in 1973, the first code of ethics that SPJ could call its own.
It happened this way: In 1972, when SPJ was known as Sigma Delta Chi (SDX), I was chairman of the society’s Professional Development Committee.
Abuses
At its national convention in Dallas, the society adopted a resolution asking journalists and the public to be aware “of the importance of objectivity and credibility in the news media by calling attention to abuses of these tenets when they occur.”
That resolution was sent to my committee “for study and program proposals.”
Committee members considered a list of things to do in response to the convention mandate. At the top of the list was a code of ethics SDX could call its own.
While I researched what a modern code of ethics should contain, committee members offered ideas. With that, I batted out a code of ethics on the Underwood typewriter I used at work at the Chicago Tribune. (This was before computers, if you can imagine that.)
Soaring ideals
I wanted it to reflect the ideals of SDX and of journalism in soaring ways, reflecting not only what journalism is but what it wants to be.
The next year, in 1973, I presented the new code of ethics at the national convention in Buffalo, N.Y., calling it “strong stuff.” It outlawed accepting “freebies”, free travel and secondary employment that could damage a journalist’s reputation and credibility.
Most of all, it contained a pledge, saying “journalists should actively censure and try to prevent violations of these standards, and they should encourage their observance by all newspeople.” That became known as the “censure clause.”
For the books
What happened next is one for the history books. I moved for its adoption, it was seconded and adopted unanimously by hundreds of delegates without a word of debate.
Those delegates had copies of the proposed code of ethics in their notebooks. Typically, journalists haggle for hours over the proper use of words, sentences, phrases and even punctuation in written material. But not this time.
What happened next was bizarre, surprising and maybe unprecedented in the history of the world. As I walked from the dais, the society’s executive director, Russ Hurst, grabbed my arm.
Once again
Looking worried, Hurst said maybe the delegates did not realize what they had just done. He expected a long and bitter floor fight over the code, especially the part about censuring journalists. He told me to introduce the proposed ethics code again.
So, I returned to the dais, interrupting the society’s president as he was going on to the next order of business, and told him I was instructed to introduce the code a second time, which I did.
This time, I emphasized it was a tough code “with teeth,” telling journalists to take action on ethics. Ethics requires thought and action. I moved again for its adoption.
Ayes
And a resounding second chorus of louder “ayes” rang out, without objections or debate.
It was the only time in SDX history that a resolution was adopted unanimously twice. And probably the last time ethics was discussed without heated debate.
That year, the organization changed its name to the Society of Professional Journalists, and I became chair of the newly created national Ethics Committee.
SPJ leaders responded cautiously with a go-slow campaign of hanging copes of the ethics code on newsroom and classroom walls.
Next decade
For the next decade, the code nagged at members, as a good code should. It should not simply be words on paper, but a call to action.
On Nov. 19, 1977, an SPJ convention in Detroit adopted a resolution mandating that “chapters be encouraged to develop procedures for dealing with questions of ethics.” That never happened.
SPJ was torn between a desire to lead journalists toward more ethical conduct, and a fear that could lead to “witch hunts” and litigation.
My greatest fear was that 326 SPJ professional and student chapters had no idea how to handle ethics complaints if they arose. It made sense to offer some guidelines, some boundaries.
President’s request
While I was national ethics chairman In 1984, at the request of SPJ president Phil Record, I drafted procedures for addressing ethics complaints. On May 17, 1985, the SPJ board of directors unanimously rejected the procedures proposed during a meeting in Salt Lake City.
I was not proposing draconian measures. Censure could mean anything we wanted it to mean, including a mild rebuke pointing out that a member or one of the SPJ chapters were doing something contrary to the ethics standards.
I believed that the SPJ code of ethics should be considered a condition of membership, like the bylaws which spelled out the conditions for being a member in good standing. First and foremost, it belonged to SPJ and our first duty was to be sure our own members understood the code and lived up to it.
House in order
SPJ had an obligation to make sure its own house was in order before preaching ethics to others.
If other organizations wanted to adopt the SPJ code, that was their business. And they could decide what to do about it.
The censure clause issue came to a head at the 1986 convention in Atlanta, 13 years after the code’s adoption. A delegate from Mississippi said that his chapter started an investigation into an alleged ethics code violation, but dropped it when SPJ national official said they would not support any action.
Proper and just
A delegate from Arkansas proposed a resolution asking the SPJ board of directors to recommend, in consultation with the national Ethics Committee and local chapters, procedures for chapters to use to handle ethics complaints, subject to approval by the national convention the following year in Chicago. She wanted guidance for what is “proper and just.” The resolution was adopted.
On April 30, 1987, the SPJ board of directors met in St. Paul and voted to recommend no procedures for chapters to handle ethics complaints, and the board recommended removing the censure clause from the code of ethics.
At that meeting, Bruce Sanford, SPJ’s lawyer, is quoted in the minutes saying “if you believe in ethics, you have to take some risks.” That seemed like a moment of enlightenment. But then Sanford handed the board a memorandum calling ethics enforcement an “oxymoron.” He urged “using hypothetical situations to provoke discussion,” as lawyers do, not real ethics issues. The memo warned enforcing the code “would likely engender a rash of lawsuits.”
A menace
Sanford had been terrifying board members with this kind of language for years, describing the ethics code as a menace to be feared. It should be noted that various professional groups are bound by professional standards, including lawyers. The American Bar Association has model rules of professional conduct, including disciplinary authority.
Lawyers advised SPJ that admitting to having a code of ethics could be held against journalists in court, which never happened.
The trouble with hypotheticals is they are fiction, although a room full of clever journalists can devise some amazing and far-fetched hypotheticals. But that’s just an amusing game. Life often is far more complicated and surprising than anything you can imagine.
Refusal
At the 1987 national convention in Chicago, the SPJ board refused to follow the 1986 convention’s mandate. After delegates voiced disapproval of the board’s failure to act on that mandate, a proposal to delete the controversial censure clause was adopted by a 162-136 vote. It was replaced by a passage calling for ethics education programs and encouraging the adoption of more codes of ethics.
By my reckoning, SPJ leaders by this point had overruled or ignored four convention resolutions mandating action on ethics abuses and procedures for addressing ethics complaints.
For years, SPJ bylaws stated that conventions are “the supreme legislative body of the organization.” Their mandates typically were honored and considered the voice of its membership, helping to set the organization’s agenda.
Bylaws amended
In 2023, the bylaws were amended, deleting references to conventions being a supreme legislative body. Instead, it said the SPJ board of directors “shall determine the priorities of the society’s business in furtherance of its mission…” In effect, SPJ leadership censored its members. This made official the board’s long-held suspicion that the boisterous rank and file can’t be trusted.
This history describes an organization leading the way on ethics, then losing confidence as its leadership turned timid and out of touch with the wishes of its membership, then turning a deaf ear to its members.
So ended a stormy period that provoked hard feelings and some broken friendships.
All for ethics
Though everyone is for ethics, you’d get an argument on what that means.
The toothless 1973 code and its amendments, though considered a model for journalists for 23 years, was ready for retirement.
SPJ’s national Ethics ommittee met in Philadelphia in 1996 with the intention of drafting a new “green light” code of ethics, which it did in two days. The backbone of the new code hinged on four principles: Seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable. I was told the Poynter Institute suggested that framework.
Four principles
Participants gathered into four groups to suggest standards for each of the four principles. I chaired the “be accountable” section, later changed to “be accountable and transparent.”
The new code of ethics was adopted by a national convention in 1996, including passages urging journalists to be accountable by exposing “unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations” and to “abide by the same high standards they expect of others.”
The code was tweaked again in 2014.
I served as SPJ’s national ethics chair from 1983 to 1986, and left the national Ethics Committee in 2010. I also served for many years as Midwest regional director for Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. And in 1983 was awarded the Wells Memorial Key, the society’s highest honor. I served the society for many years, but also feel an obligation to hold its feet to the fire, as I would with any organization that considers itself vital to the future of journalism. I want SPJ to live up to its own ideals.
Calls for action
Clearly the current SPJ ethics code still calls for action, where it says journalists should expose unethical conduct in journalism. That is something SPJ is unwilling to do, and might be the next thing to disappear from the code.
The Hawaiian state legislature is taking aim at wayward journalists, despite SPJ’s protests. And the legislature has a definite plan for doing that. It calls for:
*Establishing baseline ethical standards and transparency requirements for journalists, editors or news media outlets operating in Hawaii.
Training
*Requires news media to train their employees in ethics.
*Establishing a journalistic ethics commission to render advisory opinions about violations of the journalistic code of ethics.
*Establish a journalistic ethics review board.
Penalties
The commission “shall enforce penalties” recommended by a review board.
*Create a dedicated hotline and online reporting system to file complaints related to violations of the code of ethics.
*Create a complaint and appeals process.
Investigate
Under the legislation, the ethics review board would investigate complaints and file a written determination within 30 calendar days. The board could recommend a penalty for noncompliance, which could include a fine for a second violation.
Penalties could include “suspension or revocation of state media privileges, including press credentials for government-sponsored events.”
The proposed legislation goes on to say, “The state shall not deny or interfere with a journalist’s, editor’s or news media outlet’s right to exercise freedom of speech or freedom of the press….A journalist, editor or news media outlet shall be responsible for determining the news, opinion, feature and advertising content of their publication.”
Unacceptable
Unacceptable expressions include libel, slander, invasion of personal privacy, obscenity and inciting unlawful acts.
Locally, Hawaiian media express disapproval of the proposals.
The Sunshine Blog in the Honolulu Civil Beat, said: “Just say no to giving the state power over the press.”
Journalists will say, as they have in the past, that ethics enforcement is a violation of their First Amendment rights, and maybe it is and will be shot down for that reason. Courts these days, however, seem to differ on the meaning of constitutionality and press freedoms as government officials turn increasingly hostile toward the media. Two U.S. Supreme Court justices want to reconsider New York Times vs. Sullivan, a 1964 landmark First Amendment decision in libel cases.
It could be healthy to nudge journalists into thinking about what they should do to keep journalism honest, fair and ethical in these times of political polarization, media fragmentation, a divisive internet and a disappearing newspaper industry.
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 historic 20-year nosedive of the U.S. newspaper industry, shedding 77 percent of its jobs, is usually blamed on the internet and plummeting advertising revenue.
Seldom does anyone mention management marauders who, in the name of shareholder value, strip newspapers of their value by skeletonizing the staff and selling assets, turning them into shadows of themselves.
This involves management decisions, which sometimes allow newspaper owners and executives to sell out because it is in their personal financial interest. This is the part of the story of newspaper decline that is not told because it’s usually hidden. They are boardroom decisions that don’t get much publicity, until details leak out through court documents.
Look no further than Chicago, which has a rich history of attracting raiders to its newspapers. They included Keith Rupert Murdoch and the late Sam Zell. They ruled at different times over the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, leaving those newspaper worse off when they left, like the devastation left behind by a tornado.
Newspaper ruination
What they did to the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune says a lot about the ruination of newspapers.
Let’ s start with Murdoch, an Australian media mogul who runs newspapers in the U.S. and Great Britain that stress sex, violence, crime and racial discord. It’s said he practices “the black art of journalism.”
Murdoch controls News Corporation, a media powerhouse headquartered in New York City with companies that dominate the news, television, film and print industries. Originally incorporated in Adelaide, South Australia, the company re-incorporated in the U.S. in 2004.
In 1984, one of his companies, News America Inc., bought the Chicago Sun-Times from Field Enterprises, owned by half-brothers Marshall Field V and Ted Field, for $98 million. The sale included the newspaper’s building and property in a downtown riverfront location and the Field Newspaper Syndicate.
Chicago’s oldest
The Sun-Times calls itself the oldest continually published daily newspaper in Chicago, tracing its lineage to the 1844 founding of the Chicago Daily Journal, which also was the first newspaper to publish the rumor – believed false – that a cow owned by Catherine O’Leary started the great 1871 Chicago fire by kicking over a blazing lantern in the barn. The true cause was never determined.
The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun, founded in 1941, and the Chicago Daily Times, published from 1929 to 1948. In recent times, there were four Chicago daily newspapers, and the competition was savage, just as journalists like it and one of the reasons Chicago was considered a great newspaper town. It was no place for sissies.
The Chicago Daily News closed and Chicago Today merged with the Chicago Tribunes, leaving the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune to battle for news.
Unkept promise
In 1984, Marshall Field V promised the newspaper’s managing editor that he would never sell the Sun-Times to Murdoch, but he did.
Some of the newspapers top writers, including columnist Mike Royko, who called Murdoch “The Alien,” defected.
Roger Simon, another Sun-Times columnist, recalled a dinner involving Murdoch and about two dozen employees. Murdoch promised, “as he always did when he bought a paper, to retain its quality and integrity. It was a lie, and we knew it was a lie.”
Writing in Politico, Simon said he was alarmed by what Murdoch might do to the Sun-Times. But editors told him to calm down, that Murdoch had given his personal assurance that the paper’s quality would be maintained.
Editors gone
“Within a few months, all those editor were gone,” Simon wrote. “They had quit in disgust or had been shown the door. Murdoch imported his own thugs and stooges from Britain to run the place. ‘Quality’ was just another word for snobbery, they said. It was not what the masses wanted. And those who disagreed were elite and effete.”
The late Roger Ebert, the paper’s film critic, recalled the first day of Murdoch’s ownership, when he started to lay out a new front page.
“He threw out every meticulous detail of the beautiful design, ordered up big, garish headlines, and gave big play to a story about a North Shore rabbi accused of holding a sex slave. The story turned out to be fatally flawed, but so what? It sold newspapers. Well, exactly, it didn’t sell papers. There were hundreds of cancellations. Soon our precious page 3 was defaced by a daily Wingo girl, a pinup in a bikini promoting a cash giveaway.”
Murdoch changed the appearance of the spunky tabloid newspaper by surrounding stories with thick black borders, making the paper appear to be in mourning.
Mistaken city identity
Murdoch and his minions seemed to think Chicago was a blue collar town, ripe for sex and sensationalism, which worked in Britain despite its staid reputation. Successful newspaper operators are supposed to know something about the character and culture of the communities they serve.
Jack Fuller, the late president of Tribune Publishing, put it this way: “Newspapers grow out of the soil of the community.” A paper should reflect its region and aspire “to have a distinctive voice that relates well to the community it serves.”
Murdoch didn’t care. He has an operating formula that caters to the sordid.
“All newspapers are run to make profits,” Murdoch told his biographer. The path to profitability is a matter of choices. Murdoch’s path involves sensationalism, pandering to advertisers and sexual interests and promoting a flaming right-wing political and social agenda. Plus daily doses of photos of women wearing practically nothing.
Ethical standards
Other newspapers reach profitability another way, through admired and respected journalism based on highly ethical standards.
Since Murdoch is a member of the world’s billionaires club, it must be acknowledged that he gives his audiences what they want. He works on the idea that he can’t go wrong by going low.
It can be argued that Murdoch showed a generation of future hedge fund operators how it’s done. He slashed the staff from 320 Newspaper Guild members to about 245 and in 1986 sold the newspaper for $145 million in cash. Separately, he sold the Sun-Times wire service, renamed the News America Syndicate, reportedly for $20 million to $30 million.
Chop!
Then Murdoch skipped town, leaving him richer and the Chicago Sun-Times a far weaker newspaper than he found it, with a smaller staff and without its wire service. Chop! That’s how it’s done.
Murdoch has said “money itself doesn’t interest me. You make it to go on building the business.”
But that’s not what he did at the Sun-Times. He drained it of revenue and its power to be profitable. Then he abandoned it.
Enter Sam Zell
Then there is the late Sam Zell, born Shmuel Zielonka in Chicago in 1941; died a real estate tycoon in 2023.
A bald, squat, foul-mouthed gnome-like man standing about 5-feet-five, Zell was called “the grave dancer,” a nickname derived from an article he wrote by that name explaining how he profited by scooping up failing and undervalued properties and selling them. In the real estate business, they are called distressed properties or assets. It’s said Zell, with a swatch of white beard covering his chin, got rich being a contrarian and an iconoclast.
“I was dancing on the skeletons of other people’s mistakes,” he wrote. But in Chicago, he became best known as the evil genius who loaded Tribune Company with $12.9 billion in debt and drove it into bankruptcy, using an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) he created.
Board accepts
In April 2007, the Tribune’s board of directors accepted Zell’s proposal to take the company private in a complex, $8.2 billion transaction using the ESOP, part of a pension plan for Tribune employees, and ending with the flamboyant Zell becoming chief executive of one of the nation’s most conservative, strait-laced media companies.
It was called a leveraged buyout, meaning it involved an acquisition of one company by another using a large amount of borrowed money or debt to meet the cost of acquisition. In this case, the ESOP was buying Tribune Company.
Although Zell invested $315 million in the scheme, he was risking someone else’s money – the pension plan for 18,000 Tribune employees.
A tool
To Zell, the ESOP was just a tool. If anything, he looked upon Tribune employees with disdain. As it turned out, he was a stain on the Tribune’s reputation.
The Chicago Tribune, founded in 1847, was a media powerhouse , the biggest in the Midwest with influence to match. Its highs and lows are legendary, from its support of Abraham Lincoln for president, to the erroneous 1948 “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline still discussed in journalism classrooms.
Tribune Company, which became the Chicago Tribune newspaper’s parent, by 2001 owned 26 broadcasting stations and 15 newspapers staffed by 4,500 journalists worldwide and covering 80 percent of U.S. households. It also owned the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field.
Like other newspapers, the Chicago Tribune was weakened by the loss of advertising in the 2000s to the growing internet and two recessions that struck the U.S., including the severe Great Recession from 2007 to 2009.
Going private
Always alert for a way to profit from someone’s misfortune, Zell, the Grave Dancer, devised the plan with Tribune management’s approval, to take Tribune Company private. Among the advantages, management believed, was getting the company out of the glare of public scrutiny in tough economic times.
For Tribune employees, it was confusing since the Tribune for a time had two ESOPs, one that was old and the new one created to be a financing vehicle to buy back billions of dollars worth of publicly owned Tribune shares and make a lot of shareholders, Tribune board members, Tribune management and bankers rich.
To get the scheme rolling, on April 1, 2007, the newly formed ESOP bought 8,928,571 shares of Tribune common stock for $250 million. Those shares were split into 56,521,739 shares.
Tender offer
Next came the most important part of his plan: On April 25, 2007, Tribune Company announced that it started a tender offer to purchase up to 126 million shares of its common stock for $34 a share. It borrowed $7 billion at the same time, using $4.2 billion to pay for the shares, and $2.8 billion to finance existing debt.
The loans came from Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch.
The targeted 126 million shares the company intended to repurchase amounted to more than 50 percent of outstanding Tribune common stock, with a total value of about $4.3 billion.
So many Tribune Company shareholders wanted to cash out that the tender offer was “oversubscribed,” meaning they wanted to sell more than the 126 million shares sought. So Tribune management bought more.
Offering shares
Employees could offer shares they held either in the old ESOP (not the new one Zell created) or from their Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
The final step in the tender offer came when Tribune Company merged with the ESOP, making the ESOP owner of the company. Tribune Company borrowed another $4.2 billion to buy the rest of the shares that were publicly owned.
That meant Tribune Company now was about $8.2 billion in debt because of its stock buy-back.
No federal taxes
One major advantage came with the stock buyback campaign – taxes. The Tribune became an S corporation, which pays no federal taxes because shareholders are responsible for taxes.
But wait! There’s more.
Back in March, 2000, Tribune Company agreed to acquire Times Mirror Company in Los Angeles for $8.3 billion in cash and stock, the largest acquisition in the history of the newspaper industry.
By 2007, the Tribune’s debt load from the Times Mirror merger was about $5 billion. Together with the $8 billion in debt from the stock buy-back, Tribune Company was straining under a debt load rounded out to $13 billion. Industry onlookers had warned this was risky and urged Tribune management to reconsider the deal.
Plot thickens
Here’s where the plot thickens – some of what was driving the tender offer in the background.
California’s Chandler family, owners of the Times Mirror Company, ended up with a 20.1 percent stake in Tribune Company, becoming the largest shareholder, in the 2000 transaction. The family grumbled about the sinking price of Tribune stock shares, and began agitating for a corporate breakup or sale. They wanted to cash out and avoid more losses.
Tribune employees also did not like the drop in Tribune stock values. For years, the Tribune was considered a solid investment.
Investment advice
Invest in companies you know and understand, say investment advisers. Many Tribune employees loaded up on Tribune stock as part of their pension plans, thinking it was wise.
In 2000, Tribune stock was selling for up to $55.69 a share. That $34 a share offered by Tribune in the buyback was a big drop in value, which could be counted as a capital loss on tax returns.
The Chandler Trusts supported the Tribune’s tender offer deal because it gave them a chance to cash out of Tribune stock. The Chandlers were putting a lot of pressure on the Tribune.
Poisoned chalice
Tribune attitudes toward the Chandlers differ. Some say the Chandlers and their wily negotiators tricked Tribune executives by selling them the Times Mirror along with a hidden $1 billion IRS tax debt. Some called it a “poisoned chalice” or a tax time bomb waiting to explode. Others said the Tribune knew about the huge tax bill, but decided to go ahead with the transaction anyway.
Once the leveraged buyout was finished, an analyst commented: “If there is a problem with the company, most of the risk is on the employees, Zell will not own Tribune shares. The cash will come from the sweat equity of the employees of Tribune.”
Zell era
Next, the Tribune entered the tumultuous Zell era.
Zell began visiting Tribune Company offices and staffs, introducing himself as the new boss.
“There’s a new sheriff in town,” he’d crow, in speeches peppered with profanity.
It quickly became clear that he thought of newspapers as department stores with merchandise to sell to customers. Give the customers what they want.
At one of those staff meetings, a photographer said readers like photos of puppy dogs, but a newspaper can’t just give them photos of puppy dogs all the time.
Expletives
“F…..k you!” Zell bellowed. If they want pictures of puppy dogs, give them pictures of puppy dogs. Zell accused journalists of being arrogant for thinking they knew what readers should read.
It got worse.
Zell handpicked Randy Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, to be the Tribune’s chief operating officer. Later, he became president and chief executive officer. Next, Zell brought in a new management team, mostly from the radio business. Like Zell, they had little newspaper experience, though it accounted for more than 70 percent of the company’s business. They become known as “Zell guys.”
Lipinski resigns
In 2008, Ann Marie Lipinski resigned as the Tribune’s editor, telling confidantes that she had grown weary of Zell guys who dropped F-bombs every three or four words, showing their admiration for and loyalty to Zell, who spoke that way.
It went far beyond the way they talked.
The New York Times, in a story headlined, “At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture,” described sexual activities in Tribune Tower and a smoke-filled gambling casino in the 24th floor paneled office once occupied by Publisher Robert R. McCormick.
“Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company,” the Times reported. “Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.”
A Zell guy
A Tribune editor described how a Zell guy entered the fourth floor newsroom holding a large open container of beer, the kind purchased at ball parks. The editor told him it probably was not a good idea to be seen drinking beer in the newsroom, upon which the Zell guy spilled the beer on the floor, dropped the container and walked away.
Zell and Michaels decided that Tribune Company newspapers must shrink, and one of the ways to do that was holding journalists accountable for their productivity. This meant measuring column inches written by every reporter. Michaels cited statistics that he said showed the average journalist at the Los Angeles times produces about one-sixth of the content produced by counterparts at Tribune Company papers in Baltimore and Hartford, Connecticut.
“You find out that you can eliminate a fair amount, a fair number of people, without eliminating very much content,” he said, even allowing for investigative reporting. “We believe we can save a lot of money and not lose a lot of productivity.”
Slash to profitability
It was a plan to slash themselves to profitability, and led to 4,200 layoffs.
Editor&Publisher magazine reported that Zell found a “novel” way to fund the layoffs. “In a novel twist, they’ll be funded with overages from Tribune’s employee pension plan.”
At the time, 9,280 Tribune retirees were drawing pensions, and I was one of them. I checked the plan’s rules and regulations and found they stipulate pension funds must be spent only for pensions. I notified the U.S. Department of Labor and a bankruptcy judge that Zell was messing with our pension money, and violating the pension fund rules and regulations.
About the same time, the Labor Department sent a subpoena to Tribune Company asking for “an extensive range of documents” about the ESOP and the pension fund. In 2012, The Labor Department announced a settlement giving $32 million to Tribune ESOP participants.
Joyride over
Zell’s joyride in the media world ended badly on Dec. 8, 2008, when Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection, the largest in the history of the American media industry. It came a year after Zell took over.
“I made a mistake,” Zell told Bloomberg Television. “I was too optimistic.” More famously, Zell described his Tribune incursion as the “transaction from hell.” The Economist magazine called him “overZellous.”
“So, how did we get here?” Zell asked in a memo to Tribune employees. “It has been, to say the least, the perfect storm. A precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy have coupled with a credit crisis, making it extremely difficult to support our debt.” He said he was proud of the work he did at the Tribune.
Zell’s main strategy for survival was to sell assets. He sold Newsday, a paper based in Long Island. And he sold the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field to the Ricketts family for about $845 million. Critics said he could have gotten $1 billion for the Cubs if he had acted sooner.
Bankruptcy advisers
Tribune Company worked with bankruptcy advisers investment bank Lazard Inc. and law firm Sidley Austin to weigh its financial options.
Zell is an example of why businessmen should avoid businesses they know little to nothing about. He was accused of trashing Tribune Company, despoiling its pension fund and inflicting misfortune on the company’s employees.
Zell was loud and obnoxious, intentionally drawing attention to himself. Others, more discrete, were just as damaging.
For the Tribune, the storm just began. Two months earlier, in September, six Los Angeles Times reporters filed a class action suit in Los Angeles accusing Zell and former Tribune CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons of taking the company private to enrich themselves and of reckless management that was destroying the company’s value.
Lawsuit flurry
A flurry of lawsuits followed, with astonishing details of alleged self-serving by Tribune’s top management and others involved in the 2007 tender offer and bankruptcy proceedings.
“This lawsuit arises out of the destruction of Tribune Company by greed, fraud and financial chicanery,” said a suit filed by Marc S. Kirschner as litigation trustee for the Tribune Litigation Trust in the federal district court in southern New York.
“The facts of this case show how a desire to make fast bucks for shareholders led to the bankruptcy of one of America’s most venerable media companies, with massive job cuts and huge losses for Tribune’s creditors. Under the law, those creditors, which lent billions of dollars to Tribune, were supposed to be paid before the shareholders of the company.
Trusts and foundations
“Instead, the wealthy trusts and foundations that controlled Tribune instigated a leveraged buyout that funneled more than $8 billion to them, other corporate insiders and thousands of fellow shareholders, enriched the company’s management with tens of millions of dollars of bonuses and other financial incentives, and paid huge fees to Wall Street advisors.
“Tribune was left an insolvent wreck and filed for bankruptcy less than one year after the transaction was completed.”
The fifth amended complaint, filed August 2, 2013, named 125 defendants, starting with Dennis J. FitzSimons and including Zell.
Tribune officers got more than $79 million in leveraged buyout proceeds, while members of the Tribune board of directors got $28 million, according to the suit.
Fiduciary duty
Tribune board members and management had a fiduciary duty to put the welfare of the company and employees ahead of their own interests, said the suit, but that “quickly changed when the risk of insolvency was shifted entirely away from themselves and onto Tribune creditors through the LBO proposed by Zell.”
Banks were accused of engaging in insider trading, acting on non-public information about the Tribune’s financial condition and bankruptcy plans.
Lawyers in such cases might be accused of exaggeration, since the amounts of money involved in the Tribune leveraged buyout and bankruptcy are beyond the comprehension of most people – millions and billions.
Examiner’s report
But a court-appointed examiner in the Tribune bankruptcy case, Kenneth Klee, decided that the buyout was marred by “dishonesty and lack of candor” by Tribune Company management so that the deal rendered the conglomerate insolvent from the moment the two-step tender offer transaction closed.
Klee concluded it was “somewhat likely” that the second part of the $8.2 billion stock buyout was an example of “fraudulent conveyance,” meaning the debt that came with the deal overwhelmed the company’s ability to pay its bills. Klee wrote he found no evidence that Zell or third parties committed intentional fraud.
Ungrateful workers
Never repentant, Zell called Tribune employees uncooperative and ungrateful. And, apparently irritated by accusations that he and others were greedy, Zell said: “In my experience, newspaper people are at least as greedy as anybody else, and any perception to the contrary is perpetuated by the media itself.”
It’s impossible to know if Zell was talking about newsroom journalists or media executives, who are not journalists. Or both. Possibly, he did not know the difference.
Dan Neil, one of the former Los Angeles Times journalists who sued Zell, answered Zell this way: ”Newspaper people are not greedy. I’m pretty sure Mr. Zell has met greedier people in the finance and investing sector as opposed to journalism. It just demonstrates that he never got the meaning of a media company. It’s not just a business but a public trust. Like hospitals, they have obligations that extend beyond their profit and loss.”
Eventually, some of the lawsuits reached conclusions.
Decade passes
More than a decade after Tribune Company went private, more than 50 former Tribune directors and senior executives agreed to settle a case in a Delaware federal bankruptcy court by paying $200 million.
They included Zell and former Tribune Company CEO Dennis FitzSimons (who got $50 million through stock sales and incentives in the buyout); Crane Kenney, a former Tribune executive; Miles White, a former Tribune board member; and Tim Knight, a former Tribune Company executive.
Michaels out
Randy Michaels lasted until 2010, when he was pushed out as chief executive for tarnishing the company with boorish, sexist behavior and creating a general atmosphere of juvenile unprofessionalism in the corporate suite.
Ever vigilant for a chance to make a profit from failure, brazen billionaire Zell in 2011 sued former shareholders of the bankrupt Tribune Company, contending he should be paid along with other creditors if a court ruled that the 2007 buyout he engineered was a fraud.
Tribune Company emerged from bankruptcy on Dec. 31, 2012, after a grueling four years of corporate conflict. It emerged with new owners, a newly appointed board of directors and freed from massive debt.
Company splits
Tribune Company split into publishing and broadcasting companies.
Weaker now and faced like most newspapers with redefining itself in the new digital world, Tribune Publishing Co. attracted some strange – and eventually the worst possible – bedfellows.
Tribune Publishing Co. became a plaything for a rich technology entrepreneur, Michael Ferro Jr., who, on a whim, in 2016 changed the company’s name to Tronc, which was widely ridiculed. Ferro was nonexecutive chairman and the largest shareholder of the newspaper chain. The name changed back to Tribune Publishing Company in 2018.
Tronc supposedly stood for “Tribune Online Content,” but published reports show that Ferro had been toying with the name earlier, when he was majority owner of the Chicago Sun-Times. The word means a type of fund into which shared money is put, like tips.
Tronc
While the newspaper company was known as Tronc, the landmark Gothic Tribune Tower, built in 1925, was sold in 2016 for $240 million to a Los Angeles developer, who turned the tower into multi-million-dollar luxury condominiums near downtown Chicago. Tronc was the largest tenant and moved editorial operations to another location, eventually to the printing plant, which was demolished to make way for a casino. Printing operations moved to suburban Schaumburg.
Tribune was struggling, and its employees knew it. They practically begged some billionaire with an appreciation for the Chicago Tribune’s history to rescue the company.
Columnist Mary Mary Schmich wrote “a letter to the next owner of the Chicago Tribune. We need you.” A few billionaires thought about it. Recognizing that hedge fund Alden Global Capital was interested in buying the Tribune, investigative reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx wrote: “Will the Chicago Tribune be the next newspaper picked to the bone?”
The answer was yes.
Vulture capitalists
In 2021, Tribune Publishing Company fell prey to Alden Global Capital, a New York distressed investment hedge fund with a reputation for aggressive cost and staff-cutting. Companies like Alden are known as vulture capitalists who suck the life out of companies they buy.
Alden already had a 32 percent stake in Tribune Publishing, mostly acquired from Ferro. A Tribune writer called it “a final bird flip to Chicago journalism from Michael Ferro…”
Alden bought the company for $633 million in a transaction approved by Tribune Publishing shareholders, becoming the second-largest newspaper owner in the U.S. behind Gannett.
Back in debt
“It didn’t take long for Alden Global Capital to put its imprint – and significant debt – on Tribune Publishing….,’ wrote Chicago Tribune’s Robert Channick. The deal was leveraged with two loans totaling $278 million, putting the company in debt again.
That took Tribune Publishing private. Until the Alden purchase, Tribune Publishing was debt-free, profitable and had more than $250 million in cash.
Ironically, Alden founder, Randall D. Smith, was another grave dancer. He made his fortune on Wall Street by investing in failing companies, as did Sam Zell. Alden was dancing on a skeleton left by Zell’s mistakes. Smith is described as a pioneer in vulture capitalism, buying failing companies and dismantling them.
Chopping
Then Alden began chopping, which had started while the Tribune was in bankruptcy.
The Chicago Reader reported lists of those who took buyouts or were let go. Tribune reporter Kevin Pang also Tweeted such lists, until one day he Tweeted, “I was told to stop writing about this, because it was upsetting some people. OK, I’ll stop. But this is bigger than work. This is about real people and real friends.”
When the Tribune was fully staffed, it had about 700 editorial workers, including those in bureaus around the world. By 2009, that dropped to 480 newsroom employees. After further slashing by Alden, the Chicago Tribune staff fell from 111 to 76 by 2024.
The Chicago Tribune once covered the planet. Today, it covers mainly local and state news and fills several pages with one story.
First in 171 years
In 2018, while the Tribune was known as tronc, the media company agreed to recognize the Chicago Tribune Guild, the first newsroom union in the newspapers 171-year history.
“We have been badly mistreated by a series of corporate owners, tronc only being the most recent, and we’ve decided to take some control over the future of our journalism in the city of Chicago,” said Charles J. Johnson, a Tribune home page editor and an organizer of the Guild chapter.
For anyone with a sense of Chicago Tribune’s history, it was an astonishing development. Chicago Tribune management had always been staunchly hostile to organized labor.
According to Tribune lore, workers had been fired or demoted for even thinking of such a thing. They might find themselves covering police at Midnight.
Anti-union history
“The Chicago Tribune, the mother of all major anti-union newspapers – both in its editorial philosophy and newsroom policy – had just bowed to its employees’ desire to form a union,” wrote Stephen Franklin.
But that did not mean working conditions improved.
On Feb. 1, 2024, more than 200 journalists took part in the first strike ever staged in the famous newspaper town, and, at this point the first newsroom strike in the Chicago Tribune’s 177-year history.
“There’s never been a newspaper strike in Chicago,” said journalist Rob Warden. It included Tribune reporters, photographers and staffers from six other newsrooms around the nation.
The 24-hour strike was called to protest years of “slow-walked” contract negotiations and to demand fair wages.
Corporate greed
Union president Jon Schleuss accused Alden Global Capital of gutting newsrooms and being “hellbent on destroying America’s newsrooms.” Corporate greed in media is “out of control,” said Schleuss, “and hedge funds are at the core of the corporate greed.”
This is the story of just two Chicago newspapers brought low by corporate raiders. It’s impossible to say how many more newspapers fell victim to such forces, not just because of an unfavorable economy or a business model based on advertising that did not work anymore.
But this much is clear: The newspaper industry once was among the largest employers in America. In the early 1900s, about 24,000 newspapers were operating in the U.S.
Rate of decline
The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University charted the rate of decline, and found they were disappearing at the rate of two or more a week. Until only about 6,000 newspapers, mostly weeklies, were left in 2023. This led to “news deserts” with no local newspapers.
Newspapers lost 77 percent of their jobs over the last 20 years, the steepest dive by any of the 532 industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By one account, there were nearly 458,000 employees in the newspaper publishing industry in 1990; that fell to 183,000 by 2016. Employment in internet publishing and broadcasting rose from about 30,000 to nearly 198,000 in the same period, far from replacing jobs lost at newspapers.
Journalists like to point out that the press is the only profession explicitly mentioned and protected by the U.S. Constitution. They say newspapers are not just property but part of an institution with public purpose.
Reporters enemies
Good luck with that, with a president-elect, Donald Trump, who calls journalists “enemy of the people” while crowds cheer. Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, according to a new Gallup poll.
Journalists seldom get high ratings in public opinion polls. Popularity was never part of their mission.
But it is somewhat remarkable, not too surprising, that government officials watched a U.S. industry disappearing without doing much to help. It’s not surprising because newspapers make it their business to spotlight governmental corruption, and few government officials want to encourage that.
Struggling to survive
With many newspapers struggling to survive, a bill was introduced in 2009 in Washington allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits for educational purposes, giving them a tax status similar to public broadcasting companies.
Newspapers don’t get the kind of assistance given to coal mining communities where coal mines are closing as the U.S. moves to a clean-air economy. The U.S. Economic Development Administration offers relief to those communities.
More targeted, the U.S. Treasury Department’s American Rescue Plan offers tax and unemployment benefits for those who lost work because of the Covid-19 crisis.
Free enterprise
But I get it, free enterprise means survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog, no mercy, sink or swim.
For the U.S. newspaper industry, a lot of damage already has been done.
Also remarkable was the lack of law enforcement, in the Chicago Tribune bankruptcy case for example, where insider trading and breach of fiduciary duty seemed fairly blatant. Some of it resembled corporate sabotage. There’s a law against that, too. Buying a company and loading it with debt to buy it seems like corporate sabotage. That’s allowed but seems unfair.
Courts are supposed to protect businesses from nefarious practices. Good luck with that too.
Activist judges
Judges these days openly take sides politically. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch say they find flaws with the landmark 1964 New York Times vs. Sullivan decision which limits the ability of public officials to sue the media for defamation.
Thomas has been blistered by media accusations of alleged ethics violations, and he might be looking for a way to silence them.
Newspapers are not likely to get much sympathy from local powers either.
Seeking a savior
When Tribune Company was looking for a savior, Joe Cahill, a writer for Crain’s Chicago Business, pointed out other metropolitan dailies afflicted by woes found shelter in nonprofit ownership.
“And no Chicago foundation has signed up for a mission to save the Tribune from a hedge fund that has gutted other papers it owns,” wrote Cahill.
Chicago’s business leaders always knew where to drop off their press releases. But that was business.
No tears for lost newspapers
Likewise, when local newspapers and the writers who delivered useful or amusing articles vanish, where is the outrage or expressions of regret? None that I have seen. Even for writers who fell into that rare category of “beloved,” writers who knew their community and wrote movingly about it. None. Mary Schmich was that kind of writer, and so was Royko.
To counteract some of that disappearance, the Medill School of Journalism and Crain’s Chicago Business both have embarked on campaigns to rescue journalism. Medill’s is called the “Local News Initiative,” and Crain’s published a series of articles on “a race to save the news.”
Both lack one thing: A serious look at the predations by plundering corporate raiders and how to avoid them.
The trouble with reformers is they tend to think everything is on the level and people are acting in good faith. The Tribune Company case revealed that a lot of people knew it was on a disastrous course, headed for bankruptcy. Are there no safeguards against the predations of hedge funds? Should there be?
No stupidity law
It can be argued there is no law against stupidity, and the Tribune case falls into that category.
It also can be argued that the kind of businesses that attracted Zell and Alden Global Capital are dubbed “under performers.” They were weak and vulnerable, the kind that attract sharks like blood in the water. So keep your business strong and watch for insiders who might profit by making it weak through skulduggery and chicanery.
The New York Times is not an under performer, so we are not reading stories about corporate raiders picking it apart. Even strong companies can be attacked by hostile takeovers, but that’s another story.
No friends
Let’s learn from the fate of Tribune Company: Don’t expect help from government or even local business leaders. You are on your own.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer argued that newspapers should have no friends.
Perhaps the answer is for the newspaper industry itself to find ways to lend assistance to flagging newspapers by creating a fund to do that.
The Price-Anderson Act, for example, is a law that establishes a financial protection system for people who may be injured or held liable in a nuclear accident. All U.S. nuclear power plant operators contribute to the fund.
Worth saving?
Something like that is a possible solution, at least short-term, for ailing newspapers, depending on whether society decides that newspapers are worth saving, or should go the way of buggy whips. In the long run, society decides that by deciding what it wants to buy, although worthwhile institutions can be preserved by donors or other ways.
The intent of the U.S. Constitution is to protect the free flow of information, not necessarily the method by which it is delivered. In the far distant future, newspapers as we know them might become extinct and replaced by new technology.
James Squires, former editor of the Chicago Tribune, saw a shift in the newspaper business and wrote about it in his book, “Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers.”
“This development coincided with the passing of newspaper ownership into the hands of corporate managers less concerned with press tradition than with business profitability,” he wrote. “The decline of the free press had begun.”
Bean-counters
Those who run newspapers only for profitability are called bean-counters.
Families that owned newspaper in the past often considered themselves journalists, who tend to be idealists. Money management skills were sometimes lacking. It can be argued that’s why the cold-blooded bean-counters took over.
To their sorrow, many newspaper managers did what they always did; innovation was not on the playbook. Editors often were obsessed with reader “navigation” through the newspaper. It was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
One more thing about this look into the fate befalling newspapers in Chicago and across the country: hedge fund owners seem intent on trashing journalism businesses, as though showing their contempt. They strip them not only of revenue, but of their dignity and value.
They remind me of tomb robbers of ancient Egypt. After looting the royal tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, the robbers smashed everything left behind, possibly to destroy the magic that supposedly protected them. Looting and desecration. It was an insult and a form of murder, since the looters took what the pharaohs needed in the afterlife.
Legends say those tomb raiders were cursed to suffer bad luck, illness and death.
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 beauty and serenity of a garden owned by a professional painter with colorful ideas seem safe topics to write about.
That’s what a freelancer thought when she pitched that kind of story to a magazine editor in Seattle.
The editor liked the idea, until she learned that the painter/gardener is the freelancer’s aunt. The editor fears an article might be seen as a pitch for the artist’s work, and therefore a conflict of interest.
The freelancer asked David Ozar, an AdviceLine adviser, how to respond to that concern.
“I explained that the ethical question is whether a conflicting interest is interfering (or is likely to interfere) with the professional’s judgment in a way that would harm those the professional is serving (that is the readers.)
“So is the relationship to her aunt likely to impact the journalist’s judgment that the garden is newsworthy in the relevant sense and is the author describing it accurately rather than ‘puffing it up?’”
A beautiful garden
The freelancer replied that it is a beautiful garden by any standard and it shows the artist’s skills can enhance a garden; but there is nothing in the description of the garden to pitch the artist’s other work. Also, the article would be accompanied by photos so readers could judge for themselves whether the garden was outstanding.
“We also talked about transparency,” said Ozar, “that is that the author should mention in some appropriate way that the artist is her aunt so the readers can take that into account in their judgment of the garden.”
Conflicts of interest is an ethics issue often raised by journalists who contact AdviceLine for guidance. An article written previously about the topic by another AdviceLine adviser is among those visited most often by journalists searching the AdviceLine archives.
An “open concept“
Given that interest, here’s that article, written by Nancy Matchett, who pointed out that definitions of conflicts of interest can be elusive and confusing, making it an “open concept.”
The article was titled: Conflict of interest: What does it mean?
By Nancy Matchett
A reporter who covers town meetings wonders whether it is appropriate to pursue a relationship with a councilmember’s daughter.
A community activist learns that the editor of the local newspaper plans to run for town supervisor, and asks whether this is OK.
An editor discovers that one of her reporters is covering an issue he previously wrote editorials about, and wants to check whether her instinct to give the story to someone else is correct.
And a publisher posts a notice that “no anti-fracking info [is] welcome,” overturning the paper’s previous policy of printing flyers on both sides of the issue. This prompts at least one reporter to resign, and she wants to know whether we share her concern that the new policy poses a threat to journalistic integrity.
A general question
All of these AdviceLine cases raise the general question, “What counts as a conflict of interest?” Interestingly, the SPJ code is relatively silent on this.
It does say that journalists should “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,”and “disclose unavoidable conflicts.” But the code does not provide further details about what would make a conflict unavoidable, nor does it offer a precise definition of what it means to say a conflict of interest exists.
This is not a criticism of the code itself; it is a reason why ethical professionals sensibly seek advice from time to time.
Conflict of interest is an example of an “open concept.” While it’s possible to give some textbook examples, there is no single definition that adequately covers all cases.
A family resemblance
At best, there is what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called a “family resemblance” among the various situations in which the concept is appropriately used. When dealing with an open concept, testing your thinking against other professionals’ reactions is one of the best ways to ensure that you have fully understood what the concept means.
Whether a real conflict exists will also depend on facts about the particular individual whose interests potentially conflict. All of us have different abilities to bracket off our emotional attachments and understand conflicting points of view. So while one reporter might be able to draw a bright line between objective reporting and editorial work, another might find it impossible to report seriously on the arguments made by those with whom he disagrees.
One of the things AdviceLine respondents try to do is make sure callers are attending to this kind of detail. But even when it’s plausible to say that only the journalist herself knows whether a real conflict exists (the first three cases above could be examples of this), the need to avoid perceived conflicts of interest remains.
Fighting temptation
Why should journalists avoid perceived conflicts of interest even when no real conflict exists? The answer comes from reflection about the profession’s societal role. The average citizen isn’t in a position to know which reporters and editors can fight which forms of temptation.
And even the most seasoned journalist occasionally might be mistaken about his or her own ability to resist. To protect the profession’s integrity, it’s better for everyone involved if journalists avoid anything that looks remotely like conflict of interest. Only then can journalists and readers alike be confident that the profession is fulfilling its broader obligation to seek and report the truth.
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.
Camelot was that legendary place where high ideals were honored and celebrated by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Centuries-old fables tell that story, which also was told by Broadway and Hollywood.
In a small way, Chicago was like Camelot. Long ago, the Chicago Headline Club gave Ethics in Journalism Awards to Chicago area reporters, editors or news organizations that distinguished themselves in journalism by performing in an ethical and sensitive manner.
You could imagine them as modern knights in shining armor.
The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics defines ethical conduct, in case you were wondering.
Like Camelot, the ethics awards also faded into history. Historians quarrel over whether Camelot really existed. But the ethics award did exist.
Walking the talk
It called upon anyone to nominate journalism candidates worthy of the award which honored those who “walk the talk” by doing the right thing.
“This means acting like a professional, taking into consideration the welfare of those we encounter in covering the news and the possible harm our reports might do to an individual or a community,” said the nominating form.
“It’s a tough line to walk, and is judged by our conduct. It means always asking ourselves if we are being fair and accurate.”
Some might say this was too idealistic, too much to expect. Even laughable.
Chief among those critics was Michael Miner, media critic for The Chicago Reader. Miner was a savvy, street-smart writer who often wrote about the ethics award and the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists in a caustic and dismissive way. He probably was typical of many hard-bitten journalists who wince and believe that journalism ethics is an oxymoron
Best solution
Miner wrote that the best solution to journalism’s intractable contradictions “was to build newsrooms no more than 100 feet from a bar.”
The media critic wrote several stories about me, ethics, the Society of Professional Journalists and AdviceLine. Actually, it could be said that Miner gave us more ink than anyone.
“Ethics? For Journalists? Is Casey Bukro Serious?” was the headline on a story he wrote in 1987, telling about my failed efforts to keep a sentence in the SPJ code of ethics that said: “Journalists should actively censure and try to prevent violations of these standards.” That part was stricken from the code, which I wrote 15 years earlier. I wanted the code to be more than words on paper, to make the code enforceable. SPJ leaders said paying attention to the code is entirely voluntary.
“Active censure may comport with a journalist’s temperament, but his inclination to police his own ranks is no sharper than a lawyer’s, a doctor’s or a cop’s,” Miner wrote. Some journalists might even consider it unconstitutional, he pointed out, contrary to the First Amendment.
Telling journalists
From the start, Miner had assumed that anyone who presumes to tell journalists what to do about ethics is a bit daft, silly or pretentious.
Miner zeroed in on AdviceLine shortly after it was created in 2001, offering a few snide comments, going so far as imagining reporters picking up a phone and saying, “Hello, sweetheart, Get me ethics.”
The man has a sense of humor and a soothing baritone voice on the telephone, teasing out information in a way that non-journalists might find disarming. Think of Morgan Freeman.
The story he wrote practically unhinged the AdviceLine team, which includes ethics experts who teach at universities. In other words, most were people not accustomed to being interviewed, especially by somebody like Miner who calls himself a critic. He was usually looking for ways to be critical.
Describing cases
After interviewing me, Miner told other members of the AdviceLine team that I described some of the calls from professional journalists asking for ethics advice and so should they. And they did.
I thought I was being careful about identifying callers or details that could not be disclosed under our confidentiality policy.
Then Miner’s story was published, and an uproar erupted. An AdviceLine team member emailed:
“I hardly know what to say about the extent to which confidences and commitments have been violated” in response to Miner’s cajoling questions.
Part of AdviceLine’s mission is to show what kinds of ethics problems confront professional journalists and the best advice for dealing with them. But AdviceLine offers confidentially to journalists who request it, so they and their news organizations must not be identified.
Sensitive world
Being new to this highly sensitive world of ethics public relations, some of the AdviceLine ethicists gave Miner more details than they should have under AdviceLine’s confidentiality policy. No names were revealed, but some locations were.
And it’s often a shock when people see their words in print, even when the words are true. Some journalists believed that nothing should be revealed about ethics cases, but that would frustrate AdviceLine’s mission to educate journalists and the public about journalism ethics.
Describing actual ethics cases and how they were handled would show the public that journalists take ethics seriously, contrary to what they might think at a time when journalists are accused of “fake news.”
A learning experience
It was a learning experience for everyone involved, resulting in AdviceLine adopting more exacting rules for confidentiality. I thanked Miner for his contribution toward improving AdviceLine, which might have pained him.
It was a tumultuous beginning for AdviceLine.
It’s good for journalists, and ethicists too, to have unsympathetic, cold-eyed lampooners. Like it or not, their taunts and derision can be instructive, showing why idealists lose or can improve. Idealists also can say to hell with these critics and keep trying. Conventional wisdom is boring and would never have produced flying machines.
Fourteen years passed. By that time, I had retired from the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Headline Club gave an award to the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for its journalism ethics blog. Miner was not impressed.
A richer life
“But as life is richer when Bukro’s around to disagree with, I’m pleased to report he hasn’t gone away,” wrote Miner at the time. That was in 2015.
By then, the Chicago Headline Club had discontinued giving ethics in journalism awards. Like Camelot, it was a distant memory, but a shining moment.
Makes me think of a line in the Lerner and Loewe musical: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”
As all things connected with ethics, the ethics award was controversial, including why some of the winners were chosen. They had to be nominated to qualify.
Most journalists ethical
Some journalists argued that most journalists always perform ethically, and it was unfair to pick out just a few. I figured it was better than nothing. You can decide for yourself.
In 1996, the first year ethics awards were presented, 19 journalists or media organizations in broadcast news, print news and print commentary were nominated. The winners:
Carol Marin was suspended from WMAQ-Channel 5 for objecting strongly to reading what she considered blatant plugs for sponsors while presenting the news.
Harris Meyer laid his job on the line for writing stories on Medicare and health-care reform that sometimes were contrary to American Medical Association policy. He was fired from American Medical News for insubordination.
Bill Rentschler, editor-in-chief and president of the weekly Voice Publications in Lake Forest, was cited for editorial integrity and a body of work spanning decades in columns and stories that tackled tough issues.
In 1997, Ethics in Journalism awards went to:
The Austin Voice, a Chicago weekly newspaper that became a target of threats and harassment for the first stories of police involvement with drug dealers and armed street gangs on Chicago’s West Side. The Austin Voice was nominated by two neighborhood groups.
John Lampinen, managing editor of the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, for refusing against intense pressure to print Richard Jewell’s name the day he was named but not charged as a suspect in a bombing at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Lampinen followed with a front page story on privacy and the public’s right to know.
Bill Lazarus and The Times of Northwest Indiana for tenacious coverage in exposing political connections in waste disposal despite a $10 million libel suit filed against them by an East Chicago hazardous waste firm. The paper persisted in the exposé and a jury later found Lazarus and The Times of Northwest Indiana innocent.
Carol Marin, for courage in journalism, by resigning from WMAQ-Channel 5 in a dispute with management over news values and hiring “trash talk” host Jerry Springer as commentator. (The station’s viewership plummeted after Marin left.)
In 1998, the ethics award went to Ron Magers, of WLS-Channel 7, for consistently showing ethics leadership in the newsroom throughout his career at WMAQ-Channel 5.
In 1999, five nominees were offered, but the winner was Nigel Wade, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times. Wade showed his abrasive side the previous year at the Chicago Headline Club’s annual awards banquet. The keynote speaker gave a speech telling what newspapers could do to be more ethical. Wade got up in the audience and said that newspapers that followed such advice would be as boring as the speaker. But that month, Wade went on to prove there’s nothing boring about being ethical.
On May 22, 1998, the Sun-Times printed a front page message to readers explaining that Wade refused to play the Springfield, Oregon, school shooting on the front page because the story might harm or frighten vulnerable children. The following day, the New York Times carried Wade’s op-ed piece explaining why he didn’t print the story on page one. Wade proved this was not a one-time gesture when he decided against playing the Littleton, Colorado, school shooting on the front page for the same reason.
The 2000 ethics award went to John Cherwa, the Chicago Tribune’s associate managing editor for sports, who turned back staff credentials to cover the Indianapolis 500 race. A Sports Illustrated staff writer had been denied such credentials because his coverage of auto racing was considered unfavorable. Cherwa said he took “a stand against a form of censorship by a sports organization.” Other newspapers followed Cherwa’s example, and the Indy Racing League reconsidered and gave credentials to the Sports Illustrated writer.
The 2001 ethics award went to Victor M. Crown, assistant editor of Illinois Politics Magazine, for his diligence in seeking guidance on fairness and balance on a story involving Illinois Sen. Peter Fitzgerald and ethics in government. Crown posted all of his evidence in the case on a website so it could be scrutinized by journalists and the public, following advice from the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists.
In 2002, Carolyn Hulse, director of news reporting and writing at Columbia College in Chicago, got the award for resigning as interim chairwoman of the college’s journalism program to protest an attempt to name as acting dean of the school of media arts a person who had been fired at a Chicago newspaper for fabricating a story. Hulse said it was unacceptable for a person like that to teach journalism and be held up as a model for students.
In 2003, Mike Waters, Daily Southtown managing editor, and columnists Phil Arvia and Phil Kadner, won the award for their roles in challenging their newspaper’s decision to promote supporting U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, which could tarnish the newspaper’s and staff’s reputation for objectivity.
Also in 2003, an ethics award went to the Chicago Tribune for taking steps to enforce its newsroom ethics code, forcing the resignation of columnist Bob Greene for inappropriate sexual conduct.
In 2004, Virginia Gerst took the award. She resigned as an arts and entertainment editor for the Glenview-based Pioneer Press newspaper, saying the integrity of the editorial process was violated when the publisher assigned an editor, who Gerst described as a marketing director, to write a restaurant review to replace one already written. Gerst quit after 27 years with Pioneer Press.
In 2005, anchor/reporter Anna Davlantes of WMAQ-Channel 5 and Chicago Sun-Times publisher John Cruickshank won ethics awards. Davlantes was cited for courage and professionalism in reporting the sale of the Village of Bridgeview golf dome despite repeated threats and intimidation from a man involved in the sale who wanted her to stop her investigation. Friends and relatives urged Davlantes to drop the story. Instead, she produced five reports on the sale, which involved a man who said he was forced to sell his property.
Cruickshank discovered in 2004 that the Sun-Times had overstated its circulation for years. He urged company officials to go public with his discovery. Some of them feared that would kill the newspaper. Cruickshank said the future of the newspaper depended on doing the right thing, and correcting an unethical practice. Under his leadership, parent company Hollinger International disclosed the overstated circulation figures and set aside $27 million to reimburse advertisers.
In 2006, no ethics award was given. Contest judges decided that year’s nominees failed to demonstrate the high standards required for the award.
Story ends
And that’s where the Ethics in Journalism Award story ends, after nine years. It became dormant, and stays that way.
Looking back on it, giving awards strictly on the basis of ethics was difficult. Often those nominating reporters for the award cited forceful reporting resulting in changes. Other awards recognize that kind of work.
The ethics awards honored journalist who made personal sacrifices and often took an unpopular stand. That is more difficult to find. And all nominations were submitted to a panel of judges, who do not always agree on what is ethically laudable. It boils down to humans making decisions.
Zeal for ethics faded in a time of media staff cuts and disappearing newspapers, some say at the rate of two a week. Ethics takes a certain amount of boat-rocking, not something young journalists eager to keep their jobs want to do.
Lost newspapers
The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University predicts that by the end of 2024, the U.S. will have lost a third of its newspapers and almost two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.
Into that bleak landscape came another threat: Generative artificial intelligence able to create news content with little human involvement. Medill reports that “could be the final nail in the local news coffin.”
Medill is careful to point out that this new technology also could bring benefits, creating new tools to improve storytelling and to monetize content. It also could free human journalists to devote their time to more original enterprise reporting.
But the potential downsides are worrying.
“Given how some chain owners have prioritized cost-cutting and profit-making over sustained journalistic quality, what is to stop them from replacing more reporters and editors with robots?” asked Medill. “Can news consumers be relied upon to discern between human-reported journalism and machine-generated content – and does it matter?”
Artificial intelligence makes mistakes and could be prone to spreading misinformation and disinformation, either by accident or design.
In these times of chaotic technological transition driven by artificial intelligence and robots, some might see ethics as a mere luxury. Others might see it as a way out of the chaos.
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 publisher, at the top of a media organization’s pecking order, might scold underlings for stepping out of line ethically.
But who scolds a publisher?
That is one of the underlying issues brought to AdviceLine where publishers and other high-ranking editors decide to serve on the boards of outside groups, including civic organizations.
Civic organizations typically hope this cozy relationship with media leaders will result in publicity. For media leaders, it often is seen as a way to serve and create ties with the community.
But is it a good idea? It can lead to trouble.
The publisher of a Tennessee newspaper called AdviceLine, saying: “I have a difficult confidentiality problem.”
The publisher was a member of the board of directors for an international nonprofit fundraising organization. In an emergency board meeting, the publisher learned from the organization’s new executive director that the former executive director failed to file federal tax forms by the time required.
Penalties owed
The penalty for such an oversight is $90 a day, and the organization already owes the federal government more than $20,000. Failure to file the tax forms and pay the penalty before a looming deadline could result in a bigger fine and loss of the organization’s nonprofit status.
As far as anyone could tell, no fraud was involved, just wretched administration, terrible book-keeping and poor audits. The nonprofit organization has enough cash on hand to pay the penalty in time to avoid any further losses. But that was money intended for local charities and other worthy groups in a cash-strapped rural area.
The board’s immediate actions will include paying the penalty, getting the organization’s financial records audited and deciding when and how to explain all of this to the public.
A complicating factor is that a fund raising drive is now under way. Donors might be less generous if they knew of the nonprofit organization’s tax, financial and management problems.
Publish now or later?
The publisher asked AdviceLine if he would be acting ethically if he refrains from publishing what he knows immediately? Can he wait until the problems are fixed?
“We talked at length about benefit and harm,” the AdviceLine adviser wrote in his case report. The publisher’s reasoning mirrored the adviser’s.
“Although the public will be much upset at this, and at the misapplication of their previous contributions, the cause of that has been remedied already by the arrival of the new, and competent, executive director.
“So there is no great loss to the public in not knowing this right at this time, whereas there is good reason to believe that, even with the corrective action already taken…many people might reduce their contributions and many potential beneficiaries of (the organization) might suffer accordingly.
Benefit and harm
“That is, reporting this matter right now seems to produce more harm than benefit to the public.”
The adviser adds, however, that all of that depends on whether the board and the executive director took the corrective actions needed, then reported the situation to the public.
If they failed to do that, “then there would be a story that would then need to be told promptly; but that is not yet the situation.” The publisher does not expect that situation to arise because the board is determined to act properly and promptly, “including proper notification of the public when all the facts are in order and all the remediation with the feds has been attended to.”
The publisher has one additional concern: In preserving the board’s confidentiality, he might appear to the board, and later to the public, “to be involved in covering up something that, as a journalist, he should have reported.”
The reasoning
Said the AdviceLine adviser: “But I told him that the reasoning we had just gone through was the appropriate benefit-harm reasoning for the case from a professional ethics point of view, and in fact that the principles supporting this would be found (in general terms only, however) in the SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) code” of ethics.”
The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists has a team of four ethicists, all of whom teach or taught ethics in universities. They meet periodically to review advice that was given to journalists who called or query AdviceLine for guidance.
In this case, several ethicists vehemently disagreed with the advice that was given. They pointed out that one of the main themes of the SPJ code of ethics is to seek the truth and report it.
Ethics tricky
This case helps to underscore that even professional ethicists do not always agree on what is an ethical course of action. Ethics is tricky business, especially when applied to journalism.
The ethicist involved in the case accurately spelled out the benefit-harm reasoning often used to resolve ethics problems. But in this case, it could be argued that it led to a debatable conclusion.
The opposing ethicists pointed out that the public had a right to know immediately how money donated for charity and other worthy causes was being managed.
No doubt, the nonprofit organization with management problems would be embarrassed by such disclosures. But the publisher in this case failed to recognize where his greatest loyalties lie: To the public. And he does risk being seen as a participant in a coverup, as he feared.
In a jam
He got himself in this jam by serving on that nonprofit organization’s board of directors. This is not a rare or isolated ethics issue.
The Washington Post recently reported that NBC News Group chairman, Cesar Conde, is a member of Walmart and PepsiCo’s corporate boards – for which he earned $595,018 in 2022 in cash and stock.
There’s no evidence that Conde has been involved with any NBC stories about the two outside corporations, but the Post said “the arrangement has raised some ethical concerns, and reveals a potential blind spot for a news business usually very serious about conflicts — real or perceived.”
The headline on the Post story read: “Outside roles by NBC’s Conde, others reveal a journalism ethics issue: being paid to sit on boards.” Others include CNN’s chief executive and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post.
Paid positions
Paying news executives to sit on corporate boards brings the issue to a new level of concern. They amount to paid jobs.
Typically, editors and publishers serve as volunteers on the boards of local school or civic organizations. A similar case in which an editor asked AdviceLine for help led to some guidelines that could be useful.
An editor for the Mankato Free Press in Minnesota asked about the wisdom of editors joining civic groups.
In that case, the AdviceLine adviser said the first rule should be to avoid influencing, or interfering with, reporting on civic organizations – as was done in the Tennessee nonprofit organization case.
The Free Press editor was concerned that editors and publishers schmoozing with community power brokers sends a mixed message to reporters – that it looks like editors are breaking the traditional barriers between the editorial and business departments.
Staff feedback
In the Mankato case, AdviceLine urged the editor to discuss the situation with her staff to get feedback on how best to avoid compromising the paper’s standards.
This is a good ethics strategy: Get everyone involved in thinking about what is good for the organization. They become part of reaching solutions.
Later, AdviceLine called the Free Press editor to ask what happened in this case.
The newspaper was bought by another media company, which had a corporate handbook. It encouraged journalists to “participate in worthwhile community activities, so long as they do not compromise the credibility of news coverage or the independence of the newspaper.
“Avoid involvement in organizations or activities that could create a conflict of interest or an appearance of conflict.”
It helps to have written corporate policies that are known and understood by the staff, and by management, who sometimes think ethics rules don’t apply to them.
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.
‘Tis the season for – among other things – generosity.
Appeals come from charities, emergency services, environment and animal welfare groups – like The Salvation Army, the Sierra Club, the Anti-Cruelty Society or Meals on Wheels, just to name a few among hundreds.
But should journalists contribute to them, especially if they write about such organizations? The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics warns journalists to “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.”
A photojournalist contacted AdviceLine, saying “when I started as a freelance photojournalist for a major metro daily 30 years ago, it was drilled into my head by an editor that we can’t support any causes.” She quoted the editor, who said: “If a Girl Scout comes to your door with a fundraiser, you can’t give them any money.”
“I stayed true to this for 30 years,” said the photojournalist. “I don’t sign any petitions, I don’t opinionate on Facebook, I don’t give any money to any organizations or fundraisers.”
But she’s having some doubts after refusing to give one of her photos to a city animal shelter for a public information campaign warning people against locking pets in hot cars. “I’m not sure I did the right thing,” she said, especially since animal welfare advocates were “totally put off” by her refusal.
Can generosity be unethical? David Ozar, the AdviceLine ethics expert who took the query, admits he pondered the question for several days before contacting the photojournalist. Even ethics experts agonize over ethics.
“I can easily imagine an editor, especially 30 years ago, simplifying the ethics of conflicts of interest in the way he or she did back then,” said Ozar, acknowledging what the SPJ ethics code says. “But I have been teaching that this way of stating how to respond ethically when interests conflict is mistaken because it oversimplifies things far too much.
“The problem is that everyone has conflicting interests all the time and simply saying ‘avoid them’ is not helpful. Anyone who works for pay or even pro bono but gets credit for it somehow (or just satisfaction) has an interest in the pay/credit/satisfaction as well as in doing the work according to relevant standards. We could not function if that were not true. So the idea of ‘simply avoiding’ is not helpful.
“The real ethical question is to ask whether the ‘other interests’ are likely to outweigh (or are already doing so) the interests of the people we as professionals are supposed to be serving, which in journalism is our audience (readers, viewers, etc.). Is the ‘other interest’ likely to cause us to not serve them as well as we ought? For example, the reporter holds back facts that are really important to the readers/viewers because they will reflect badly on the reporter’s brother-in-law or, worse yet, is the ‘other interest’ those whom we as professionals serve” and might be harmed?
Ozar also suggests transparency allows journalists to support good causes by telling readers and viewers of a decision to support a cause, warning them “to be cautious about our professional judgments in such situations.”
“Buying Girl Scout cookies is, in my view, a very simple case in which, at most, transparency would be fully adequate ethically,” but relevant “only if you were reporting on the Girl Scouts.”
Ozar agrees journalists must avoid the appearance of impropriety, since “journalism is in the integrity business and things that might make reporters or their organizations or the journalism profession look biased, unfair, half-hearted about the truth, etc., are certainly things that need careful examination.”
Ozar does not stop there. Other questions for consideration are: What are readers/viewers likely to think about the matter? How likely are they to think negatively? And which readers/viewers are likely to think that way?
The public needs to know if journalists are acting without integrity, which is more important than the simple act of buying Girl Scout cookies.
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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.
“Every American has a role to play” in combatting the coronavirus menace, says the president.
That includes journalists, although President Trump does not seem to recognize that. He excoriates them every chance he gets.
NBC’s Peter Alexander asked him at a news conference: “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?” The president answered: “I say that you are a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. It’s a very nasty question. It’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”
Actually, it was a soft-ball question that offered the president a chance to appear presidential and to comfort a nation under attack by a viral pestilence. The president’s drumbeat of negativism is not helpful.
On Sunday, President lashed out against media again, tweeting: “I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the @nytimes, & the @washingtonpost, and all I see is hatred of me at any cost. Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?”
Actually, this attack dog mentality against the media appears to be destroying his credibility at a time of extreme urgency, when public trust in credible sources of information is vital to public safety.
Crisis demands media collaboration: Working together is more efficient and conserves resources that “could be deployed in smarter ways that the public needs,” writes Dan Gillmore.
Be calm, broad, precise, transparent, engaged and relentlessly useful, he writes.
Media audiences drop, except radio: Michael Barthel reports Pew Research Center findings for every major sector of the U.S. news media for 2017.
“Radio was the only sector studied that did not show an audience decline, by several measures,” writes Barthel. Newspapers, cable TV, network TV, local TV and digital-native news were all down by five to 15 percent.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 