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October 9, 2002 in Watchdog
I read Neil Steinberg so you don’t have to. Neil’s most recent column about his vaunted sense of personal ethics is particularly rancid, especially considering the pasteing he gave Bob Greene over his so-called ethical lapse. Steinberg made some snide comments about the Chicago Tribune’s ethics policy:
Our competition, the Tribune, quite famously by now, has a 12-page ethics statement that reporters are forced to sign. My journalistic ethical creed is far shorter. In fact, there’s only one rule:
1. The stories you put in the newspaper should be interesting.
Got that? The rest, as Hillel said, is commentary. That’s why I had to laugh–we’re laughing a lot over at the [Chicago] Sun-Times lately–when the editors at the Tribune kept pointing to their dozen pages of ethical standards. “Golly,” I thought. “Twelve whole pages! That’s a lot. They must be really, really moral.”
Who needs that? Don’t they trust their reporters? My bosses trust me, and I’ve only got a single moral precept and it isn’t even written down (until now). With it, everything else falls in line.
First, I would like to point about that Neil writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, a group that has no business pointing out other organizations’ ethical lapses. Also, Neil once wrote an anonymous column called “Bob Watch,” in which he pilloried Bob Green for his writing style and hairpiece. Anonymous. So much for Neil’s ethics. Neil recently wrote a Salon article that Greene haunted “trailer parks” looking for stories about child abuse. Does class-based bigotry count as an ethical lapse, or is bigotry just a moral lapse? Well, it doesn’t matter, because all Neil and the Sun-Times care about is whether a story is interesting, even if it is bigoted and unethical.
Actually, there is some truth in Neil’s little rant. If a newspaper employee is not trustworthy, there is no ethics policy in the world that is going to keep them out of trouble.
The problem, Mr. Steinberg, is that relying on good will alone will not work, which is something you would know if you ever had been in a position of authority over anyone. Even good ethical reporters have differing ideas about what is right. Some reporters think accepting free admission to events one covers is always wrong. Others gladly accept free tickets, but only for the purpose of covering an event. There are journalism organizations that promote model ethical standards, but the reality is that different newspapers have different standards.
An ethics statement lets employees know what the rules are.
My problem with the Tribune’s forcing Green to resign is that management hung its displeasure on the fact that Greene had sex with a young woman who was the subject of a column.
That was a technical violation of the rules, although I am sure the rule was written to protect the readers from the sloppy journalism that results from reporters literally and figuratively being in bed with the subjects.
Steinberg ends his column with:
The moral is: Beware of people who take pride in their morals. They don’t trust others because they don’t trust themselves. After they leave the room, count the spoons.
You can cut the irony with a knife
