This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 6, 2009 - A city is experiencing an upswing in crimes committed by young male African Americans. Should a journalist be worried that telling these crime stories day after day may lead citizens to falsely stereotype all young African Americans as criminals?
Right before an election, one candidate accuses the other of having an illegitimate child. Should a journalist report the allegation if there isn't time to evaluate whether it's true before people vote?
A journalist discovers that the CIA has committed illegal activities. Should the story be reported if it might reveal how the CIA is operating to lower the risk of terrorist attacks in the U.S.?
Journalists wrestle with judgments like these hypothetical situations all of the time, but they too seldom engage anyone outside the newsroom in their deliberations. They almost never do before a decision is made, and rarely after the fact, unless the decision causes so much anger in the community that some explanation is unavoidable.
A free public forum at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, at the Missouri History Museum will give citizens and journalists a chance to talk to each other about ethical questions like these. You're invited to join the conversation, which I will moderate.
I hope the discussion will illuminate a dynamic tension among the ethical values at the heart of professional journalism. I also hope it will explore how citizens would have journalists wrestle with that tension.
Ask journalists what values are most central to their profession and they likely will answer with variations of four concepts:
- Telling the truth;
- Being independent;
- Minimizing harm;
- Being socially responsible and accountable.
Pick any one of the values to the exclusion of the rest, and the decision on what to publish becomes relatively easy, but at the cost of ignoring the other important considerations.
Give each of those values equal weight and you will never find a "right" answer to any tough question. For example, some times you can't tell the truth without harming someone innocent, as would happen in the hypothetical concerning crime reporting.
And being socially responsible can impinge on being completely independent, as could happen in the hypothetical concerning the CIA.
The toughest news judgments aren't between good and bad, right and wrong. They are between conflicting positive values. Journalists must balance the values differently in every situation, always looking for some equilibrium that is appropriate to the story.
Likewise, citizens can offer the most salient criticism of news media decisions if they see ethical dilemmas as a balancing of values. Seeing them in this light doesn't make them go away, but it could lead to more civil discourse and common ground between journalists and the public they serve.
Public trust in and respect for journalism have been on a long downward slide. Still, a study for the Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Missouri a few years back indicated citizens value the importance of journalism to democracy.
MU journalism professors George Kennedy and Glen Cameron wrote about the study in the book "What Good Is Journalism," edited by Kennedy and colleague Daryl Moen. They said a reasonable inference from the study was this:
"If journalists did a better job of sticking to their own principles, and a better job of explaining those principles to their audience, both press and public would be well served. What makes that inference reasonable is the deeper reality that free journalism and free people are mutually dependent. Neither can exist long without the other."
That's the spirit behind Wednesday's forum. We're all in this together.
Mike Fancher is a 2008-09 Donald W. Reynolds Fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism. He retired from The Seattle Times last year after 20 years as executive editor. During his tenure The Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist 13 other times.