A thimble-full

A couple decades ago, an editor at the Detroit Free Press was sent to a seminar on ethics in journalism. When he returned, someone remarked approvingly on the cause of his absence, journalistic ethics being a sacrosanct concept heavy on the minds of many in newspaper work.The editor replied, “Ethics in journalism? — that’s a thimble-full.”I thought of that piece of newsroom repartee when I read Clark Hoyt’s January 20, 2008 dissertation in the New York Times on the private life of Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse. Later, I’ll get into the nuts and bolts (mainly nuts) of the Times’ Public Editor’s latest fulmination. The crux of the story is that Greenhouse is married to a lawyer who sometimes argues cases before the Supremes, and as I understand it, her mistake was failing to ask her editors’ permission before she accepted this man’s hand in marriage.Right now, I’m not going to delve into how this discussion was prompted by some right-wing looney who snitched on Greenhouse or the kind of latter-day McCarthyism and Big Brotherism that are the natural results of proscriptive, self-styled ethics policies at newspapers. Later.What I find fascinating is Hoyt’s use of the old newspaper gambit of appearing to bolster his conclusions, or indeed seeming to come to his conclusions, through the quoting of self-proclaimed experts. In his essay, Hoyt quotes a professor of journalism and allows him to expound on the issue of conflict-of-interest as an ethical issue. This is nothing unusual. The normal course for journalists promulgating rules of reportorial behavior is to dial up a J school prof.But wait! Since when is ethics a branch of journalism? I thought ethics was a subsidiary of philosophy. Why not call a philosophy prof who’s an expert in the broad field of ethics, not just “ethics” as applied in newspaper work?I can think of a couple reasons: Just didn’t think of it. Too lazy to find out who the philosopher experts are.Or, just maybe, asking somebody outside the thought-conditioned realm of journalism might elicit, well, the wrong answer.Hmmm. Wouldn’t it be neat to shrug off the J school pontifications and head for the P department?Let’s see what some prominent philosophers have to say about newspaper ethics policies. I’d like to start by having a panel of real ethicists analyze what some call the “gold standard” of newspaper ethics policies — that 54-page epic published by The New York Times. They call it “Ethical Journalism: A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Editorial Departments.” It even has an index! Wow. This must be the real thing.Maybe not. What I want to know is whether newspaper ethics policies are really meant to encourage honest, fair reporting, or are they simply tools for controlling the behavior on and off the clock of newsroom employees?Well, okay, I know the answer. I don’t need any talking heads to say it for me.Of course those policies are meant to manipulate and condition employees’ behavior.What if there were a car repair shop and suddenly the manager decided the mechanics should become expert in the ethical repair of automobiles? Instead of just going ahead and installing new head gaskets or brake linings, the mechanics are asked to master philosophical concepts outside the realm of car repair. The ethics of the ring job. Imagine the drag on productivity. Which is why it wouldn’t last five minutes in a production-dominated workplace.But think about it. Newsrooms are not production-dominated. Oh sure, writers grind out words to meet deadline. But there’s no customer waiting at the end of the day to pick up her keys and drive the car away without regard to how ethically the brake job was done. There’s no objective standard for telling whether a journalist’s “product” has been executed properly. Given the number of heads that muddle over a story, there’s no way to tell by the end whether the beginning — the actual story — was competently written. Evaluations of journalists are done in a very loosey-goosey way, when they are done at all, with lots of room for lies, propaganda, hype. Did you actually do that ring job by the book and on time? You can evaluate a car mechanic. Impossible to know with a journalist.For this reason, it’s possible to pump smoke into a newsroom and incite journalists, who gossip-prone, nattering about their colleagues’ purported “ethics” violations.Now, where ethics is important in the car shop is in, say, diagnosis, as in not selling a brake job when it’s not needed, not billing for more hours than were worked, not charging new prices for used parts. Pretty basic.So it is with journalism. The rules are pretty simple: Only write that which is true, don’t lie to editors, don’t compromise the integrity of your newspaper.Instead, we get 54-page indexed tomes we’re told are “gold standards.”And more: Distraction. Confusion. Finger-pointing. Backstabbing.Is that what managers want? Maybe.Divide and conquer.Ethics in Journalism: Full of sound and fury, but still only a thimble full.Contact me at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com