Medill School of Journalism has concluded a survey that attempts to get some benchmarks on bad journalism. While thousands of examples have been documented by MRC and Newsbusters on a daily basis, the report tells us that we don't know the half of it.
...how much internal misconduct [can] a paper reasonably be asked to uncover on its own... maybe 50 percent.
The report, “Newspaper Reporter and Editor Attitudes Toward Credibility, Errors and Ethics,” claims that reporters are in denial.
assistant dean Ellen Shearer... told Helfrich the journalists complained about Jayson Blair, TV news, and “agenda-driven media,” saying they undermined public confidence in their papers’ credibility. But most felt unethical behavior was “not an actual problem at their newspapers—it’s more other people,” she went on. “That’s a little concerning to me.”
Me too. The report also tells us that newspapers are looking the other way while the drive-by media take their shots.
“Instances of unethical behavior by newspaper reporters are much more likely to come to light through passive processes than as a result of active investigation,”
We also learn that the journalism industry in general shrugs off its responsibility and has no penalty for bad journalism.
“journalists should. . . expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.” It’s a vestige of a pledge SPJ ratified in 1973. The pledge, which Bukro wrote, was the garnish on that era’s code of ethics. It said, “Journalists should actively censure and try to prevent violations of these standards, and they should encourage their observance by all newspeople.”
No one was ever censured, Bukro says, and SPJ didn’t even describe a process by which censure was supposed to take place. In 1986 Bukro wrote a resolution that specified a series of steps—complaint, hearing, recommendation—and a range of punishments, from a letter of reprimand to dismissal from SPJ. But instead of adopting the resolution that would have given the censure pledge teeth, SPJ dropped the pledge.
“SPJ considers adherence to the code of ethics voluntary. It does not enforce the code,” Bukro told me. “Code enforcement was what I was pushing for, and that became a dirty word.”
Tell us what we already know.
