Making the Tough Calls--Daily

Amid the general frenzy to beat up the tabloid press after the death of Princess Diana a couple of months ago, I suggested it was an appropriate time for some soul-searching by the mainstream media about the ethical issues that confront us every day.

The idea was to establish a dialogue that wouldn’t just fade away once the big story of the day was over. To that end, we asked for your thoughts and committed ourselves to some hard thinking, too.

Not only was I pleased to see your letters in reply, I was downright overjoyed with the results of an experiment we conducted among our reporters and photographers: a 12-question ethics test.

The questions were knocked out in the usual hasty style of newsroom communications, but covered the kinds of tough decisions that come a newspaper’s way continuously. Although the list was kept to a dozen questions, it could as easily have been a thousand. We will explore others in future months.

We started with something relatively easy, the kind of question that comes up in any newsroom once a year or so. The hypothetical was an old man on Social Security working as a dog walker to earn extra money. While walking the dogs, he was robbed and the dogs were stolen. When told we were planning to write the story, he begged us not to use his name for fear that the government would come after him for moonlighting on his Social Security income. Besides, he was embarrassed.

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Among the staff of The Times Ventura County Edition:

* Four voted to include the man’s name and everything about him, including his Social Security status.

* 16 favored writing the story but omitting his name, because it serves no high moral purpose to humiliate an aging dog walker.

* Three others argued that the story wasn’t worth writing at all.

Other questions included publishing stolen defense documents to placing the value of human life below that of a good picture or story. We even asked one about high-speed car chases.

On all 12 questions, there was some division within the staff. The lesson delivered was the lesson intended: There isn’t always an easy right and wrong in deciding ethical questions in journalism, but there is always a need to seriously consider them.

I think there is some benefit in posing these questions to you. Please mark your answers and return them to me. I will tally away, then let you know how closely we agree on at least some of the routine, difficult choices that make newspapers bastions of situational ethics.