Journalists also recoiled at the commission’s suggestion that citizen panels should be set up to monitor their performance. They didn’t like the idea of outsiders judging their work, and warned that voluntary commissions could lead to regulatory agencies with legal powers. It was not until 1973 that a National News Council was established to investigate complaints against the news media. It died a decade later, having failed to gain the support of either the public or the industry. 31
Ethical Awakening in the Profession
Press criticism did not begin or end with the Hutchins Commission, as George Seldes, I.F. Stone, and others were publishing press critiques in the decades before and after the commission made its study. Over the years, however, the Hutchins report was debated in journalism schools. The commission’s findings were elaborated on by scholars, notably in the 1956 book Four Theories of the Press by Frederick S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm. 32
In time, the commission’s definition of journalism’s social responsibility made an impression on journalists, even though they rarely acknowledged the source. This was borne out at the end of the century when Kovach and Rosenstiel grilled journalists on what they stood for. Reading the purpose of journalism and the principles of journalism defined in The Elements of Journalism, one cannot miss the influence of the Hutchins Commission.
Somehow, journalists absorbed the ideas of the Hutchins intellectuals and made them their own. These ideas found their way into the codes of ethics adopted by organizations of journalists. New, stronger codes were adopted in 1966 by the Radio Television News Directors Association, in 1973 by the Society of Professional Journalists, in 1974 by the Associated Press Managing Editors, and in 1975 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The Hutchins influence can also be seen in the revised code adopted in 2014 by the Society of Professional Journalists, and discussed in detail in Chapter 8.
In an activist decade between the mid‐1970s and the mid‐1980s, many newspapers and broadcast stations formulated their own codes. The growth of newsroom codes during this period is documented by two surveys. An inquiry in 1974 by the Associated Press Managing Editors found that fewer than one in ten newspapers had ethics codes. Nine years later, journalism professor Ralph Izard of Ohio University found that three out of four newspapers and broadcast stations had written policies on newsroom standards and practices. 33
These newsroom codes aimed at improving credibility by eliminating conflicts of interest. Broadly defined, a conflict of interest is anything that could divert a journalist – or a news outlet – from performing the mission of providing reliable, unbiased information to the public. Journalists can be conflicted by accepting gifts from the people they cover, by their personal political or civic interests, or by part‐time jobs that create divided loyalties. News outlets are conflicted if they allow their commercial interests to interfere with gathering the news, such as killing a story under pressure from an advertiser. To their credit, many have resisted this pressure and done their journalistic duty even at a cost of millions of dollars in withheld advertising.
Initially, ethics reform centered on the practice of accepting gifts. As the 1970s began, cases of liquor were being carted into the newsroom just before Christmas. If a reporter needed to buy a car, the automobile manufacturer would be pleased to provide a discount. A press pass entitled the bearer and his (nearly everybody in the newsroom was male) family to so‐called freebies – free admittance to ball games, circuses, and amusement parks, and gifts of all kinds from business executives and politicians.
Typically, the journalists would protest that they wouldn’t slant news coverage to get a bottle of free liquor. This rationalization “underestimates the subtle ways in which gratitude, friendship, and the anticipation of future favors affect judgment,” the ethicist Michael Josephson wrote in his book Making Ethical Decisions: “Does the person providing you with the benefit believe that it will in no way affect your judgment? Would the person still provide the benefit if you were in no position to help?” 34
At the time, an argument for accepting freebies was that it was a way of supplementing salaries, which were notoriously low in most places. In fact, when the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times in 1974 promulgated an ethics code forbidding staff members from accepting gifts and discounts, the journalists’ union complained that the paper had committed an unfair labor practice by depriving employees of income. After hearing testimony in the case, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled in 1975 in favor of the union. The judge said the paper could not unilaterally impose an ethics code on its employees but must instead bargain with the union. Fifteen months later, the hearing judge was overruled by the NLRB. The board held that newspapers do not have to bargain with unions over whether employees may accept gifts from news sources, but any discipline for violating an ethics code would have to be bargained. 35
Initially, many ranking editors and news directors were unconvinced that freebies were a problem. A 1972 study by APME found that two out of three managing editors themselves would accept an expenses‐paid overseas trip if offered. Almost half of the editors permitted their sports writers to serve in jobs as official scorers or announcers at professional sports events, jobs in which they were paid by the teams they covered. 36 Paul Poorman, managing editor of The Detroit News, ordered his staff in 1973 to stop accepting gifts, but he was not encouraged that reform would occur. He lamented, “The whole issue is greeted with tightly controlled apathy on the part of many newspapermen.” 37
A decade later, newsroom attitudes had changed drastically, and any journalist who valued the respect of colleagues would turn down freebies. The conflict‐of‐interest standards were not just about freebies. The codes also warned journalists not to take secondary jobs with competitors or businesses they might cover, not to engage in political activity other than voting, and not to state publicly their opinions on controversial issues in the news.
Some of those standards met resistance. In 1985, two Detroit journalists acknowledged in a Columbia Journalism Review article that a ban on gifts was “noncontroversial” but argued that the codes went too far when they kept staff members from exercising “their rights as citizens.” They wrote that a journalist should be allowed to participate in civic activities, including being a candidate for an office the journalist is not assigned to cover. They warned: “The danger is that news organizations, in their zeal to demonstrate their purity, will reach too far into the personal lives of their employees by regulating outside activities that pose no real conflict.” 38
Today, journalists are more accepting of the premise that the public always sees them in their professional role, whether they are on or off duty. This text discusses conflicts of interest for individual journalists in Chapter 12.
In many newsrooms, there was a second wave of code‐writing in the 1980s. Spelling out rules on conflicts of interest had addressed the most glaring ethical abuses. Now, journalists decided that it was even more important to define best practices for covering the news.
The process that staff committees used in formulating the conflict-of-interest guidelines was put to work on news policies. Putting news policies in writing made media lawyers uncomfortable. They feared that if the policies were subpoenaed by the attorney for someone suing for libel, they could be used to show that a news organization was negligent by its own standard. Ultimately, many lawyers worked with newsrooms to forge a compromise. Mainly, this was achieved by hedging the codes’ language: “shall” became “should,” and “always” became “in most cases.” Also, the codes made clear that their provisions were guidelines, not absolute rules, and that sometimes the circumstances would