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RESPONSE FROM A SENIOR MEMBER OF SPJ, 4/11/02
[…] Contrary to your presumption, Leonard Downie has not been invited to "instruct others" at our foundation's annual dinner, but to amplify the issues discussed in his book. SPJ provides public forums for people with all points of view, from management to front-line reporters like the undersigned. We are a voluntary, membership organization. Our ethics code is voluntary, and we are not an investigative or enforcement agency. If the letter-writing campaign in which you have joined fails to get a response from the Post, I suggest you take this matter to those who cover journalism as reporters and commentators.
TO SPJ, 4/11/02
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply.
I don't think the SPJ is off the hook.
The analogy that I think you are trying to draw by saying you take all points of view is between the SPJ and a convention center, where the convention center takes on all comers. But the objection to Mr. Downie does not arise from the content of the speech. It comes from the record of the speaker. The analogy I would draw with the SPJ's invitation to Mr. Downie is to a business school inviting Kenneth Lay to speak. It is surely a less notorious action than inviting him onto the faculty, but it doesn't sit right. The prominence of the position granted the speaker amounts to an institutional imprimatur that the speaker has been brought to instruct the audience.
I agree that bringing the Schmidt episode to the attention of organizations that cover journalism is appropriate. The Columbia Journalism Review is aware of the issue.
I do want to correct one misapprehension you seem to have. I have not joined a letter-writing campaign. I write letters on issues that distress me. I do some journalism, and am appalled by the state the profession has fallen into. Any sort of behavior goes. Even writing to the boss of a reader who doesn't like one's work and trying to get them fired.
FROM A SENIOR MEMBER OF SPJ, 4/14
[…] The sections of the SPJ Ethics Code that you cite are not absolutes. They are ideals. The Code says "balance" and "avoid." The only place it says "never" is in its shortest provision: "Never plagiarize."
Sometimes it's in the public's best interests to use undercover techniques, or to put disclosure ahead of a suspect's claims that he or she can't get a fair trial.
As for SPJ's choice of speakers, we're open-minded. We listen to people we disagree with as well as to those with whom most of us are in agreement. And not all of us are ever in agreement on anything.
RESPONSE TO SPJ, 4/15/02
Thank you for your comment on the SPJ code of ethics. One might add that since Mike Barnicle and Jeff Jacoby are still in the business, even the definition of "never" is highly elastic in journalism.
There is a parallel between the SPJ's Code of Ethics and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Many matters in accounting are not absolute. They rely on the intellectual honesty and common sense of the people applying them. Enron was able to cook its books because the auditors at Arthur Andersen had neither. They hid behind a hypertechnical reading of the rules. If ethical rules are not applied by men and women of integrity in an intellectual honest way, if it somehow no one is ever responsible for standing up and saying "no", the system gradually becomes more and more corrupt.
Rules of ethics have some flexibility because an individual case may have some quirk that renders it different than the run of the mill. In Enron, Special Purpose Entities were granted exemptions from normal rules of reporting. But when Enron used the same dodge again and again, it added up to a crime. The Post has repeatedly refused to discipline cases of unethical behavior-- even one in which reportorial behavior was labeled "reprehensible" by the Ombudsman of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune-- again and again. Just like Enron.
And just like Enron, the watchdogs are curiously silent.
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