Episode 29: Ethics in Journalism: an Interview with Eunette Gentry

In this episode, April talks to Dr. Eunette Gentry about the public's lack of trust in the press and why we should have more faith in journalists and reporters. It's about codes of ethics, people!

Episode 29 Show Notes
This Gallup poll shows the low percentage of trust that the public has in the media: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394817/media-confidence-ratings-record-lows.aspx
Here's the article about the press as the "Fourth Estate:" https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-fourth-estate-3368058
Marianne Jennings' great article on journalistic ethics: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-evolutionand-devolutionof-journalistic-ethics/
The First Amendment Encyclopedia's article on "yellow journalism:" https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1253/yellow-journalism
Aiden White's article on the origins of ethical journalism: https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/journalism-ethics
This fascinating webpage is the Public Affairs page of the US Diplomatic Mission to Germany, and goes into the history of media ethics in the US: https://usa.usembassy.de/media-ethics.htm#:~:text=%E2%80%A2%20Yahoo%20-%20Media%20Ethics%20and%20Accountability%20The,accelerating%20the%20U.S.%20exit%20from%20an%20unpopular%20war
The Associated Press Managing Editors Code of Ethics: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/ethiccodes/APME.html#:~:text=Associated%20Press%20Managing%20Editors%20CODE%20OF%20ETHICS%20This,or%20who%20influence%2C%20news%20coverage%20and%20editorial%20policy.
The Society of Professional Journalist's Code of Ethics: https://www.spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics.pdf
Ethics codes from many journalistic sources can be found here: https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~rcollins/431ethics/codes.htm#:~:text=Professional%20Codes%20of%20Ethics%20American%20Society%20of%20Newspaper,and%20renamed%20%22Statement%20of%20Principles%22%20in%201975.%20PREAMBLE.
The Philippe Perebinossoff Ethics Rubric: 

EVALUATE --The ethical situation needs to be examined in a number of different ways, not just from a single perspective. 

TRUTH --Make sure you have a clear definition of the facts as well as a definition that can be agreed upon by others. 

HARM--Consider what harm is likely to ensue from a given action. Real-world situations are involved, and media rumors can ruin lives. 

INVESTIGATION--Investigation involves going beyond a cursory review, and digging deep to gather the necessary information.

CODE OF ETHICS--Codes provide valuable guidelines that can facilitate ethical decision making. 

SITUATIONAL ETHICS--Approach issues on a case-by-case basis that allows you to adjust ethical beliefs t

Transcript

Episode 29: Ethics in Journalism—an Interview with Dr. Eunette Gentry

Hello and welcome to episode 29 of Think It Through. In this episode we’re going to revisit, and add to, a topic I’ve discussed in previous episodes. We’ll be talking about the news media, the trust (or lack thereof) that the public has in journalists, the ethical standards that should be followed by journalists, and the importance of upholding those standards.

Today, trust in journalism and the media is at a very low level—According to a recent Gallup poll, only 16% of American adults say they have “a great deal” or “QUITE A lot” of confidence in newspapers, and only 11% have confidence in television news. For comparison, in 1979 51% of Americans trusted in newspapers to tell the truth.  In this episode we’ll look at some of the reasons why that’s happened and what journalists should be doing to regain the public’s trust, as well as what we can do to determine whether the news sources we rely on can and should be trusted. And to help us understand the importance of ethics in journalism, I recently interviewed Dr. Eunette Gentry, who teaches journalism classes at the College of Southern Nevada and is also a broadcast journalist working in local TV as well as being one of the subjects of a recent HBO Documentary series. But before we get to the interview, let’s take an admittedly VERY brief look at the history of ethics in journalism. Here we go…

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Traditionally, the press in a democracy is known as the “fourth estate,” Most historians attribute the coinage of this term to the great 18th-century British conservative statesman Edmund Burke, who, according to journalist and professor Marianne Jennings of Arizona State University, believed that journalism was as important and as influential as the government. In the United States this has been interpreted to mean that the press, while independent of government, is on the same level of importance as the administrative, legislative, and judicial branches, and its job is to act as a watchdog over those branches of government. But according to ThoughtCo’s article “What is the fourth Estate?”, these days the idea of the press as the watchdog of government is considered by many to be a somewhat outdated concept.

I think there’s an impression out there that the press was trusted more in the past because it was much better and more trustworthy than it is now; that reporters always told the truth and got to the heart of the matter. Now, journalism as a bulwark of truth is certainly what we all hope would be the case, but unfortunately the press has often been less than deserving of trust. President John Adams was aware of the press’s potential to be both helpful and harmful when he wrote back in 1815: “Mankind cannot be governed without it, nor at present with it. A free press is necessary for the effective functioning of our republic. But it is also an invitation to abuse.”

 It’s not difficult to find evidence that newspapers were historically less than ethical; you may have heard of the term “yellow journalism” that newspaper moguls William Randolph Hearst and his arch-rival George Pulitzer are credited with creating in the late 1890’s. According to The First Amendment Encyclopedia’s article on Yellow Journalism, Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s newspapers tried to outdo each other to get more readers by printing sensational, salacious, and completely outrageous stories with very little, if any, truth in them. While some other newspapers decried this type of journalism as “misconduct” and attempted to have those papers boycotted, it didn’t really do much to change reader’s voracious appetites for these kinds of stories. In fact, this reporting style of sensationalism over substance is often considered by historians to be one of the main factors in the US entering into the Spanish-American War. The press’s role in that event cemented it as a powerful entity that could sway an entire government and its populace. 

 However, there have also always been constant voices of reason in the press, insisting that journalists have a responsibility to the truth. According to the article, “Journalism Ethics; What they are and where they come from,” by Aidan White of the Ethical Journalism Network, “The first attempts to articulate the rights and responsibilities of journalists which form the basis for modern notions of ethical journalism were made more than 150 years ago at a time of confrontation between The Times of London and the British government.” The editor of the Times, John Thaddeus Delane, responded to government criticism by saying, “The duty of the journalist is the same as that of the historian — to seek out the truth, above all things, and to present to his readers the truth as he can attain it.” He also made it clear that the press should not have connections or relations with government officials so that journalists would be free to, as he said, “investigate truth and apply it on fixed principles to the affairs of the world.”

 So, you can see that this tug-of-war between the press’s desire for more customers AND the ideal of the press as the “watchdog” of government and the bulwark of ethical standards has always been present. To clarify and emphasize the ethical responsibilities of the press, journalistic codes of ethics were created in the early decades of the 20th century. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) approved the first such code in 1923; shortly afterwards, the Society of Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi and the Associated Press Managing Editors published their own codes of ethics. We’ll talk a little later about what is in those codes, but before we do let’s listen to my recent interview with my colleague, Dr. Eunette Gentry. Afterwards, I’ll have more to add, so stick around.

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No transcript available for interview

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I hope you could tell what a wonderful person Eunette is, she’s an extremely conscientious, highly ethical, hard-working journalist and teacher. And you could tell she uses her religious faith to inform her ethics and values, which I find admirable. Now, faith isn’t a requirement for being an ethical person, but it can certainly give someone the motivation to be more ethical in their daily lives. 

I’d like to review a couple of ideas that Eunette brought up about ethics in journalism; first, that the job of a journalist is to focus on objective truth, and in that way journalists are indeed different from other types of media personalities— while pundits, commentators, bloggers and other media types have a purpose, and the right to express their opinions, journalists are (or should be) trained to be objective and neutral. But, of course, journalists are also human and fallible (and that means their political, societal, and/or religious worldview can cause them to see things in a particular way), so it takes work to reduce or eliminate any subconscious bias. How hard is that? Yeah, it's hard; that’s one of the main reasons that newsrooms have groups of people working together on the news, and editors who oversee their work, and that all those people are beholden to the ethics code of that particular news organization. And even with all that, bias can and does still seep through. For example, editorial decisions and time constraints can certainly impact what the audience sees and hears about any event. John Stewart (who by the way is NOT a journalist, he would be considered a commentator), but he said something noteworthy recently on the topic of media bias--he said that when a newscaster opens a news show with the words, “Our top story tonight is…” that’s a form of bias in and of itself. That decision of what a top story is, out of all the events of the day, is basically telling the audience to think that indeed it IS the top story. So Eunette’s advice to listen to or read different credible news sources to look for information that may be missing from one source but can be found on another one, will definitely help news consumers to be able to see the bigger picture. But they also need to keep in mind that commentators and pundits on both sides of an issue can generally say whatever they want as long as they are not breaking the law and may not be necessarily held to a code of ethics (again, depending on who it is, they may try to be as accurate as they can be, or they may be ignoring accuracy and focusing instead on pushing a particular opinion or agenda), but hard news reporters and journalists are different—they are held to certain standards. And those standards, while they may differ slightly between codes of conduct, generally contain the same ideals, which include the responsibility to be fair, accurate, honest, independent and decent; to divulge sources unless there is a clear and important reason not to do so (and that the audience should know what that reason is); to strive to be impartial; to avoid conflicts of interest, and to use common sense and good judgment. Eunette referred to an ethics rubic by Philippe Perebinossoff in his book, Real-World Media Ethics; inside the broadcast and entertainment industries.  He turns the word ETHICs into an acronym, using each letter to give journalists ways to make good ethical decisions. 

He says the “E stands for    EVALUATE—meaning the journalist should evaluate the ethical situation not just from their own perspective but analyze it from a number of perspectives. 

T         stand for    TRUTH—the journalist should have a clear understanding of the facts, and that that definition can be agreed upon by others. 

H     stands for       HARM—the journalist needs to consider what harm might be likely to occur from the way a story is reported.

I         stands for   INVESTIGATION—the journalist needs to do more than just gather the basic facts, but should dig deep to get all the necessary information. 

C           stands for CODE OF ETHICS—the journalist must check to see whether their code of ethics that addresses the particular case in question

S      stands for      SITUATIONAL ETHICS—and by that I don’t think he means from a Machiavellian standpoint—he’s talking about looking at every situation as an individual set of circumstances, that while it might have some things in common with a similar situation that doesn’t mean the same ethical issues apply. Everything should be considered on a case by case basis.

I will post this rubric in the show notes, so you can read it for yourself.

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As I said at the beginning of this episode, the public’s trust in journalism is at a low point. But a big part of the reason why is that we tend to conflate journalists with other types of media personalities like pundits and commentators; also, we don’t realize that since the early days of the 20th century, when codes of ethics began to be written for journalists and editors, that newsrooms have tried to live up to those ideals and reduce bias in their reporting; that ethics is a major part of a journalist’s training, and the vast majority of journalists take that responsibility very seriously. I’ve put links to several of these codes of ethics in the show notes so you can see what standards the press should be holding itself to. And you can use them to help you determine whether the news sources that you rely on are indeed attempting to hold themselves to those standards. I have to say that I don’t believe that the press’s traditional function as the Fourth Estate is outdated; it’s critical that the press continues to function in that way. As the preamble of the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics states, they “believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” 

And that’s all for this episode. I hope you’ve been enlightened by everything you’ve learned, and that you use this information to help you Think It Through.