By Liz Halloran
The Hartford Courant
Published on 3/24/2004
Excerpt:
“In the last year, as an industry, we have radically changed our understanding of ethics and how important it is,” said Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute. …
As the same-sex marriage issue continues to mushroom nationally, editors in newsrooms across the country are certain to face situations similar to the one that has roiled the Chronicle in recent weeks, said McBride of the Poynter Institute.
“We here at Poynter are paddling like crazy to keep up with the issue,” said McBride, who has written about the Chronicle case on Poynter’s website, http://livex.poynter.org/. “The country’s unprepared to have a dialogue on this, newsrooms are unprepared, politicians are unprepared.”
Newspapers, she said, should have policies that acknowledge that everyone has conflicts of interest, and create a process for discussing the conflicts so journalists aren’t automatically disqualified from reporting on particular issues, and minority groups aren’t singled out.
“In Utopia, it would have been clear to everyone on the staff where the threshold was,” she said, “and the paper would have asked the question, `Are these journalists fair, and if there’s a public perception of bias, are we willing to live with that?’
“Now we just see this as a black or white issue – either you do or you don’t have a conflict. I don’t think there’s enough tolerance for gray.”
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