Our goal was low-cost higher education for Owensboro, Kentucky’s only urban area without a public college or university. The Messenger-Inquirer had agitated for state funds for years, without measurable effect. Access to low-cost education was critical for reviving the stagnant local economy, we believed, and those with greatest need, the poor and working-class people, were being left behind.

So when John Hager, the paper’s publisher and editor, was asked to help form a committee to work toward state funding, he accepted. Although I was editorial page editor, I also agreed to serve on that group.

We talked many times about the dangers of our participation. We knew we were risking the credibility of our news coverage and the independence of our editorial opinions. But we tried to minimize those risks. When the Committee on Higher Education began, we wrote a long editorial explaining that our personal involvement was unusual, an exception to what journalists often do. We argued that education was a fundamental need in Owensboro, compelling us to take the unusual step.

We continued to do editorials on education and in particular on issues brought up by the citizens committee and its proposals for a community college. At those times we included an editor’s note explaining the newspaper’s position and the role Hager and I played on the committee.

Although the newspaper was open about our involvement, the committee’s record for openness was ambiguous. The committee included broad representation – business, labor, education, women, minorities – and called regular public forums, but not every meeting was announced in advance to the media. While this ad hoc committee did not fall under the state’s open meetings law, the conflict between journalism’s commitment to openness and loyalty to the committee was unavoidable.

Because of our involvement, neither Hager nor I exercised direct control over the news coverage of this story. But readers are unlikely to believe that what the editorial page editor and the publisher do on a citizens committee has no impact on the newsroom’s coverage of that issue.

Outside the newsroom, our involvement could also create an expectation that the newspaper would be a team player and booster – rather than a disinterested observer and critic – in key community issues. How would we shed that expectation? How would we choose among issues?

For all that, our venture into community activism was successful: The state legislature approved a new community college in 1986, and a $13.5 million campus was dedicated in the spring of 1989.

Still, questions linger.

A newsroom’s independence may survive a limited amount of community involvement by the paper’s executives; but would it survive regular, or frequent, doses of activism? Even on this issue, the fairness of news coverage was challenged by a developer whose land was not chosen as the community college site.

If the issue had blown up in our faces, how would we have defended our credibility? Our involvement would have been far more controversial if the new community college had caused the closing of the two private colleges in Owensboro.

Finally, what damage to editorial independence follows in the wake of close cooperation with politicians? Will readers think that deals have been cut the next time the paper endorses some government project the politicians support?

Certainly, life would have been simpler had we not been involved with that committee. But one can also argue that a smaller community in distress has a right to expect community involvement from the head of one of its major institutions. In reality, Hager’s leadership was critical.

My position was more ambiguous. For me it was a long period of preserving an uneasy balance between editorial independence and corporate responsibility.

Despite that tension, my venture into community activism was the most satisfying experience of nine years as an editorial writer. Given a chance, I’d do it again.

Yet I still see activism as a limited exception, not a model. To risk one’s independence and credibility, the cause needs to be critical, the risks clearly understood, and the tough questions answered first.

While journalists and scholars debate about the ethics of what is published in the mainstream media, little is written about the ethical implications of what isn’t and why it isn’t.

For 16 years, I have been exploring these sins of omission in American journalism through a national research effort called Project Censored.

I have discovered that there are a plethora of important issues that are overlooked, under-covered, or just plain censored by the media every year. I also discovered that the mainstream media reject out of hand the notion that they self-censor, and refuse to explore or even acknowledge their sins of omission.

The usual explanations of why vital stories are not covered — or, just as important, contextualized — include reliability of the source, complexity of the subject, the fact that controversial issues often are potentially libelous, and a perceived risk to their chimerical objectivity.

But there are other, less acceptable, explanations for the media’s failure to cover important stories. For example:

• It probably took the "October Surprise" so long to be discovered by the mainstream media for the same reason it took Seymour Hersh more than a year to get the My Lai story published: Both stretch the bounds of credibility and therefore present a discomfiting challenge.
• Our Vice President’s guileless appearance has the press less interested in what he’s doing than what he’s saying. While reporting on Quayle’s every faux pas, the press overlooked [until mere days ago] his misnamed Council on Competitiveness, which has seriously undermined federal health and safety programs on behalf of big business since 1986.
• It was difficult to understand why the Congressional press corps took so long to report all the perks our elected representatives enjoy until we realized that reporters feed at the same trough.

But perhaps the most blatant example of media self-censorship is an incident which occurred last summer. The Bohemian Grove encampment, which draws the cream of America’s male power elite — including press moguls — to northern California each year, is one of the media’s best known, best kept secrets.

Dirk Mathison, San Francisco bureau chief for People magazine, managed to surreptitiously infiltrate the encampment in search of a good story. And he got it.

He recorded a variety of newsworthy items, including a previously unpublicized Gulf War Iraqi casualty count of 200,000 reported to the Bohemian Club by former Navy Secretary John Lehman. Unfortunately, Mathison was spotted by a Time Inc. executive and quietly ordered to leave.

The article, which Mathison said was scheduled to run for four pages, was suddenly killed.

When I asked People managing editor Lanny Jones whether the fact that Time Inc. owns People had anything to do with killing the story, he said no. Since his magazine had obtained the story by illegal trespass, he said, running it would have been unethical.

Think about it. Peeping People magazine — they of the hovering helicopters at rock stars’ weddings plead ethics to explain why they spiked a story the American people should hear!

When I took exception to Jones’s response, he asked me what I would have done without violating the publication’s guidelines. I said, at the very least, I’d have Mathison write a straight news article describing exactly what happened. Jones said it was a good idea and he’d think about it. That was August 6, 1991.

Television journalists are as culpable of the sins of omission as their print colleagues. But it was not always so. Where we once had the NBC White Paper, CBS Reports, and ABC’s Close-up, today we have A Current Affair, Unsolved Mysteries and Inside Edition. Where we once had See It Now with Edward R. Murrow, today we have Now It Can Be Told with Geraldo Rivera.

While the media moguls squander their resources hounding Donald Trump, Pee Wee Herman and William Kennedy Smith, they ignore the economic, environmental, political and social ills that profoundly threaten the nation.

The media’s love affair with sensationalism, combined with its sins of omission, leaves the American people uninformed and ill-prepared for the 21st century.

While the press generally does a good job in answering the first four W’s of journalism — who, what, where, and when — it often fails to even address the hardest W of all: why.

On this, the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment, it would be fitting for the nation’s press to start asking why and to acknowledge its ethical responsibility for keeping the American people adequately informed.

While providing licensure and regulation of virtually any other profession is a logical purpose of government, the First Amendment and our colonial history teach us that similar control of the press is unwise and unconstitutional. Thus to regulate the conduct of the press, government has had to take the much more subtle measure of tort law, and arguably that subtlety leads to perversity in its practical result.

The tort system is the law’s great regulator of human conduct. The law focuses on the base level of conduct, drawing a line between the minimally acceptable and unacceptable through imposition of criminal and civil punishments, reparations and injunctions.

Ethical systems ideally function at a loftier level, asserting principled goals for which principled men and women strive, measuring their success by how close they come.

Lawyers have not been spared the impact of negligence law on the ethics of their own profession. In fact, avoiding heightened liability for legal malpractice is one of the articulated reasons for a recent national move to alter legal ethics.

In very broad terms, the ethical rules of lawyers of past decades were divided into two components, Disciplinary Rules and Ethical Considerations. Like other systems, the Ethical Considerations articulated lofty ideals.

To the dismay of lawyers, courts began to cite Ethical Condiderations as establishing standards of conduct in malpractice suits, using the breach of these loftier ideals as evidence of negligence.

However, replacement of this ethical system is now well underway by the substitution of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules. These take a more middle-of-the-road approach, which in broad measure defines unacceptable conduct by a combination of arbitrary, prohibatory rules and common-sense guidelines.

In the decade following the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, the law of libel underwent several major changes that ultimately emphasized established tort law principles of negligence. Sullivan rejected the old common rule that liability for defamatory speech was automatic, called "negligence per se." Instead, for articles discussing public officials, press liability would not pertain unless the press acted with actual malice — that is, knowingly lying or recklessly disregarding reasons to doubt the accuracy of the story.

That doctrine was easily extended from public officials to public figures and, at the apogee of First Amendment interpretation of libel law, to articles about matters of public interest.

In the 1974 decision Gertz v. Welch, the Supreme Court retracted from a malice test for public interest articles and instead articulated that for private figures, the First Amendment demanded only a "fault" or negligent standard, allowing states to erect higher barriers if they wished.

Courts define negligence as the breach of a duty or a departure from a reasonable standard of conduct. The analysis was further refined to the question of whether a journalist’s actions would be measured against a "reasonable man" or "reasonable journalist" standard, the latter prevailing in most jurisdictions.

Of course, a "reasonable journalist" libel standard focuses the law upon standard journalistic practices. Commonly in a private-figure libel trial, the plaintiff will find a disgruntled journalist or J-school professor to come to court and expound, with the benefit of hindsight, upon the defendant’s failure to live up to exquisite, lofty standards of conduct by journalists. Consequently, the articulation of industry-wide codes of good journalism is deadly to the defense of libel suits.

A similar risk inheres in a press organization’s own code of standards. Nothing is more delicious to a good plaintiff’s lawyer than the irony and hypocrisy of a defendant that fails to live up to its own rules. In the Westmoreland libel suit, CBS was severely challenged for failing to live up to its own news standards. It is for this reason that a vast majority of media lawyers, including this writer, counsel clients against adopting any form of ethical code, whether expressed as a statement of principles, a statement of corporate policy, standards contained in personnel manuals or even style-book or training materials.

The effect is unfortunate. These defensive tactics clearly bear an adverse effect on the ability of news organizations to establish principled corporate culture, to train new members of the profession and to reinforce these standards in writing. As a result, newspapers are left to express and reinforce standards in one-to-one contacts and orally in formal training sessions.

The larger irony here is that the application of negligence law to codes of ethics is self-defeating. Use of codes of ethics to create liability engenders enormous disincentives to articulate, adopt and apply sound professional principles.

If there are to be written standards, media lawyers will argue for the bare minimum. The law imposes an extra penalty on loftier expression of ideals; indeed, it has eliminated its own.

This underscores a deeper philosophical concern for a negligence system that encourages the bare minimum of normative conduct and punishes the expression of higher aspirations. In so doing, the law impedes one mechanism — written codes of ethics — by which we can all seek to improve upon established standards of conduct.

For another view, see "The problem is in the writing."

When journalists find themselves in court, something will instruct the jury and the court about how reasonable journalists act in simlar situations. Far better for that something to be a well-conceived and well-written code of ethics than the "disgruntled journalist or J-school professor" that George Rahdert warns us about.

We do have, in fact, a national news ethic. Television news simulations that aren’t labeled as such, reporters who lead their readers to believe that they are reporting from the scene of a story when they are not, and composite story subjects presented as bona-fide individuals are a few of the practices that have been widely condemned. National awards would be meaningless without agreement on what constitutes outstanding journalism.

But even if journalists can identify and agree upon some behaviors that they condone and others that they condemn, what emerges from most attempts to write codes is a confusing mix of the two against an overlay of conventional practices.

If the code writers can’t get it straight, how can jurors and lawyers be expected to separate the lofty ideals from the conventions of the business, or from the behaviors for which a journalist should be drawn and quartered? Why shouldn’t a juror be confused when the professional society’s code says one thing and the editor says, "But we have a different practice in our newsroom"?

National professional societies should confine their codes to description of the ideals and, in a separate section, the usual practices of the profession. News organizations should describe, in their codes and statements of company policy, the minimal expectations for staff and discuss how in-house conventional practices differ from the national norms.

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists provides a case in point for the current state of confusion. The Code includes, as it should, ideal standards for which all virtuous journalists strive, with statements like "Truth is our ultimate goal."

And, "Objectivity in reporting the news is another goal that serves as the mark of an experienced professional. It is a standard of performance toward which we strive. We honor those who achieve it."

However, the next sentence in the SPJ Code seems different. It says, "There is no excuse for inaccuracies or lack of thoroughness."

Now, how is one to make sense of that? It reads like a minimal standard, comparable to the ABA’s Disciplinary Rules.

But would we want journalists held accountable for every inaccuracy or lack of thoroughness?

Which news story is "thorough"? How can it be when news itself is a snapshot of evolving truth?

No excuse for inaccuracy? How about the mistake in the police report? How about the lying source who has been trustworthy and truthful for months? What about the misunderstanding with the copy desk that results in a pivotal paragraph being dropped?

Maybe this is neither an ideal nor a minimal standard, but a description of the way journalists usually act. If so, it should read something like this: Within the recognized constraint of deadline, journalists do everyhing within their ability to provide stories that are both accurate and complete.

A minimal standard should be expressed this way: There is no excuse for lazy reporting.

When truth, objectivity and no excuse for inaccuracy appear in the same section of the code, it makes sense that they might be treated alike. With no differentiation between kinds of standards, it is just as likely as not that a juror will think they are all enforceable.

A useful code is one that clearly outlines the minimal expectation, specifies that other goals are ones that most mortal journalists can only hope to approximate, and states that still others are conventional practices that are followed, all things being equal (but set aside with adequate justification).

If clearly-labeled ideals and conventions are misused in the courtroom, then the problem is with the quality of the news organization’s legal representation and not with the code. Being "outlawyered" can happen at least as easily with expert witnesses as with well-written codes.

If the written minimal standards come back to haunt the news organization that fails to live up to them, so they should. The public nature of journalistic misadventures means that ethical breakdown in one organization raises questions of credibility for all.

For another view, see "Written rules can be hazardous."

The turmoil began with an alleged embezzlement from a single bank. The $13 million hole led to a financial crisis that closed 45 financial institutions. Among those shutout of their banks were the 1,600 shareholders of the Journal Employees Credit Union, every one of them a newspaper employee, with some $3.5 million on deposit.

But by mid-January, the newspaper credit union rescued itself by winning federal deposit insurance. The move got scores of reporters off the ethical hook since they no longer had deposits that would be affected by governmental plans to rescue the closed credit unions.

However, some reporters, including myself, also had accounts at other credit unions that remained closed. The newspaper’s management never polled any of its reporters or editors, including those covering the crisis, about whether we had accounts in the still-closed credit unions. Instead, they relied on individuals to raise the issue independently.

Before I wrote my first credit union story, I did just that.

I told my editors about how I had opened an account at East Providence Credit Union last year after hearing rumors of insider loans and other questionable management practices there. My supervisor, Karen Maguire, and I had agreed that the best way to get access to inside information was to become a member.

Three months before any hint of the impending banking collapse, I moved some of my personal savings from the Journal Employees Credit Union to the East Providence Credit Union. On New Year’s Eve, I had not yet written a single story about East Providence Credit Union. But that was soon to change.

When the crash came on New Year’s Day, I reminded Maguire of my account. I also discussed the potential conflict of interest with our ranking editor, Andrew Burkhardt. We all agreed that my account was indistinguishable from the 30,000 other accounts at East Providence Credit Union, and that it would not affect my coverage of the credit union. As a precaution, I decided not to vote on any shareholder ballots at the credit union. I also told the credit union president that I had an account with his institution.

Neither I nor my editors considered adding a note to my stories telling readers of my savings account in the credit union. The newspaper does not have a tradition of such self-disclosure and it did not occur to us that such a note might be warranted.

Two months into the credit union crisis, and many stories later, I thought my ethical concerns were over. That was, until a debate about journalistic ethics sprung up in CritQ, the newspaper’s electronic in-house forum for newsroom employees. Several colleagues accused me of a conflict of interest, saying I had a direct financial stake in the resolution of the credit union’s fate and therefore should not be writing about it.

I responded that I did not believe my account at the credit union had influenced my writing and that my editors agreed and had been fully informed. Nevertheless, the criticisms from my colleagues shook my confidence.

In the week following the CritQ debate, I again raised the issue of my potential conflict of interest with my supervisor, asking whether I should stop writing about East Providence Credit Union in light of the allegations. She said absolutely not, reiterating her belief that there was no conflict. She also said my knowledge of the history of East Providence Credit Union and its ties to the state political leadership was too valuable to the newspaper and its readers for me to disqualify myself. In this case, she said, the public interest in the news outweighed a marginal consideration of conflict.

Since that discussion, I have written many more credit union stories and there have been no further submissions in CritQ about me. Even so, I remain acutely aware that some of my colleagues may be looking over my shoulder, trying to detect the slightest hint of bias.

In retrospect, I still believe journalists should not be forced to stuff money in their mattresses and that it was important for a reporter to open an account at East Providence Credit Union. There was legitimate news interest in creating the relationship. Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have opened only a nominal account, say $25, rather than $1,000.

But the fact remains, if my editors had removed me from covering East Providence Credit Union, they also would have been forced to remove half the staff from covering the initial days of the crisis. There were just too many of these financial relationships with all the closed credit unions, including the newspaper ’s own employees’ credit union.

And then, surely, the public’s interest in getting the news would have been sacrificed on the altar of ethical purity.

When I was a kid growing up in Motown, this was a night reserved for dumping over garbage cans on people’s lawns and perhaps ringing doorbells and running away before the resident could answer. Alas, times have changed. Now let’s get back to Berman and the ensuing controversy.

When Berman called, he requested I provide a reporter to do a live shot for "America Tonight." Berman asked for a story about the fires. I told him we would be glad to help, but I was quick to point out that while the problem still existed, it was not nearly as bad as it had been in the mid-’80s. Undeterred, Berman said, "Yeah, I know, but I need a story on the fires."

I explained we would help out, but the piece I was willing to provide would have balance. You know, all the good stuff about neighborhood patrols chipping in to help curtail the problem. Berman said there was no time for such a lengthy piece.

No time for balance? Was this really CBS News talking? OK, I thought, how about two stories, one on the fires and the other on how most folks were doing their part to assure that things did not get out of control: neighborhood patrols, extra police, block parties for would-be wayward kids? In other words, the other side of the story. Berman said there would be no time for such a thing. After all, this is a network news program, and 2:00 for one piece was about all they could handle.

By now it’s getting late in the afternoon, and I’m talking to this producer for what seems like the fifth time. (It was only the third.) I tell him, "Look, pal, either you take the piece with balance, or I don’t give you the story."

Berman has led some to believe that I threatened to deny videotape of the fires to the network because I was concerned about the image of the city. I am concerned about the image of the city. But at no time did I withhold or threaten to withhold raw tape of the fires. We are a CBS affiliate, and we provided any and all tape they requested. My point was — and remains — I will not put a reporter of mine on national TV with a story I would be ashamed to put on my station.

The story is far from over. Eventually, Mr. Berman calls me back and says, "OK, I’ll take the story with the balance, but it has to be kept short." I commend him on his ethics, but as I am preparing to leave for the evening, I tell my managing editor that I don’t completely trust Berman, and I warn against an end run.

Now all of you are going to be shocked, but literally 30 minutes after I left the station, Berman called Managing Editor Nelson Burg and requested you know what. Burg had orders from me to tell Berman and "America Tonight" there would be no piece if there was any attempted chicanery. Berman was livid and was apparently left with a big hole in his show. Too bad!

It is now almost three months after the incident with "America Tonight," and Berman continues to refer to me as a hack, lacking ethics, and a shill for the city of Detroit. Berman says we would not provide the story because Mayor Coleman Young asked the media to go easy on the city. I invite anyone who reads this article to call the mayor’s press secretary, Bob Berg. Ask him how much WJBK or any station in this town shills for the city.

With regard to the issue which has been raised as to whether it is a journalist’s role to be concerned with how his or her city is perceived — you’re damn right it is. How should this role be played out? Through reporting every story with balance. Report two, three, or four sides of a story when necessary.

Right now I am looking at one of our competitors in the market as they cover an anti-war rally on a college campus. They are providing two minutes to 60 people protesting the war. Nowhere in the piece is there anything about the fact that this small group represents an infinitesimal percent of the student body and that in fact there was a pro-war rally the same day on the same campus. Without the balance, the wrong image is conveyed.

In conclusion, the mayor’s office did ask the local media to call the day before Halloween anything but Devil’s Night. So what? Call it pre-Halloween fires, call it arson, call it string beans if you want to. The bottom line is that the facts were and always will be reported on this station. There is nothing wrong with looking out for the image of the city you live in if the only compromise you make is reporting the facts fairly.

Editor’s note: Al Berman, the CBS senior producer referred to in this article, had this response: "Mort Meisner’s account of events has little resemblance to the truth."

Berman said the report sent for their use was "not of network quality." He said he called WJBK’s managing editor to ask for a "better" report which he had seen by satellite, but was refused. He said this request had nothing to do with not wanting a balanced report.

Berman said there’s a larger issue of whether media in a town with an image problem should be "toning" down coverage at the request of the mayor’s office. "WJBK won’t even use the term ‘Devil’s Night,’" he said.

 

The St. Petersburg Times became the story when a publicity-shy investor, Robert Bass, tried an unwelcome takeover.

I initially heard about it at the time when Gene Patterson was retiring and we were opening a new building — so we delayed publication of the fact that these 200 shares of stock had changed hands. Frankly, we didn’t perceive it having so great importance. The result was, I read about it in the Tampa Tribune, which was difficult to my pride and extremely hard for the staff.

. . . We assigned an extremely able reporter, Susan Taylor Martin, to write a story on the occasion of a visit that Bob Bass paid. Susan wrote a first-class story which kind of got us back in the league. Then she wrote a long article on the history of the Times and the current situation which I delayed publication of for roughly six months based on my concern that publication would cause us to have more difficulty coming to an amicable settlement.

. . . On final settlement, one of the provisions was that I would say nothing about it other than what was in a rather lengthy press release worked out between lawyers. The net effect is that I have been unable, and am at this moment unable, to accurately characterize the nature of this deal. It would be easier if I worked in a role in which I could just say "Well, I’m only the publisher and everybody knows publishers don’t believe in reporting, anyway." Since I am editor, I have been forced to acknowledge that when you are fighting for the very existence of a publication which you care about, there are times when you have to say, "It is so much in the disinterest of the newspaper to publish an article at this time that we’re just going to delay publication." And if anybody asks, that’s what I’ll say I’ve done. And, that is a conflict and it isn’t clean and it is a problem — and I would do it again.

 

The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times reported on their own sale under difficult circumstances.

There is an acid test for the owners of newspapers and broadcast stations.

That test is the accessibility of information when they and their companies are the story. From my personal and very disappointing experience, the sale of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, WHAS and the other Bingham-owned properties revealed that the owners put detailed news coverage low on their list of priorities.

After the sale had been announced and investment bankers had moved in to manage the process, discussion turned to a "gag order" which would prevent family members and top management from talking to any reporter about the sale. The gag order contained many ironies. The platoon of lawyers, representing various members of the family, was exempt! But no provision was made for an exemption to the order when a buyer for one of the properties was announced. In fact, the very announcement of a new owner would have been a violation of the order. I was finally able to change that and also obtain a grudging exemption for a Courier-Journal reporter who was writing a Sunday Magazine article. In the end one of the lawyers even tried to suppress that article.

The whole fiasco was a humiliating finale for a family which had made its fortune by collecting and distributing the news. But when it came to the sale of our own companies, the right of employees and the public to know what was going on was no longer a priority. When we were put to the test of permitting full news coverage of ourselves, we deserved a failing grade.

 

For another view, see "Like any other story."

It was the labor negotiations at my paper, The New York Daily News. At stake: the future of the newspaper where I’d worked for fifteen years.

Even before I wrote my first story on the negotiations, I knew the situation was likely to become ugly. By hiring the law firm of King and Ballow, a Nashville-based company with a national reputation for union-busting, News management had signaled its intention to take on the ten entrenched unions at the paper. The unions, no patsies, also had let it be known they would not bow down without a fight.

The lines were clearly drawn and I felt like the referee.

There is no denying the inherent conflict I faced even agreeing to the assignment. I am a member of the Newspaper Guild of New York, the union representing editorial employees. As such, I had a vested interest in the Guild achieving a good contract.

The metropolitan editor, Arthur Browne, didn’t want me to take the job, knowing the intense pressure I’d be under from both management and labor. He suggested the newspaper carry the wire service reports on negotiations. Editor Jim Willse overruled Browne and, when I agreed, the assignment was mine.

My instructions from editors were to follow the story wherever it went, whether it reflected badly on management or the unions. I took their advice.

At one point, I got a tip from a fellow reporter that the Tribune Company, which owns The Daily News, was asking reporters at its other papers in Chicago, Florida and Virginia, to fill in at The News should a strike take place. I called assistant editor Rich Rosen and, to his credit, he said, "Go for it."

The next day, The News ran a surreal story under my byline about my paper recruiting reporters to take our place in case of a strike. Reporters at The New York Post and The New York Times told me they were amazed that management had allowed me to write such a story. They were even more surprised that the story was given prominent space.

But not all my dealings with editors went so smoothly. Another time, the only way I could learn of The News‘ contract offer to the pressmen’s union was through a source who refused to be quoted by name. I wrote a story about the proposal using unnamed sources. Managing editor Matt Storin refused to allow the story into the paper.

I strenuously argued the point. The News often used unnamed source stories. I complained that The News had promised to treat the story like any other and now it was changing the ground rules. Storin relented and this story and ones similar to it eventually ran.

As the months passed, union leaders would leak me damaging information on management; News officials would leak me damaging information on the union. I never ran with the information unless it had thoroughly been corroborated by the other side.

I was convinced I was doing a fair job because both sides complained. The News spokesman was annoyed his quotes were being chopped while the union leaders claimed I had shortchanged them.

The greatest pressure for me came when I wrote stories involving my own union. It came to a climax in mid-March when The News offered the Guild an unheard-of 30 percent raise over three years, a contract that would have made us the highest-paid reporters in the country.

I knew what I thought immediately. Where do I sign? I was excited at the prospect of getting that kind of raise. Who wouldn’t be?

I called Guild president Barry Lipton to get his reaction. I’ll never forget his first words when I asked what he thought of the proposal: "Utterly retrogressive."

Lipton thought the contract was a horror because it affected job security, a change Lipton could not abide.

I took the temperature of the newsroom. The die-hard unionists hated it; others loved it. As the reporter who had to put it into the paper, I kept my opinion to myself.

On the morning of October 25, the end game between management and labor began. By the next night, nine unions at The News, including my own, went on strike. I earlier had asked Lipton for an exemption to continue working on the theory that the unions would get more balanced coverage from me than they would from the management people who would take over the coverage if I went on strike.

Lipton refused the exemption. This was no ordinary labor strike. When management began permanently replacing long-time union workers, it became a labor war.

I went on strike and the coverage, written mostly by management, immediately changed. The paper became a propaganda tool for management. (For another view, see "When your newspaper is the news.") The same day 13,000 union members protested outside The News building, the editors led the paper with a one-sided account of a blind newsstand dealer who’d been threatened by union drivers not to carry the paper. The dealer’s seeing-eye dog Lars was prominently featured.

On strike, I’ve had plenty of time to consider the way I handled the coverage. For anyone facing a similar assignment, I have this advice: Give both sides an equal chance to state their case, avoid analyses where opinion often creeps in, and make sure you have the backing of your editors. It also helps to have an iron stomach to ride out the tough periods when it seems everyone is against you.

For other views on this topic, see "When your newspaper is the news."

Virtually every mover and shaker in town sits on the organization’s hoard, from top banking executives to senior Eastman Kodak Co. officials to Vince Spezzano, then-publisher of the Times-Union and its sister Gannett newspaper, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

So we knew a critical look at Rochester’s United Way would invite pressure from powerful forces to quash the story. We had heard that a local TV station had killed a similar story after its general manager — himself a United Way board member — was lobbied by a United Way volunteer who happened to be one of the station’s major advertisers.

Would we fare any better, particularly in light of Gannett Rochester Newspapers’ own close ties with United Way? And how would Spezzano handle the obvious conflict between his job as publisher and his position as a United Way board member?

I didn’t know the answers to these questions as I began my reporting. But I was encouraged by my editors’ enthusiasm; they had not flinched from pursuing the tips.

One of my first steps was to review our old United Way clips. I didn’t find much. Gannett Rochester Newspapers is one of United Way’s biggest corporate donors, and our United Way coverage consisted almost entirely of boosterish stories about the annual fundraising campaign. Editorials exhorted the public to give generously.

After weeks of interviewing United Way officials and pouring over budget documents and tax records, it was clear that the Times-Union had failed to report on fundamental changes inside the community’s premier social-service fund-raiser.

In short, United Way’s leaders had decided to pump millions more dollars into fund-raising expenses after enduring several disappointing carnpaigns. This meant spending more of every contribution on advertising, on courting wealthy donors, and on broadening the base of corporate support. United Way’s annual allocation to its own operating costs increased 61 percent in five years. It was a big change for an organization which prided itself on minimal overhead costs.

United Way officials were candid in discussing this shift in strategy. They were less eager to discuss the president’s $124,000 salary, free car and paid country club membership. Nor were they eager to discuss the lavish renovation of United Way’s headquarters which included a $3,700 sun patio, a $3,000 reception desk, $5,800 for 68 plants and another $135 a month for a firm to water the plants.

When I had finished most of my reporting, I met with editor Barbara Henry and other senior editors to present my findings. They were excited. We discussed story structure and length, possible sidebars and art. It was full steam ahead. I began to write.

We had heard from Henry that United Way board members and officials were lobbying Spezzano. Their chief concern was public reaction to the president’s salary and perquisites. They also were worried about reaction to the renovation expenses, particularly since United Way had been preaching sacrifice to donors and social service agencies. (We later learned that United Way had hired a pollster to gauge donors’ responses to our story.)

On the evening before publication, I went home to refresh myself with a nap. When I returned to finish writing, assistant city editor Kevin Ryan called me into a conference room. I could tell from the look on his face he had bad news. Henry had taken drafts of the stories to Spezzano, he told me. Now Spezzano was demanding deep cuts.

What had been planned as the paper’s lead story jumping to two full inside pages was relegated to a bottom corner of the front page and a single inside page. Those topics which United Way had been most concerned about — such as salaries, perks and renovation costs — were hardest hit by Spezzano’s cuts.

I pulled my byline from the story in protest. Word of what had happened spread quickly through the Times-Union and Democrat and Chronicle newsrooms. The Newspaper Guild filed a grievance accusing Spezzano of violating Gannett’s conflict-of-interest policy. About 60 reporters signed a petition demanding a meeting with Spezzano.

At the meeting, Spezzano denied that he acted in response to pressure from United Way. The published version of the story, he correctly pointed out, included a brief mention of the president’s salary and some of the renovation costs. In his judgment, the original drafts were unfair to United Way — a view which was not shared by several editors, including Barbara Henry.

As for Gannett’s conflict-of-interest policy, it simply did not and could not apply to the publisher, he said. The publisher has a civic and business obligation to participate in organizations like the United Way. At the same time, he said, the publisher must retain control over editorial content.

As it turned out, Spezzano’s intercession probably did more harm than good for United Way. The controversy over the cuts was picked up by other local news organizations, which kept the story alive longer and left United Way officials scurrying to do damage control.

But the big loser was the Times-Union. Readers questioned the paper’s independence, even though the paper partially redeemed itself with a couple of strong editorials critical of United Way’s spending practices. Still, there was no getting around the appearance that the newspaper’s ties to United Way had affected its coverage of the organization.

Editor’s note: Rochester Times-Union editor Barbara Henry said that while there was internal disagreement about the editing of Barstow’s United Way story, what appeared in the newspaper was anything but a "puff piece." Henry said that as a result of the Times-Union’s aggressive reporting and editorials, the United Way changed some of its practices.

For a related view, see "How now, sacred cow?"

While I applaud United Way’s marketing successes, what are newsrooms doing donating staff and editorial space to the cause?

Of all the charities and non-profits that exist within a community, only United Way gets the benefits of widespread payroll deductions. Few fund drives involve reporters receiving pledge cards with their paychecks. Even fewer receive newsroom "volunteers" who follow up with colleagues, checking to ensure that everyone has "had the opportunity to give."

The special treatment United Way gets should raise questions in journalists’ minds about fairness. United Way is not the only fund-raising game in town, but it’s the only one that can depend on news staffs to boost its efforts.

The sheer magnitude of United Way’s efforts should also signal the need for special scrutiny. But that’s not likely to happen when news organizations are part of the corporate community that provides United Way its support. Often the newspaper’s publisher and television station manager are members of the local board. How do you ignore your boss’s favorite charity?

New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist and reporter James Gill agreed that investigative stories need to be done about United Way, but admits he is one of many who hasn’t done them. "We have a vague idea that we ought to do it someday," he said. "But, it’s not the kind of thing you get assigned by management."

The Times-Picayune runs a daily tally of United Way progress during its fall fund-raising drive, a weekly column in a zoned section on Sundays called "United Way at Work," and occasional stories in the metro section on the campaign. City editor Keith Woods said that United Way gets attention unlike any other charity because the newspaper hasn’t been asked for similar treatment by any other charity of that size.

Many other news organizations also do their part.

For example, The Charlotte Observer’s coverage of last fall’s United Way campaign was low-key until the local chapter said it might not make its fund-raising goal. Then the paper rallied to the cause.

During the last weeks of the campaign, The Observer ran stories with headlines that read, "United Way Troops Get Marching Orders" (10/19), "United Way Struggles To Meet Its Goal By Thursday Deadline" (10/23), "United Way Expected To Miss Its Goal By Thursday Deadline" (11/1), "99.1% Not Close Enough for United Way Crew, Challenge Continues" (11/2), "United Way Issues Plea For Support, Current Donors Asked to Increase Pledges" (11/6). ^[1]

Lisa Hammersly, city editor at The Observer, said the faltering campaign was news. "United Way has a record of making its goal," she said.

Scott Wharton, media relations associate for United Way of Central Carolina said they appreciated The Observer’s help. "We are obviously dependent on the press to tell the United Way story," he said. As a result of The Observer’s coverage, Wharton said new donors called in and others doubled their pledges.

It’s only on the editorial page that such community boosterism belongs, said David Johnston, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who pioneered critical coverage of non-profit organizations in the early ’80s.

"I read editorials and say this is United Way propaganda. If you want to write about them in the newsroom, then cover them like any other institution. Why should United Way be treated differently?"

It has been Johnston’s experience that there are many stories about United Way that don’t get written. "Typically," he said, "Boy Scouts gets twice as much money from United Way as Girl Scouts. Are Boy Scouts twice as good?"

Johnston suggested that news organizations check out which banks in the community house United Way funds and see what role officers from those banks have within the local United Way structure.

"United Way ought to be treated like every other institution in the community," Johnston said. But, the problem, he said, is larger than the United Way.

The non-profit sector is generally not covered with the kind of scrutiny used on other institutions in the community. "Reporters hear ‘charity’ and think that means ‘good,’" he said.

Now that the fall United Way campaign and the holiday season with its share of media-endorsed charities are out of the way, it’s time that newsrooms take a careful look at their own favored causes.

If a news organization endorses a fund-raiser, whether it is for an individual in need or the monolithic United Way, that news organization takes on a special obligation to tell people how that money their reporters helped raise is being spent.

Every story about social service agencies or non-profit organizations ought to tell readers how much of its funding comes from private philanthropy. Readers need to know how many of their United Way dollars are supporting that work. News stories at the time of campaign kick-offs should include mention of the problems of United Way and its agencies along with their successes and goals.

It’s not wrong for journalists to want to contribute to the community welfare, but they should do so in the privacy of their own checkbooks. Journalists can’t escape the appearance of a conflict of interests if they are raising funds for an organization they should be watching.

^[1] Based on Vu-Text search

For a related view, see "The ties that bind."