Huge Gap Between How Republicans and Democrats View Media

Here are a few excerpts from the Keller column.

The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club includes op-ed regulars at this newspaper and The Washington Post, the editors of The New Yorker, The New Republic and Slate, columnists in Time and Newsweek. Many of these wary warmongers are baby-boom liberals whose aversion to the deployment of American power was formed by Vietnam but who had a kind of epiphany along the way -- for most of us, in the vicinity of Bosnia.

The president also has enough prominent Democrats with him -- some from conviction, some from the opposite -- to make this endeavor credibly bipartisan. Four of the six declared Democratic presidential hopefuls support war, with reservations. (Senator John Kerry seemed to come down from the fence last week after Colin Powell's skillful parsing of the evidence.)....

We reluctant hawks may disagree among ourselves about the most compelling logic for war -- protecting America, relieving oppressed Iraqis or reforming the Middle East -- but we generally agree that the logic for standing pat does not hold. Much as we might wish the administration had orchestrated events so the inspectors had a year instead of three months, much as we deplore the arrogance and binary moralism, much as we worry about all the things that could go wrong, we are hard pressed to see an alternative that is not built on wishful thinking.

Thanks to all these grudging allies, Mr. Bush will be able to claim, with justification, that the coming war is a far cry from the rash, unilateral adventure some of his advisers would have settled for….

I don't pretend to speak for the aviary, but almost all of the hesitant hawks go out of their way to disavow Mr. Bush's larger agenda for American power even as they salute his plan to use it in Iraq. This is worth dwelling on a little, because with this war the administration is not just taking on a dictator, it is beginning to define in blood the new American imperium….

Political Activism

A commendable MSNBC.com investigation revealed that at least 140 journalists contributed to political parties, movements or candidates. SPJ's ethics code states that journalists should "remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility." The code also encourages journalists to shun " political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity."

Journalist/Source Relationships

Journalists must maintain a healthy distance from people they cover.

A former Telemundo anchorwoman reported about Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's marital difficulties without mentioning that she was dating him.

Getting too close to sources sorely compromises a journalist's ability to "act independently," as SPJ's code instructs.

PlagiarismNews/Advertising Relationships

Times are tough economically for the news industry, and many organizations are responding with problematic news-advertising hybrids. For example, the Philadelphia Inquirer runs a business column under a Citizens Bank label. Though the paper says the bank won't have a say in the column's content, the appearance suggests otherwise. "Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived," the code states.

Fairness

Last year, SPJ awarded several journalists at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press an ethics award for resigning in protest of co-publisher Wendy McCaw's influence on news content. That battle reached a new low when the newspaper ran an unsigned front-page story implying that the paper's former editor downloaded child pornography on his office computer. The story fell far short of an airtight case and appeared to be bent on attacking the former editor more than serving readers with truth. "Test the accuracy of information from all sources, and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error," the code instructs.

Photo Manipulation

After the shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, news organizations may have thought they were doing the right thing by altering photos that appeared to show a wounded student's genitals. They weren't. The image organizations edited out was actually a tourniquet. Photographs should be respected as a form of truth. "Never distort the content of news photos or video," the code instructs. "Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible."

The blur of news and entertainment. NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series is fraught with ethical problems, such as the hiring of a crusading nonprofit group to set up stings. "Avoid staged news events," the code states. It also urges journalists to "deny favored treatment to special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage."

While these problem areas are cause for concern, they are, thankfully, exceptions to the rule. Thousands of journalists make ethics a top concern, and we commend them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christine Tatum is national president of the Society of Professional Journalists and an assistant features editor at The Denver Post.