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Foreword: Ethics in Journalism

By E. J. MEHREN

Editor, Engineering News-Record; formerly Chairman, New York Conference of Business Paper Editors

without some evidence of it coming to public knowledge. Then will ensue confidence; esteem will replace the distrust that may now exist.

The teachers of the people must be public. House-cleaning cannot go on actuated by high principles; otherwise society will suffer. Newspapers, magazines and business papers form a continuation school which affects throughout life the graduates of every other educational institution, be it common school or university. As is the press, so will be society.

Observance by journalists, then, of the highest ethical standards is an imperative social necessity. There have always been sound rules of journalistic conduct, unformulated, seldom written, that have guided the best of our newspapers and magazines. The wide confidence which these journals enjoy is evidence of the extent to which they have lived up to high principles. On the other hand, there have been serious lapses.

It is with the purpose of cleaning up the sore spots, of raising the good to the level of the best, that we find in different parts of the country efforts to formulate the journalistic conscience into codes. Some of these efforts are set forth in the articles by Dean Allen, Mr. Norris and Mr. Hill.

Primarily, a code is a means of internal professional discipline for each group. We must be our own judges. We must shame the violators and help reform habitually offending papers.

But a code has a secondary value. It enables a profession to justify itself to the

Codes alone mere expressions of sound standards of practice will do some good, but to be of full value they must be accompanied by machinery for their enforcement and punishment for their violation. The medical profession enforces its codes through the county medical societies; the legal profession, through the state bar associations. There is need in the journalistic world of an organization or organizations through which the social responsibility of journalists can find expression. Here and there are state associations of newspaper men and local clubs. The business paper editors have their organizations. Is the time not ripe for an Institute of Journalists which will carry the banner of high purpose for the whole profession and stimulate the organization of functioning subsidiary or affiliated bodies in every part of the country?

With the heavy responsibility resting on journalists, a responsibility of supplying mental food and guidance to millions, a responsibility of teaching the entire people, can journalists afford to do less than bind the whole craft together for the erection and maintenance of high standards?

The Social Value of a Code of Ethics for Journalists

BY ERIC W. ALLEN

Dean, School of Journalism, University of Oregon

ECENT criticisms of the Ameri

condemnatory, of which Mr. Upton Sinclair's Brass Check may be taken as the extremest example, ignore so many factors in the social problem of the press, in its past, in its present, and in its future, that the final result is much heat without any appreciable light.

Yet the questions Mr. Sinclair attempted to raise, and failed to raise in any effective way in the mind of the profession because of the intemperance of his methods, are important ones and worthy of study. An educated and idealistic newspaper writer, employed by one of the leading New York dailies, suggested to the writer that Mr. Sinclair's book was important enough to deserve-what? Not confutation, but rewriting by some careful, independent, trained investigator, who could work without excitement, who would accurately define all his terms, and guard and support every generalization with adequate documentation. For it is the generalizations in the book that are important if true, and in so far as they are true.

Fresh from a rereading of Mr. Sinclair's eloquent Philippic it was the privilege of the writer to serve as host to a hundred responsible newspaper editors, most of them newspaper owners, representing very nearly all the larger papers of one of the western states. They had travelled, some of them, hundreds of miles to be present at a twoday session at the School of Journalism of their state university for the discussion of newspaper problems. Nor had these discussions to do principally with advertising rates, wire serv

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SALVATION OF THE PRESS WITH ITS OWN PERSONNEL

The writer sat where he could see the faces of these men; their records, their successes and their failures he had observed for years; he knew the spark of genius here and perhaps the mental limitation there. With many he had been asked to consult in times

of personal crisis and honest doubt. Then came to his mind the picture of a debased press, so fervently presented by the college professors, the sociologists, the free lances, of whom Mr. Sinclair is only one,the picture of slavish repression, malicious carelessness, conceited ignorance, and contented corruption-and the thought came to him that the salvation of the Ameri

1 No slur is intended upon the report of the Interchurch World Movement on conditions in Pittsburgh. This document is of a different type and calls for a reasoned answer from those who feel aggrieved; clamorous counter-propaganda and charges of sedition are aside from the point. The reaction of the press itself to the report is shown on pp. 311 and 312 of Public Opinion and the Steel Strike. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921.

can press is with these editors more than it is with those critics; that the critical picture is overdrawn and lacks perspective and proportion.

The most virulent critics of the press as it exists do not deny the presence in the working personnel of the profession of a tremendous element of good will, character, technical knowledge, and aspiration for social improvement. The most satisfied of the newspaper's defenders-and there are many who point with pride to the contrast its present condition makes with its often erring past-cannot overlook the imperfections of the present and the need for vigilant care lest progress slacken and retrogression or decay set in. He would be an incurable optimist or a careless observer who would say that the morale of the press has not received grave wounds in the period of the War and Armistice. Yet even since 1914 certain constructive changes have been initiated within the body of the profession itself that may ultimately far outweigh in effect the degenerative influences of the orgy of hatred, narrowness and propaganda. Some of these will be specified later.

The modern press, as we know it, is less than a hundred years old. Three generations, in this country at least, have witnessed nearly the whole of the evolution of the journalist, the man who regards the gathering, presentation and interpretation of the news of the world as a science and an art, and its practice as a profession. Before, say, 1830 we have in journalism only the psychology of the pamphleteer and the politician applied through one of the collateral activities of the job printer. Even today a careless apprentice system furnishes nearly all the training for what must become, in any really well-ordered system of society, one of the most learned and scrupulous of the higher professions.

The problems of journalism can never be disconnected from the dilemmas that confront society as a whole and every newspaper office decision arises in some way from and has a reactive effect upon economic and social forces that play upon the community at large. In a perfect society good journalism would be easy. Yet he who proposes to reform society as a necessary precedent to developing a better journalism is lost to all sense of proportion; the very function of good journalism is to work toward a better society; the newspaper is to be justified as an instrument and not as an end. To wait for society to demand better newspapers is to wait too long; besides, there are more signs of hope within the profession itself than are yet to be observed in the effective demand of newspaper patrons, subscribers and advertisers-society.

NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS OF TODAY

The newspaper publishers of today are men of varied origins and training. Many began their careers as printers; others inherited or invested in newspaper properties. The advertising solicitor, the circulation man, the newsboy, the office boy, the printer's devil, have developed into controllers of policy as frequently as the man who served his apprenticeship, such as it was, in the gathering and writing of news. An acute business judgment is a more uniform characteristic than any familiarity with the social effects of journalistic policies. Yet it is this personnel that is the strongest force behind the effort to raise journalism to a position as one of the learned and scrupulous professions. It is these men who are the backers of the new schools of journalism and it is they who encourage the teachers of journalism to criticise freely, to set up such ideals as they are capable of conceiving and

presenting, to face the facts of the situation and to seek ethical solutions. The sons of such men form a large portion of the student bodies of the better schools of journalism which have been established in the last dozen years.

These, too, are the men who, in many of the western states, gather year after year in their state universities in ever increasing numbers to discuss professional problems with each other and with the faculties and students of the schools of journalism. It was such a body of men that adopted the Kansas Newspaper Code in 1910, and such a body that decided to make clear to the public a rather definite statement of their professional practices in Oregon in 1922.

It is becoming old-fashioned in such meetings to deny that there is room for further progress in journalism, or that study of newspaper problems may be of some effect. The old tendency to resent and sweepingly repudiate anything said in criticism of the press is disappearing from the newspapers themselves. The old-time editor not only did this but did it in such a way as deeply to wound the spirit or reputation of the person who dared to criticise.

SOCIAL NEED FOR A CLARIFIED
CODE

The old theory-for public consumption was that all newspaper men, without taking thought, naturally from the first day of their careers mystically knew all the ethical implications of their acts.

"The very fact that it becomes necessary to publish a definite code of the ideals to which most journalists have subscribed from the day they entered the profession," says Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent, "is proof that somewhere all is not as it should be." The

premise and the conclusion of this reasoning both seem to be that perfection has not yet been obtained; which is correct, but the italicized words picture a miracle that has not happened.

The New York Times, in the more light-hearted of its editorial columns"Topics of the Times"-takes much the same stand, narrowing the accusation down to the Oregonians whose adoption of a code calling for papers to be conducted, says the Times, "as reputable papers have always been' is characterized-light-heartedly—as a confession of past wickedness. Lighthearted, too, was the Times in violating three or four sections of the code by stating out of its own inner and incorrect knowledge that the Oregon document was not written "by a newspaper man or even a journalist."

The written code is an instrument of education. It is not a confession of wickedness nor is there anything light-hearted about it. Its function is to make clear not only to the university trained neophyte but to the untrained man in the profession, to the critical public and to the publisher himself the premises and the type of reasoning upon which newspaper decisions must be based and upon which erroneous decisions are rightly to be criticised.

The reasons behind newspaper decisions are not, upon the whole, well understood by the public. Many a conscientious act, public spirited in its intent, is interpreted as wanton cruelty or sordid sensationalism, or attributed to commercial motives. On the other hand, many a publisher utterly mistakes what the public interest really demands, or even acts upon incentives which he regards as legitimate but which sound principles of journalistic ethics should forbid.

If any body of thought ever demanded clarification, systematization,

and logical analysis, it is that of the ethics of journalism. The "codes" so far formulated, are only a basis-a sound basis, it is to be hoped-for much further study and discussion, leading finally to treatises, much more complete, upon the actual practices accepted by the profession.

ETHICAL DILEMMAS OF THE WORKING JOURNALIST

A few problems, easy perhaps to closet philosophers, but still extremely puzzling to the working journalist, may be cited to demonstrate the need of ethical study and teaching.

What is the highest duty of the press in time of war—a great war, believed to be a righteous war, a war dangerous to the very existence of the nation? "Tell the unvarnished truth as I see it," replies one, and if he sees the truth in unpopular aspects he loses his paper and perhaps his liberty. "Anything to help win the war," says another extremist. Most editors in the last few years have stood on middle ground, some toward one limit and some toward the other, leaving the public confused as to what to believe in the papers, and more than ever inclined to doubt the integrity of the press.

The Oregon Code, like all the journalistic codes published to this time, is emphatic throughout in its emphasis upon the importance of telling all the truth; yet the qualification enters inconspicuously in various connections that "if the public or social interest demands"-decidedly not the personal or commercial interest of the publisher or editor-suppression is allowable.

What does this mean?

What does it mean in case of a second-rate war, or a third-rate war with Haiti or Santo Domingo? What does it mean in such a struggle as that in the northwest in which the Non

Partisan League is involved? Or when communism threatens what most editors consider the social and public interest? Even the struggle between parties, far less bitter than of old, may still supply honest editors with doubts. The editor's conception of the "public or social interest" is an element that it seems dangerous to leave in the code or to take out. Is it, after all, or will it in time become, his duty to tell the truth though the heavens, in his judgment, will fall?

A code must not legislate. There is no organized body in journalism that has sufficient prestige to speak for the profession or greatly to influence its practices. Yet newspapers vary from the honest and courageous to the supine, and a code can set as a minimum the best practices of the profession, and as the optimum the state of perfect knowledge, perfect good will and perfect courage. And in both its aspects, the disowning of inferior practices and the setting up of an ideal, the code can become a constructive influence in the profession.

The editor's belief as to what constitutes "public and social interest" can be affected only by the gradual moralization and rationalization of all society, by education of the young newspaper men and by logical criticism. For his informed judgment no written rule can be substituted. But more truth and much less concern with immediate results seems to be the path of progress.

If a code could legislate, there is one problem of modern journalism, greatly intensified since the War, upon which a code maker would be tempted to try his hand. It is serious enough, perhaps, to attract the interest of the state, but there is little probability that any existing legislative body would adopt sound views upon the subject. It is that of propaganda.

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