Codewords- SPJ Ethics

Ethics of the News Hole

Jerry Dunklee – Member SPJ Ethics Committee

The Connecticut SPJ Pro Chapter, the Southern Connecticut State University campus chapter and the Journalism Department here, held a Project Watchdog event on Sunday, March 18th.  We invited a cross section of local and statewide news people, community and political leaders to talk about their views of the quality and quantity of local and state news coverage.  

At first glance, this was not an ethics discussion.  But when you consider the role of journalists under the First Amendment, and when you read the Preamble to the Code of Ethics you realize that this may be the “mother of all ethics questions.”  The preamble reads:  “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”

Can we achieve that goal when local and statewide issues often go uncovered?

Let’s stipulate that there is some very good journalism being committed everyday in Connecticut and around the nation.  But the other truth is real.  Many important stories go uncovered or covered by press-release journalism.   Staff cuts, the pressures of the “bottom line,” and increased use of syndicated material have affected almost every news outlet in the country.  

Just a few Connecticut facts:  The number of  reporters covering our statehouse has dwindled from about thirty 20 years ago to about ten now.  New Haven City Hall is covered by one daily print reporter.  The Connecticut Post and the Hartford Courant have just reduced or eliminated their free lance budgets.  The sports staff at the New Haven Register has been reduced by about a third. They also cut their photo staff.  Local radio news was eliminated completely at WELI in New Haven in January.  That station, historically, was a radio news leader and at one point had 12 full and part-time news reporters.  The station also has no real local talk shows.  

A reporter friend just quit his job at a Connecticut daily after fifteen years because, he said, “I was being asked to do so many stories, to just get them done, I couldn’t take pride in my work anymore.”

A former state senator told me that 20 years ago when he first ran for office there would be seven or eight stories each in several area papers about the campaign.  He said the last time he ran for re-election there were two and both were basically re-writes of campaign press releases.  

I know the problem exists everywhere and those reading this have their own stories of woe to offer.  It’s not pretty.   

Last term I taught a class on the future of news.  A student asked one of our guests, a former head of the state’s Freedom on Information Commission, if you could “run a democracy this way?”  meaning with such large cuts in news about government in the local papers and in radio and television.  He said, “You can run one, just not a very good one.”

When citizens are not informed about the basic issues in their communities by an independent and active press how do we maintain a modicum of real democracy not controlled by and informed elite?  

The community and political leaders who attended our discussion were all concerned about that problem.  None of them, or the many editors and reporters who came, had a solution.  There is a sense that none of us has control over the forces of the bottom line or the other relevant factors in the equation.  

We called our program “Doing More With Less.”  But we know what we are usually doing is “less with fewer.”  

I know I am one of many who believe the situation has eroded the “…foundation of democracy.”