Monday, August 24, 1998
		Q&A: Ethical lapses in the media
		Allyson Mann News coverage ethics has become news in recent months, with major media organizations confessing ethical lapses and the public increasingly questioning coverage of President Clinton. Columns sought comment from Conrad Fink, William S. Morris Professor of Newspaper Strategy and Management and director of UGA's James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies. Fink is a former foreign correspondent and vice president of the Associated Press. Columns: What caused this series of ethical lapses in the media? Fink: First, rampant careerism by newspaper and magazine reporters and TV producers who seek to "make" the big story--who push beyond the facts to build a dramatic story, then ignore facts that would undercut the drama. In some cases, pathological liars have found their way into our ranks. Second, and most disturbing, there has been a breakdown in newsroom management. Editors aren't editing, aren't challenging reporters to back up their assertions. This is a criminal breakdown in newsroom professionalism and there is no escaping the reality that responsibility flows upward through the management ranks at those publications that print falsehoods. There are defenses against pathological liars. The defenses are called editors. But there's an old saying in my business: Doctors bury their mistakes, lawyers wave goodbye as their mistakes go off to prison and journalists put their mistakes on the front page for everybody to see. So ethical lapses and errors in journalism are out there for everybody to see, and they receive a great deal of attention. Columns: Which of these lapses has the most resonance for you? Fink: The most puzzling of all of these ethical issues that have broken over the last four or five months is that involving Peter Arnett of CNN. Arnett is a personal and close friend of mine. We covered Vietnam together in 1962, and I've known him since then. He has been a superb and careful reporter, and I just find it inexplicable that he would get involved in that CNN story on poison gas being used in Vietnam. I just do not know how a senior, experienced reporter could get trapped that way. And it underscores something I teach my students. We can spend 45 years building a reputation and a name in journalism and seriously injure, if not destroy it, in one unguarded moment, which I believe is what happened to Peter. Columns: What should management do? Fink: Each case should be treated differently, obviously, because the facts will be different. But I believe that a newspaper has nothing but its credibility, and any act by any employee that injures that credibility should be punished in the most severe way. I come down very hard on this issue, particularly in the case of individual reporters and writers who knowingly fabricate stories. That's lying; that's unconscionable, and I'd run 'em out of the newsroom so fast their heads would spin. Columns: What's the widespread impact of these events? Fink: There's a credibility gap between the reading public and journalists today that's as wide as any I've seen since I have been in the business. It's unfortunate that when one of these cases occurs, the entire newspaper industry is painted with the same brush. We've got to get used to the fact that that is a reality of life. Columns: Haven't the media overdone the Clinton story? Fink: The pace and momentum of that story are set by the two principal players--by President Clinton, with his admitted stonewalling and lying, and by Special Prosecutor Ken Starr, with his plodding but relentless pursuit. Journalists aren't making that story; Clinton and Starr are. Columns: But isn't there public revulsion over the detailed coverage? Fink: Yeah, the public is revolted--and buys more newspapers than ever before and flocks to the TV sets. The New York Times reports that Clinton's admission of lying took CNN's ratings to their highest since the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995. Larry King Live had a three-year high in ratings that night. Columns: But shouldn't media coverage protect the President's privacy? Fink: We--the public as well as the press--learned during Watergate, with its revelations of betrayal at the highest level, that we get the whole man--private as well as public--when we elect a president. Nixon, Gary Hart, Sen. Packwood, Clinton--they show us there is no distinction between private and public morality. Can a president who breaks the oath of marital fidelity expect there will be no questions about how he'll follow through on his public policy promises to the rest of us?
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