The harm done by Jayson Blair in the New York Times newsroom may, in the end, be offset by a bit of good it does elsewhere.
The incident is serving as a wake-up call for journalism, prompting many papers – the Globe among them – to redouble efforts at accuracy and accountability, and inspiring readers to new levels of vigilance as error watchdogs.
Readers who once ignored mistakes in the paper are calling in errors like never before, and the Globe is duly publishing corrections whenever warranted. Numbers tell the story: A total of 135 corrections were published in May, compared to 85 the previous month, and 80 in May of last year. It’s not that more mistakes are being made, but that – with readers’ help – more are being caught.
To make it easier for readers to report errors, the Globe plans soon to add contact information (probably phone and fax numbers, as well as e-mail and letter addresses) on page A2, next to where most corrections run.
Internally, Globe reporters and editors have met three times in the past 10 days to discuss proposed ethics guidelines for news gathering. The document is still in draft form, and it doesn’t cover all aspects of journalism ethics (for example, conflict of interest is not addressed), but even as a work-in-progress it clearly outlines the basic rules for daily news gathering.
”The journalistic sins committed by Jayson Blair at The New York Times and previously at The Boston Globe raise unsettling questions about whether news organizations have done everything they should to protect themselves against ethical and reportorial lapses,” wrote Globe editor Martin Baron in his memo to the staff introducing the proposed guidelines.
While the Globe usually meets high standards, said Baron, the Blair episode ”strongly suggests the need for additional procedures to safeguard the integrity of our pages.”
The proposed ethics guide – part of which predates the Blair story and reflects existing policy and practice – does more than tell staffers what’s OK and what’s not. It also assures readers of the paper’s standards and provides a yardstick for measuring the Globe’s commitment to living up to those standards.
Some of the items pertain strictly to in-house matters, such as checking the background of job applicants or creating a new system to track which reporters make the most errors. But most address what readers see in the paper, and thus are worth sharing, at least in pared-down summary form:
Quoting anonymous sources is allowed, but must be done ”with caution.” Sources must have personal knowledge of the information they provide and may not use the cover of anonymity to deliver a personal attack or speculation. They should also be identified in general but relevant terms (such as ”a lawyer invoved in the case” or ”a business associate”) so that readers can judge the value of the source’s information. Simply saying ”a source said” is permitted only under the most unusual circumstances, and a top editor must sign off on it.
Quotes gathered from other publications or outlets, such as wire services, should be clearly identified as such.
Relying on observations made by others is strongly discouraged. When it is unavoidable – say, relying on a fire fighter to describe the course of a blaze – the story must identify who provided the information and must not leave the impression the reporter witnessed something he or she did not.
A story’s dateline must reflect where a substantial amount of the reporting took place. A story can not be datelined, say, Framingham just because the reporter went there the previous weekend.
On stories with more than one byline, a note at the end must make clear who reported from where.
Subjects of a story should be given sufficient time to respond to any allegations against them – although that time may be abbreviated on late-breaking news stories. If a subject can’t be reached, or is phoned late, the story should say so.
Photos of news situations may not be posed; only in portrait shots may the photographer influence the scene being shot.
When errors are made, they must be promptly corrected.
Overall, news reporting should be ”thorough, careful, and honest, informed by a sincere effort to gather all relevant facts and to interview all relevant individuals,” according to the guidelines. In addition, it should be ”free of any political or ideological agenda.”
Those are the standards that, barring last-minute changes, will guide the Globe newsroom. They are the rules by which readers can judge the paper in the post-Blair era.
