ST. PETERSBURG — People are jumping from the soon-to-collapse World Trade Center towers. A photograph shows a man hurtling to his certain death on the street below.
You’re the editor. Do you publish it?
“Absolutely not!” you may react instinctively. Graphic images like that are just too painful to see.
But should journalists shield the public from the harsh realities of terrorism? Would doing so also shield perpetrators from public outrage?
“Doing ethics,” as they term it here at the Poynter Institute, involves lots of tough choices like that.
For the past week, the institute has hosted a couple dozen print and broadcast journalists, an educator and even a lawyer to debate such choices — all to improve the practice of ethics. Poynter for years has been a magnet for journalists hoping to hone their skills.
The issues last week didn’t all revolve around dramatic tragedies, but the events of Sept. 11 did consume a fair amount of the discussion, because of the vast numbers of people they affected.
Bob Steele, Poynter’s ethics group leader and our host, urges journalists to identify those “stakeholders” and their sensitivities before publishing or airing anything.
Who could be affected — and how — by publishing a photograph of a man falling to his death?
I’ll leave that for you to ponder, but those veteran journalists — from as far north as Minnesota, as far east as South Africa, as far west as Washington state and as far south as, well, Florida — felt that they were among the stakeholders in that decision. And several felt that the image was too disturbing to publish.
That may imply that “doing ethics” involves sparing readers discomfort. Not so. Sometimes the ethical choice requires making readers uncomfortable.
Some people in South Florida have been exposed to deadly anthrax. That’s disturbing, but would you, as an editor, keep it from the public?
No?
Neither would I — because a journalist’s job is to tell the truth. In my view, our Founding Fathers issued not only a constitutional protection but also a moral obligation for the press to inform the public.
So where do you draw the line?
Last week’s discussions demonstrated that different journalists in similar circumstances come up with different answers.
We talked a lot about potential benefit weighed against potential harm. And it developed that involving others and listening to disparate opinions is always a good idea.
That isn’t always possible in deadline situations. So sometimes it’s better to wait — not easy in a world that involves round-the-clock television news and the Internet.
Events such as those of Sept. 11 demonstrate the benefit of not having to figure those things out on the fly.
Sentinel reporters and editors regularly discuss decisions at several levels. That doesn’t prevent poor choices, but it does make them less likely.
We will be talking more about ethical decisions in the weeks to come. And I hope that you’ll join us in this exercise.
As you see things in the Sentinel that move you, try identifying the stakeholders. Consider what good can be accomplished, and compare that with what harm can be done, by publishing.
Then consider the potential harm of not publishing.
This isn’t as easy as it looks.
