That was beeyoooootiful!
Well, I’ve already stated my (albeit not particularly wide) stance on that particular story.
The ethical thing to do is report the truth, it would be an editorial decision whether the fact had any news value.
In the long term having a free and unbiased press is more important for the health of our nation than having a Democrat win the next election. In fact, many of us would argue that the reason the Bush administration was able to get away with so much for so long is because the press have been shirking their responsibilities to report honestly and openly about important events of the day.
I would ask my boss Mark Halperin what to do. No doubt he would tell me to go ahead and damn the consequences.
Regards,
Shodan
I think in general it’s absolutely unethical for a reporter to base a decision of what to report and what not to report based on the political parties involved, or that reporter’s personal preferences among candidates.
However, I think the question of what is and is not legitimately news is an interesting one. What if you discovered a photograph of the candidates girlfriend at the time, who was of a different race. Most people today would say that that wasn’t news. But 50 years ago, that might have been an issue that many people would have been interested in. Is it news if enough of the citizens think it’s news? If so, then maybe minor gay experimentation IS news?
I don’t think that’s a question with an easy answer.
One other potential hypothetical twist: you are a reporter covering a campaign between candidate A and candidate B. You discover evidence that convinces you, personally, beyond any doubt, that candidate A is an evil treasonous monster of some sort. However, this evidence is something that you personally witnessed but have no way of proving, and thus something you can not report. How do you proceed? At that point, do you assume that your responsibility as a citizen and a human being is more important than your responsibility as a reporter, and thus do anything you can, even if it violates every rule of journalistic integrity, to help candidate B get elected?
Or to put it in somewhat less hypothetical terms, suppose you were a generally liberal individual working as a reporter in the 2004 campaign, and you came across a piece of incendiary but irrelevant dirt about GWBush’s past which, using purely objective journalistic standards, you withhold because it’s not really news. Then Bush wins a close election and thousands of Americans die in the next 4 years. Was it worth it? Would you want to face the mothers of those dead soldiers and say “I could have revealed a very true fact that would likely have sunk Bush’s candidacy, which would likely have saved your son’s life, but my journalistic ethics told me not to”?
Not your fault.
It is just like asking “I saved this guys life, then he went on to murder a child. Am I to blame for the childs death?”
Of course not. The fault lies with him (the man you saved), the man who ultimately decided to murder the child.
Obviously, that person is at fault. But rephrase it as “I saved this guy’s life, knowing that he was going to go on and murder a child, then he went on to murder a child…”. Are people responsible for the predictable-but-indirect outcome of their actions, even if the chain of causality involves other people and their choices?
I disagree slightly with Mr.Dibble. Although journalists are not public servants, providing news information is an important public service. With that said, I agree with the rest of his post.
The end doesn’t justify the means. Somewhere in the past twenty-five years, we have tossed aside intellect for gossip and truth for lies. If I am honest with myself, I would probably run with a salacious, but not news worthy, story about a Republican candidate out of anger and then hate myself for becoming part of the problem. Voters should have honest information to make informed choices. Americans shouldn’t need a gossipy story about the Republican candidate to vote for a Democrat when that vote serves their interests.
The real story is that a senior aide would have been stupid enough to try this. Aside from treason, murder or rape (convictions, all of which would have been found long since) I can’t think of much that someone did 25 years ago that would be relevant. Is guilty meant in a legal or moral sense? What are the odds that the story got planted? Is there enough time to do a thorough investigation before the election, and not run something that might be iffy?
If the offense was not wearing a flag pin, run it. They guy’s a Commie. 
Your changing the premise. In your hypothetical in post #26, you said:
You did not indicate that you knew before hand that Bush was definately (or even most likely) going to start a war. It seems as if the info, which is described as “not really news”, is portrayed as non-news, or news not really germane to the present day.
I believe it would be ethical to not run that story. That result would certainly be a good one.
The problem for me is that it isn’t the only result. What else happens? What if the story comes up later, ruining the now-President’s image and causing whatever other efforts he might take to fail? What if opponents use this as (justifiable) material to show that the Democratic side is just as dishonest? What if the Democrat decides he won’t pull out after all? What if circumstances force him not to? What about all the other, inevitable unforseeable problems down the line? What efforts would a candidate thus exposed (or a candidate seeing another so exposed) do to the press’s freedom to stop their own/future transgressons coming to light?
In smaller matters, with a similar hypothetical, i’d be more likely to agree. But world politics is a long game, and there are probably about 6 people worldwide who can predict some ends of things to a reasonable amount of certainty at the best of times. When we don’t know how things will turn out, the best thing to do is tell the truth; lies and hiding of information just muddles things up further.
If candidate X is gay and keeps it in the closet, wouldn’t report it if I found evidence about it.
If candidate X is gay and keeps it in the closet, AND votes against gay marriage/denounces gay rights, etc., WOULD report it if I found out about it. One’s a private matter, the other is hypocrisy.
In the same manner, if candidate X drives a Hummer, wouldn’t report it. If candidate X is a big pro-environment type calling for others to cut back on gas use and SECRETLY drives a Hummer, WOULD report it.
So, it depends. What the hell is candidate X up to, anyway?
True… but I think the implication of Bricker’s question is that we have some reason to believe that one candidate winning will result in lots of bad things happening. How certain to we have to be, or how bad to those things have to be, or both, before concerns of ultimate human decency overcome concerns of journalistic integrity? (I’m not saying I have a good answer to this question… I think it’s a gray area.)
Really? Then why all the hoopla over “I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale”? Or was that just another example of that individual’s semantic hairsplitting? (Aside: I would have a lot more respect for someone who when asked about long-ago marijuana use simply said: “Yep, did it once, it was long ago, didn’t do it again, so what?”… but then I’m rather liberal and would have preferred an answer to questions about relations with interns along the lines of: “I shall not deign to answer any more of your inappropriate and prurient questions. Damn your eyes Sir!”. :D)
Part of the issue (as I see it) is that anything reported will be seen by some people to be relevant, no matter how trivial, and depending on how it gets reported may have even greater impact.
“Candidate X is left-handed” is neither newsworthy nor relevant (at least to rational people), but “Candidate X is secretly left-handed, and you know what they say about those sinister south-paws” creates “news” where there is none.
Sadly i think you over-estimate the rationality of the public at large (regardless of country).
My conception of journalistic ethics is somewhat different. A journalist doesn’t give up their political convictions upon entering the cloistered monastery of the sacred newpaper racket. A journalist has an obligation to their readers and to themselves, not to some platonic ideal of Truth.
So I have no problem with someone simultaneously doing political advocacy and reporting. In fact, a reporter who simply reports events but has no opinion about them is a fucking waste of space. Why bother, then?
This doesn’t mean that reporters should be shills for any one political ideology, or for any one person, or for any one corporation. The main reason is because once you’re identified as a flack, you give up your credibility. But it is patently obvious that real reporters have opinions about what they write about. Objectivity is not an end, the purpose of objectivity is to make the reporter believable. If everyone knows that the “reporter” is a shill for Hamas, or for Exxon, or for Hillary Clinton, then what that person produces are not news articles but press releases. If you know that the “reporter” doesn’t care about the truth, then those press releases are worthless.
But the opposite extreme is worthless as well. “Some critics claim X. Supporters say Y.” is a bankrupt method of reporting the news. Yet it is “objective”, it doesn’t “take sides”. But how about the reporter does a little digging, and finds out if X is really true, or not, or if Y is really true, or not, or maybe whether Z is really true, or not. Getting a soundbite from one side, and a soundbite from an opposing side and then “letting the viewer decide” isn’t journalism, it’s crap.
And so, suppose you’ve got a nugget of information about some public figure. What is the source of your information, and are you willing to stand by that source when challenged? What is your purpose in revealing the information? What is your purpose in witholding the information? Exactly why are you in the information-revealing business in the first place?
Let’s take an example I’m familiar with. Michael Totten is a freelance reporter (http://www.michaeltotten.com/). A few years ago when he was covering Lebanon, a Hezbollah media liason threatened him with death if he wrote anything negative about Hezbollah. But when Totten wrote a story about Lebanon, he included the fact that he had been threated with death by that Hezbollah guy. Was that a violation of journalistic ethics? Did it taint his reporting because it revealed that he wasn’t being objective?
I argue the opposite. Not reporting that Hezbollah was the sort of organization that intimidated and threatened journalists would have been biased. Reporting what happened to him, what he saw and heard with his own eyes, is what a reporter should do. A reporter who goes to Lebanon and reports, “According to Hezbollah leaders X, according to Israeli sources Y.” is just a stenographer. Why not have the whole story a link to a Hezbollah press release and a link to an Israeli army press release if that’s your game?
Not running a story “for the good of the country” is a call that a news outlet has had to make in the past (i.e. holding news of the impending Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba) or might need to make at some point (do you report that the U.S. has identified bin Laden’s cave and is about to plaster it with 50,000 pounds of high explosives?).
Not running a newsworthy story for the sake of electing a Democrat or Republican is obviously contrary to journalistic ethics (no, that’s not an oxymoron). If you had solid information that John McCain had done a little nightriding for the KKK back in his school days, it would be newsworthy no matter how many GOP staffers pleaded with you to withhold it for the sake of America and a rational tax code.
If there was a questionable case of date rape, that might not be newsworthy, particularly if you found out about it a day before the election and publicizing it likely would result in a key voter swing that affected the outcome.
So, withholding a genuine news story for the sake of a political party and/or your personal political beliefs - not ethical. Weighing whether a story is newsworthy, fair and timely including evaluating its potential for significant detrimental political impact - part of the editor’s job (yoo-hoo, N.Y. Times 
).
Except that was in 1992. Bill Clinton was the first baby boomer president. It is 2008 now. I dare you to try to find a politician in the house and senate nowadays who doesn’t admit to smoking pot back in college. I suppose you might find a few Mormons, and a few WWII generation relics, but previous marijuana use even among Republicans is a non-issue. Hell, previous cocaine use is a non-issue. Not just Bush refusing to answer cocaine questions, Barack Obama wrote in his memoir that he used cocaine occasionally when he younger, and it has been a complete non-issue in this campaign.
Bill got in trouble because he was in the first wave of marijuana-use panic, plus he gave evasive and silly answers like “I didn’t inhale”.
I don’t necessarily think that answer was so silly. He could’ve ingested it in the form of pot brownies and still technically would’ve been telling the truth. Bill looks like the type who likes pastries anyway be they pot-laced or not. 
In any case, if I may suggest an extreme variation on the OP’s scenario, what if the drug use in question was something a bit more serious than a few youthful joints or snorts? What if you found out the candidate had a really bad heroin problem that resulted some “lost months” before he (or she) managed to get clean?
Fair enough. Is a non-issue now, wasn’t a non-issue in 1992… but I would argue was equally not important then as now. In 16 years time an expose that a US candidate had a College “experimentation” with a homosexual relationship may be equally a non-issue, but today I suspect it would have an impact… and yet, (unabashed liberal here), it is just plain not relevant to their political soundness (unless, as has been mentioned, they are an anti-gay crusader – in which case the issue is blatant hypocrisy, not the relationship itself).
Yes. And I think being apparently evasive is seen by many to indicate a feeling of guilt which somehow makes the “offence” worse.