The Ethical Journalist. Gene Foreman

       Embarrassment. Scandals were rocking the industry, the most noteworthy being the Janet Cooke case at The Washington Post. The Post had to give back a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after Cooke, under intense questioning, admitted that she had made up her prize‐winning story of an eight‐year‐old heroin addict named in the paper only as Jimmy. Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute calls this episode “the alpha event in the history of media ethics.” The Cooke scandal, Clark has written, “did not invent the field of media ethics, but it certainly fertilized it. Articles, seminars, programs, journals sprang up everywhere.” 40

       A new generation of journalists. As older journalists retired, the traditions of their era faded. The new generation, better educated and more idealistic, had come into the profession in the decades after the Hutchins Commission defined social responsibility. The drive for professionalism came not just from newsroom leaders but also from the rank‐and‐file newsroom staff.

       The nature of the news. Journalists were covering government and society’s institutions more critically than ever, and they were reporting on officials who lied to the public. The Vietnam War and Watergate were prime examples. If you are going to point out transgressions by people in public life, it follows that you need to get your own house in order.

       More scrutiny. The media watchdogs were themselves being increasingly watched. Back then, the scrutiny came from local and national journalism reviews, alternative weeklies, and a handful of mainstream media critics. Although only the Columbia Journalism Review survives today as a national presence online and in print, the watchdog function has become the province of all manner of critics who have the capacity through the internet to call the media to account.

       Chain ownership. The shift from local ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations was not without its negative effects, but many papers and stations improved under chain ownership that grew in the second half of the twentieth century. The new corporate owners tended to be attuned to industry trends, including ethics awareness, unlike some local owners who had often been isolated and arbitrary. Under a local owner, the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald and its sister Lexington Leader ignored the 1960s civil rights demonstrations that were changing the city’s social fabric. 40 In 1985, under the ownership of Knight Ridder, the merged Herald Leader courageously reported cash payoffs to University of Kentucky basketball players in violation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulations, enduring a storm of criticism from the state’s basketball fans.

       Fear of libel lawsuits. The news industry was reeling from big libel judgments. Gil Cranberg of the University of Iowa, after surveying 164 libel plaintiffs for a study published in 1987, concluded that if journalists are seen as ethical, they are less likely to be sued. Most of the plaintiffs in the survey told Cranberg that they would not have sued if the newspaper or station had taken their complaints seriously and run a correction. 41

       Journalists are better educated. A journalist without a college degree is a rarity in newsrooms today. According to a 2013 survey of journalists by the Indiana University School of Journalism, 92 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. 43 Although possessing a diploma does not automatically make someone a better journalist, the rising education level signifies better preparation for the challenges of a complex profession.

       Newsrooms have diversified. Diversity in the news staffs is reflected in news coverage that is more likely to examine the whole community. The journalists of the mid‐twentieth century, nearly all white men, tended to write for people like themselves. The profession has been influenced by the women and people of color who entered the workforce in the second half of the twentieth century. The transition remains a work in progress, however.

       Journalists have accepted a duty to be accountable to the public. A news organization’s social responsibility is to provide honest, impartial, and reliable information about current events that their fellow citizens need to make democratic institutions work. This responsibility entails being responsive to questions and complaints from the audience – the readers, viewers, listeners, and online users. It means a commitment to the principle of transparency, a spirit of openness, one that acknowledges journalists’ mistakes and explains news decisions rather than arrogantly asserting that the decisions speak for themselves. The internet has made accountability more important than ever, for two reasons: first, citizens form an army of fact‐checkers calling attention to journalists’ mistakes, and, second, the web’s interactivity fosters a conversation between journalists and the audience.

       Journalists have embraced compassion. Where many journalists of the mid‐century liked to project an image of toughness toward the people they covered, today’s journalists generally show empathy. They are concerned not just with reporting the news but also with how their reporting will affect the people involved. “Minimizing harm” is one of the four cornerstone principles of the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics and is, as well, a key component of a course in journalism ethics.

       “Watchdog” journalism has flourished. Journalists, especially through investigative reporting, use their platform to expose wrongdoing and to illuminate solutions to public ills. When the government’s democratic system of checks and balances breaks down, journalists have stepped in to investigate and report to the public on the system failure. In February 2007, for example, Dana Priest, Anne Hull, and Michel du Cille of The Washington Post documented neglect by Walter Reed Army Medical Center in caring for outpatients – soldiers and marines who had been physically and psychologically damaged in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress and the White House immediately responded by promising sweeping reforms and by firing the officials who they thought should have prevented the failure. Although officials and the citizenry do not always respond so forcefully, that has not deterred responsible journalists from continuing to try to raise the public conscience when they discover civic dysfunction.