Ethics Breaches and Public Perception

One interesting part of the Phoenix's great expose of the Mike Barnicle debacle came in one of the story's sidebars. Recounting the Globe's tumultuous year, the story featured a quote for Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, who said, "It's hard to make an argument that ripping off some jokes is as bad as falsely accusing US troops of a war crime, but in the public consciousness the Globe's difficulties simply become part of the litany of journalistic sins."

There are two parts to this that I find interesting. First, the idea that "journalistic sins," however minor, constitute a breach of the public trust. This seems fair, if not obvious. Though I wonder, in today's media climate, if it's even possible to avoid them completely. With the volume of content produced, and the speed at which it is expected, will there not be some ethical (or at least qualitative) lapses? And if not, will the unoffending copy be instead bland and stale and devoid of any tough decisions? Clearly standards should be followed regardless of climate, and I don't mean to excuse any of these "sins." I just wonder if it's even possible to remain relevant and cutting edge and current — without the occasional blip. (Though as the Barnicle story shows, it is not just the sin but how the sin is handled.)

(As an aside, can a competitive newspaper really insulate itself entirely from the Jack Kelley's of the world? Clearly there was shoddy fact-checking, poor oversight and even a lack of commonsense displayed by his editors. But don't we need to afford a certain amount of latitude and trust to some writers for them to deliver stories from dangerous locales? Mistakes were clearly made in the USA Today's handling of the case, but couldn't something similar very easily happen again? I think it could, and I think now manner or revised standards and procedures will completely protect a paper from this possibility.)

I also wonder two things about the aforementioned public consciousness. Did this notion of journalists as people not to be trusted result wholly from scandals like those of Smith, Barnicle, Glass, Kelley et al, or is that perception more a result of partisan politicking? Hard to know.

Finally, I just wonder if there are more mistakes, more ethical breaches, than in the past. Or if they're just easier to spot, with plagiarism-detection software and the Internet. I just have a hard time believing journalism fell off as drastically as people tend to think.