A student-run newspaper misuses SPJ code of ethics to defend a decision

It’s been a difficult week at the University of California Santa Barbara, where six students died before the killer turned the gun on himself. Tragedy often brings out the best in journalists, who work difficult hours, ask difficult questions, and sometimes stifle their own pain to cover the story.

It can be particularly difficult for student journalists, who have not had the time to build the hard-but-needed shell to be able to do the job effectively.

But the bottom line is that the job must be done. In times of crisis — especially in times of crisis — the public relies on journalists to seek the truth and report it.

That ending phrase from the last paragraph — “seek truth and report it” — is the first of four key points from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

The code’s second key — “minimize harm” — was the reason that students at The Bottom Line, the official UCSB student newspaper, offered to not cover the story. As its editorial said:

As stated in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, a code we at The Bottom Line strive to uphold every day in our reporting, we are to minimize harm, whether physical or emotional. Ethical “journalists should show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage.”

After extensive discussions among our Editorial Staff, advisor and alumni, we have decided to not immediately publish an article on the recent tragedy in our community of Isla Vista to minimize the emotional harm for our reporters, photographers and multimedia journalists. Before we are journalists, we are Gauchos and feel we need our time to mourn, process and recover from this senseless violence.

A former adviser for the competing student paper says the “we are Gauchos” before we are journalists is the reason for the decision, as the paper is more of a house organ for student government than a place for independent journalism.

The SPJ code is a mashup of ideas in search of an Aristotelian mean between excess and deficiency. The “seek truth and report it” is designed to balance against “minimize harm,” just as there is a tension between “act independently” and “be accountable.” While not publishing may well be the right decision in some instances, failing to write about the biggest, most obvious news on campus seems to fall on the “deficiency” side of the mean.

To justify a decision by using one portion of the code, without balancing it against the code’s entirety, is to misuse the code. In Doing Ethics in Media: Theories and Practical Applications, our final question — “How’s Your Decision Going To Look?” — cautions against first making decisions and then looking for justifications. While I have no insight into the student paper’s discussions, and I apologize if wrong, it feels as if appealing to the SPJ code was an after-the-fact justification.

Fortunately, the student-run independent newspaper, The Daily Lexus, has earned praise for its coverage. And, since the editorial was written, The Bottom Line has published a little about the killings.

It’s easy to pick on student journalists, but the past few years at The University of Alabama has shown that student journalists can thrive through the difficult times — whether covering a tornado or taking on the most powerful student groups on campus. The first loyalty was to readers, not fears about “emotional harm for our reporters, photographers and multimedia journalists.”

As a member of the committee helping to revise the SPJ code, I hope we find a way to make it clear that the code should not be the scapegoat excuse to not cover big, scary, obvious news.

AN UPDATE: May 28

The Bottom Line editors have responded to critics via JimRomenesko.com, saying it was posted by a former editor without permission. The post said the paper’s staffers are reporting — and have been posting online and through Twitter – while simultaneously deciding “it would be best to gather all the necessary facts to report on such a grave and tragic incident, rather than rush to publication and print misinformation.”

From the response:

We pride ourselves on factual and accurate reporting, not sensationalism and fear-mongering. We, as a news organization, do not want to contribute to the panic by exploiting the grief of our fellow community members. We serve our community first, and we took the steps that we thought were necessary to best serve that community. Our primary audience is UCSB and Isla Vista, who were rocked by a tragic event and have experienced a severe loss. We did not think it journalistically ethical to harass our community in its time of grief and shock, and decided to hold off premature publication of an article so that we did not hurt anyone through misinformation.