Ethics expert speaks to J-School students

By Tyler Christensen
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Luke George

Kelly McBride, the ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., spoke to University of Montana School of Journalism students Wednesday, Sept. 22.

Journalists can prevent the kind of incidents that cause the public to lose faith in them by being more transparent, an ethicist from The Poynter Institute told University of Montana journalism students last month.

Kelly McBride, the only member of the institute’s ethics faculty, encouraged future journalists to embrace transparency as part of a set of ethical skills they will need to use in the wider world. Becoming transparent means letting the public in on how journalists get their information, she said.

McBride, who was a religion reporter for the Spokesman-Review for eight years, gave two public lectures attended mostly by School of Journalism students.

The first lecture, “Ethics in a Time of Scandal,” focused on problems facing journalists today and provided three major principles for how to deal with them: seek truth and report it as fully as possible, act independently and minimize harm.

The public’s trust has been especially shaken over the past three years by incidents ranging from Stephen Glass’s fabrication of stories for the New Republic to the recent problems CBS and Dan Rather have had in using unreliable sources, who provided the station with apparently forged documents used to criticize President George W. Bush’s National Guard service, McBride said.

Jayson Blair, who plagiarized and repeatedly made things up while working for the New York Times, is particularly hard for the public to forget, although the Times tried to mitigate the damage by running a huge story in May 2003 explaining what Blair had done.

“The New York Times was probably the most influential newsroom in this country, and for that to happen there – you cannot underestimate the damage that has done to our credibility as journalists,” McBride said.

Serious ethical lapses extend to the collegiate press as well, McBride added, explaining that she runs a fellowship for recent college graduates. Every high school journalist, and two-thirds of her college-level students, will admit to plagiarism, she said.

America’s newsrooms are set up to contribute to ethical lapses in several ways, McBride said. One of these is a general lack of standards.

“There are no rules – there are guidelines, and those are very poorly understood and they’re different in every newsroom,” McBride said.

McBride said the best way to resolve this problem is for journalists to adopt and consistently use a set of standards. This will relieve much of the confusion over when to grant anonymity or how to cite quotes from sources, and will provide the public with a clear understanding of how journalism works, she said.

“I don’t think the public knows how we do our jobs,” McBride said, adding that it should be made clear to people where information comes from so they can regain confidence in the news media.

photo by Luke George

McBride listens to one of Bill Knowles' students during a discussion of sports reporting ethics last month.

Her second lecture, during radio-television professor Bill Knowles’s evening sports and media class, dealt with the ethical conflicts inherent in covering athletes and athletics.

During her evening lecture, McBride pointed to ESPN’s sports coverage as a prime example of what journalists do right. ESPN gives the big picture with every report, uses good writing and relies on local columnists who know their teams best.

Above all, it provides analyses and empowers its viewers to disagree with those analyses, which facilitates discussions, she said.

“We could see ESPN’s success as a blueprint for what we might do in the rest of the journalism world to make our work more relevant,” McBride said.

Sports coverage is important not just because it’s entertaining, but because it mirrors cultural issues and teaches us about American society, McBride said, citing Michael Mandelbaum’s conclusions about sports in his book “The Meaning of Sports.” Mandelbaum wrote that sports is really a religion in this country, said McBride.

“We’re seeing all the tension in our society manifested on the sports pages and on the sports broadcasts,” she added.

Sports reporters should adopt guidelines dealing with issues specific to them, she said, particularly when dealing with getting things for free (such as food from the press box at games), cleaning up quotes and maintaining a professional relationship with sources.

These guidelines must be strictly followed because it’s difficult to turn ethics on and off, McBride added.

“You’re either employing them on a regular basis or you’re ignoring them on a regular basis,” she said.

Before joining the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., two years ago, McBride spent about 15 years as a reporter in Spokane, Wash. While there she got to know Denise Dowling, now an assistant professor in the School of Journalism’s Radio-Television Department. Dowling was instrumental in securing McBride’s visit to the University of Montana.

“It didn’t take a lot of convincing,” Dowling said.

McBride came to UM as part of a faculty development grant through the provost’s office. Dowling said she applied for the $1,400 grant because “teaching ethics is very important to me.”

Although the J-School is fortunate to have a small department – it allows students to work closely with professors – it also means there aren’t any extra faculty available to teach a class devoted solely to ethics in journalism, Dowling said.

“I try to infuse (ethics) in every lesson that I teach,” Dowling said. “I thought it would be wonderful for our students to hear from someone who has really devoted her life to it.”

Dowling said she introduces her students to The Poynter Institute and McBride by telling them that they encourage reporters to be thoughtful, to self-examine and be honest and to be more transparent so that viewers, readers and listeners will understand how and why journalists do what they do. McBride’s writing in particular helps persuade other journalists to let people see “the sausage-making” in order to maintain the public’s trust in journalists.

“She’s engaging and she will force your engagement,” Dowling said.
McBride said she was impressed with the questions and comments offered by students.

“I though they were good because it exactly mirrored the discussion we’d have in a newsroom,” she said.

Nate Biehl, a senior broadcasting major, attended McBride’s morning discussion and agreed that students should learn about ethical concerns.

“Journalists should have a lecture like this at least once a semester,” he said.

Return to J-School main page