Here are some dilemmas:
• You are a theater critic for a big-city newspaper. You have built relationships with publicists, especially those at the smaller theaters where the companies are struggling to make ends meet but are really trying to give young directors, young playwrights, young actors a chance. One of these companies presents a play that is really terrible; it deserves to be ripped apart. But a city needs small independent theaters. Also, the publicist has made sure you were at the front of the line for various premiers and galas related to this, and other, theaters. She has put you in the best seat in the house for the past five shows by this particular company, and you have panned four of them. And here’s another stinker. What do you do?
• You are a lifestyle writer at a big-city newspaper who has been assigned to do a story on day spas in San Francisco. Your budget for the story is limited – and then seven out of the 10 days spas you are writing about offer you a free day of treatments. If you don’t take the treatments, you are going to have to write a story that’s based on the spa websites, on the spa press releases and on the spa PR people. What do you do?
• You are a lifestyle writer etc. etc. doing a story on chocolate shops. When you visit the chocolates shops, each one offers you samples. What do you do?
• You are etc. doing nightlife stories. You tour four or five hip new bars and attractive bartenders in tight-fitting garments offer you free cocktails. Seriously, three of the bars give you first-class treatment, generous with the Grey Goose martinis, while the other two offered you only a glass of ice. What do you do?
• You are a writer/editor at a music magazine that has a limited travel budget. The magazine is repeatedly offered free junkets to see a new violin shop open in Italy or to follow a famous performer on tour. As part of an invitation to review a summer jazz camp, you are offered a luxury cruise to Alaska. What do you do?
• You are a writer for a music magazine etc., and you are offered free tickets to many local musical performances, far more than you could possibly review. What do you do?
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7 comments:
LBJ told a young congressman if you can't eat their food, drink their booze, fuck their women and then vote against them, you don't belong here.
But is that advice valid for a reporter? I quote item 24, NY Times big book of ethical conduct:
Clearly, romantic involvement with a news source would foster
an appearance of partiality. Therefore staff members who develop close relationships with people who might figure in coverage they
provide, edit, package or supervise must disclose those relationships to the standards editor, the associate managing editor for news administration or the deputy editorial page editor. In some cases, no further action may be needed. But in other instances staff members may have to recuse themselves from certain coverage.
And in still other cases, assignments may have to be modified
or beats changed. In a few instances, a staff member may have to move to a different department — from business and financial
news, say, to the culture desk—to avoid the appearance of conflict.
P.S. Is someone trying to bait me into deleting another item?
Lia's comments are, of course, wise and good -- but don't just say, "she said!" and walk on by. Let's deal with the obvious: Why not take anything you are offered in the course of a story if it's relevant to the story? Where do you draw the line? Where is the gray area? It's one thing to say a music writer should not take a free cruise that has nothing to do with an assignment to write about a music camp. But what if the cruise is a "music camp" cruise? Should restaurant critics accept free meals from the restaurants they are covering? Should automobile writers accept long-term use of new cars so that they can better write about these vehicles?
And how about this one from Milwaukee Magazine?
*To prepare for duty as embedded journalists during the war in Iraq, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Katherine Skiba and Nahal Toosi received thousands of dollars worth of combat training at media boot camps. After meeting her assigned unit, Skiba later flew to Kuwait on a chartered Northwest Airlines jet full of soldiers. Toosi, joining her unit in the Kuwaiti desert, donned an imposing military gas mask during gas and Scud missile drills.
Who paid for this media training, transportation and equipment? Unwittingly, American taxpayers picked up the tab for these and man yother expenses in the military's embedded media program.*
Comps, freebies and perks are a potential ethical headache. Can you come up with a rule of thumb that helps you quickly decide in the great majority of instances what you should do?
I'm in a rush, and hope to get back to this later, but just for now:
In cases where the perk is germane to the context--drinks in bars, the spa treatment--I don't see the problem. You're not marrying these establishments, or shilling for them, you're just doing what you have to do to write the piece: experiencing them on behalf of the reader. (The more subtle ethical hangup is that whether you pay or not, if you are known to be working on a story you may get service so far superior to that received by the average patron as to be misleading.)
I actually assumed the cruise was part of the experience, that the camp was in Alaska, but if it's just a bribe, no connection to the subject, I'd pass--but that's primarily because cruise ships won't let you bring your dog.
Too many of these situations included the "limited budget" proviso. Maybe I'm speaking from the bubble of somebody who did too many assignments for the Playboy publications, but if you can't afford to cover the story and find yourself dependent on the charity of those you're writing about, maybe you shouldn't cover the story until you can.
By the way, I used to cover the local comedy scene for the Pink on a freelance basis, and any club that didn't comp me in for all shows didn't get written about by me, for the simple reason that I considered my admission a part of their public relations overhead. Their call. I almost never was turned away. And I bought my own booze, primarily because no club in the city could afford to pick up my tab on a recurring basis.
I honestly do not think taking a free drink, facial or chocolate will change what you are going to write, i say that just because someone gets you front row seats at plays at thier playhouse doesnt mean you should say the play was fabulous when it was a flop. Getting a free facial should not hinder an accurate story or review being written.
I also think the same as the others. I would take the things but my story could stay objective. For some moments these dilemmas remember me the movie "almost famous" from Cameron Crowe in which a journalist get involved with a rock band as a fan, but at the end he writes a real cronicle of the advantages and disadvantages of a new rock band.
Obviously thre is a point where a gift can be considered a bribe. However there is a gray area. Do what you feel is right and stop before you feel that what you are doing (accepting) could jeopardize your job. For the extra tickets that you cant take it would be wrong to freely give them to your friends or colleagues. When we compare a story on day spas with using the internet web sites rather than visiting the spas and getting treatments, it is clear which story owuld have more uumph. Later.
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