Healthy Disagreement

Three weeks ago, we invited you to join us in taking a 12-question journalism ethics quiz to help get us talking to one another about what the media do right and what they do wrong.

The results of this most unscientific of studies are in, and they show some interesting trends.

In many areas, the more than 50 letters we received took the same positions as our own reporters, editors and photographers.

But on several key issues, there were dramatic differences.

Among our readers who replied, for example, there was far less interest in protecting the identity of juvenile crime suspects than there was among our staff.

The public responses also veered sharply away from us on questions of protecting sources and working arm-in-arm with law enforcement agencies on our stories.

All the questions appear on the facing page, with your vote totals and ours. Allow me to focus on four questions that reveal some intriguing areas of disagreement.

One of the hypothetical questions was what to do with top-secret documents about a spy ring at Point Mugu, delivered by a source who had stolen them from the base commander’s office. The options were (1) write a story, (2) don’t write a story, (3) turn the source in to the FBI for stealing classified documents.

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Of the 25 Ventura County Edition staffers who took the quiz, seven opted to write the story, although it would be based on stolen documents and possibly harmful to an ongoing national security probe. Eighteen said they would hold off on a story unless they could get it from official sources. Nobody on our staff said they would turn their source over for prosecution.

You saw things differently. While you agreed that we should hold the story, a large number of you wanted to turn the source in to the FBI. Overall, there were only two votes from the public in favor of writing the story, compared to 36 who favored holding it and 16 who said the source ought to be prosecuted.

So that was one split on the ethics test. The next surfaced on two questions that shifted from espionage to teenage car theft.

First we asked if a photo of a 14-year-old in an “I Love Richard Nixon” hat as he was being arrested after stealing a police car should be published or held back on grounds that juvenile defendants should get a break to help them turn their lives around.

In keeping with Times practices protecting the identities of juveniles in most such cases, our staff answered with a vote of 22 to 2 in favor of not running the picture. The reader response was more divided, 31 to 22 for publishing the photo.

It was the follow-up question that produced one of the most interesting disagreements. This time, in addition to the colorful hat, we added an element of police brutality--an officer slapping the boy in handcuffs. Would you run that picture?

This time everybody switched positions--dramatically. But that might have been because a third option was added--simply turning the film over to authorities. Our staff voted 16 to 3 in favor of running the photo, with four voting for not running it but turning it over for possible prosecution of the officer. On the other hand, 36 of our readers favored turning the film in to the police but not publishing it. Only 11 favored printing it, while three voted simply for not publishing the photo.

While you ponder what that might mean, let me conclude with the fourth case in which we differed significantly. A local mayor has told us he is going to resign at the end of the year, but later calls to say his comments were off the record and says we cannot write the story. Do we write it or not?

Our staff, trained that anything said to a reporter can be used in print unless there is a prior agreement not to do so, favored running the story by a vote of 15 to 10. You voted 43 to 9 against running the story.

It’s clear from your responses, first of all, that there are many areas where we essentially agree. But you don’t have as much interest in protecting news sources as we do, nor in protecting juvenile delinquents. You also seem more open to partnering up with law enforcement on stories involving criminal activity, and you show less interest in rushing a story into print about a local official’s resignation plans than we do.

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That reflects the conservative, law-and-order pulse of Ventura County. We respect those views, but disagree for a variety of reasons that range from matters of journalistic principle to the more practical side of putting out a newspaper.

If we didn’t fight hard to protect our news sources, we would lose both journalistic integrity and neutrality. We would also lose our sources--almost everybody who came to us reporting any sort of wrongdoing that needed public exposure. With good reason, many would see us as untrustworthy.

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If we began teaming up with law enforcement agencies on stories like the spy ring, or even the photos of the boy being slapped by an officer, we would also lose our independent status as society’s watchdog. Instead, we would become more like a lap dog.

As for identifying juvenile crime suspects, that is a hot-button issue throughout our society. Our position remains in line with that of the criminal-justice system, which itself is under pressure to show less interest in protecting youthful defendants.

That leaves the politician who told us he plans to resign but doesn’t want the story published. For us, it’s largely a matter of reporting all legitimate news as long as it’s clear to everybody what the rules are. The main rule is that you can expect anything told to a newspaper reporter to wind up in print unless the two of you reach a clear agreement upfront. There is a need here for the press to better explain to you why it attaches such importance to all these issues.

But we only wanted to hold the microphone today for a brief period. In the coming weeks, I would like to invite all of you to continue this dialogue. Please keep an eye out for stories that you think demonstrate some ethical flaw or virtue. And tell us how you feel.

Meanwhile, we asked about 60 members of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. at lunch last week to join in one more experiment. Which of the following two newspapers would they read?

First there was Newspaper A, with stories on a speech in Thousand Oaks, the ongoing Dally murder case, problems at the county food bank and an update on Ventura’s planned theater complex.

Then there was Newspaper B, with a front page topped by the Point Mugu spy ring story and the terrible conditions at the local migrant labor camp. There also were photos of the police officer slapping the youthful car-theft suspect and the local official revealing plans to resign.

When asked their personal preference, the vast majority picked Newspaper A, with its rather bland but dilemma-free story mix. But then we asked a second question: Which newspaper do you think most people would want to read?

Almost everybody picked Newspaper B, the paper that ran the stories that raised the ethical debates.