Newspaper reporters lag behind TV reporters, auto mechanics, and, by the greatest gap, nurses in peoples' assessments of honesty and ethics ... but ahead of business executives, members of Congress, lawyers, advertising folks, and car sales persons.

These are the good/bad news findings of the Gallup Organization's annual survey on honesty and ethical standards in various fields. In some ways, the poll offers no real news at all, as the findings have generally been consistent in the three decades that Gallup has been asking the questions.

"If there's any good news for newspapers," Editor & Publisher reporter Greg Mitchell said in describing the Gallup results, "it's that since 2000, the number of those saying that reporters have high or very high ethical standards has climbed from 16 to 21 percent. In 2000, reporters were behind even lawyers in that category." Searching for a silver lining, Mitchell wrote that 71 percent of those responding to Gallup found reporters to have average or above average in honesty and their ethics: 5 percent saying "very high," 16 percent "high" and 50 percent "average."

"Even so, they were way down the list," Mitchell allowed.

According to the Gallup results, 16 percent of those responding in 2000 said newspapers have "very high/high" honesty and ethical standards. In 2004, the corresponding figure is 21 percent. For TV reporters, the figures went from 21 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2004.

The results were drawn from telephone interviews with 1,015 adults (18 and over) nationwide between November 19 and 21, 2004. The results have a 95 percent confidence level and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Writing for Poynteronline (see article), Kelly McBride says the Gallup figures are inconsistent with studies done by journalism professors at Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri. Renita Coleman of LSU and Lee Wilkins sampled 249 print and broadcast reporters nationally and found journalists ranking fourth among 21 professions and fields ranked in the survey on the widely recognized Kolberg moral development scale. Ranking higher were seminarians, physicians, and medical students.

The Wilkins-Coleman study reports:

• no major differences between men and women, broadcast and print, or managers and non-managers;
• a reporter's score on the Kolberg moral development scale increases as does the reporter's autonomy;
• journalists placing a premium on the importance of laws and rules tended to get lower scores perhaps, McBride writes, because a strong deference to law and rules indicates obedience "rather than critical thinking";
• investigative journalists score highest;
• journalists committed to the concepts of civic journalism score high;
• journalists were "particularly adept" at thinking through the ethical dimensions of journalism problems.

She quotes Gallup editor Frank Newport as saying, "Regardless of reality, if readers and viewers are suspicious of journalists, they are going to treat what they write with suspicion."

McBride points to several factors that she thinks might affect journalists' abilities to apply ethical standards to their work. She writes that:

• "The assembly line nature of putting out a newspaper or producing television news is a process built on production, not the values of journalism. It encourages speed and volume, rather than reflection."
• Newsroom culture can contribute to sound or unsound ethical reasoning. Economic pressures "can interfere with journalists' efforts to live up to their professional ideals," and staff cutbacks and pressures to increase audience "have combined as a sort of one-two punch."

"Functioning as a good journalist takes more than the ability to focus a camera or turn a phrase," McBride concludes. "The profession requires sophisticated moral reflection. The Wilkins-Coleman study [published in the autumn 2004 issue of Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, the journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, AEJMC] shows that individually, journalists have the ability."