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Honesty, Ethics in Journalism Rank Low; Other Studies Provide a Counterpoint

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 be average or above average in their honesty and 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. (http://www.gallup.com/opoll/content/Default. aspx?ci=14236)

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, Kelly McBride says the Gallup figures are inconsistent with studies done by journalism professors at Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri. (http://www.poynter.org/content/content_print.asp?id=75962&custoom). 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.

“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.”