ETHICAL CONCERNS AND LEGAL ISSUES OF
NEWS RESEARCH

Barbara P. Semonche, Library Director,
UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Boston, MA      June 12, 1996

We've listened to some fascinating stories and valuable tips from our speakers
about finding info and data about newsworthy people. Now we turn on the caution light
and proceed thoughtfully into the area of law and ethics, public records and private lives.

In the interests of full disclosure, permit me to inform you that I'm not an expert in
these two areas. I fell heir to it by default. I may look as if I'm standing alone here, but rest
assured that I'm supported by some heavyweights, particularly in the area of legal
research. To wit: I consulted two librarians who have law degrees, two media law
professors, one constitutional legal scholar and one legislative counsel for the state of
Georgia. Therefore, while I'm not legal by training, at least I'm legal by association.

So let's begin by looking at the sources.

It has been said that the major difference between journalists and news librarians is
that librarians REVEAL their sources.

I've struggled to separate these twin topics of ethical concerns and legal issues and
their relationships to accuracy, currency and completeness of data in news research, but as
soon as I divide them, they seem to morph together. It's as if  ethics and media law are
two sides of the same coin. It will take someone with more wit and wisdom than I to
accomplish the division.

The current flap over the White House request of 339 background files from the
FBI, the following story seems particularly relevant for today's discussion about the uses
and abuses of information.

"Few people [especially librarians] are aware that J. Edgar Hoover was an
employee of the Library of Congress in the early decades of this century. In 1919, shortly
after the creation of the General Intelligence Division (a forerunner of the FBI) an
elaborate card index system was established. Over 200,000 cards contained detailed
information concerning all known radical organizations, societies, associations, and
publications. Set up by Mr. Hoover, this index was so constructed that a card for a
particular city not only showed the various radical organizations in that area but also their
membership rolls, names of officers, and time and place of meetings. By the late fall of
1919, according to Attorney General Palmer, this index also contained the complete case
histories of over 60,000 radicals and housed a 'greater mass of data upon this subject than
is anywhere else available.'"
[Note: this information was found in three sources, Fighting Faiths by Richard Polenberg, p. 165; The Federal Bureau of Investigation by Max Lowenthal, pp. 83-84; Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Richard Gid Powers, pp. 63-74.]

Let's turn our attention to the large screen at the front of the room. We'll start with
the sources linked to the web site for this session on FINDING PEOPLE.
[REMEMBER TO TURN ON COMPUTER NOW!]

Sources on Screen
http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/bostonfind.html

Finding People: web pages


There are librarian land mines here. Client confidentiality, copyright and access to
mention just a few. Detection and correction of errors in databases and on electronic
networks are among the myriad of other concerns affecting news researchers and the
quality of their research results.

Heinke states that digital content will create new legal issues and force courts to
reinterpret old ones. One problem will be whether electronic newspapers should be treated
under their traditional definition as print media or more like the traditional electronic
media, i.e., television and radio. The US Supreme Court has drawn a sharp dichotomy
between print and electronic media holding, for instance that the government may not
compel a newspaper to publish replies from political candidates that it has criticized.  On
the other hand, the high court has also held that a person attacked in a political TV
broadcast has a right to reply on the same station.  How does this affect news librarians?
It's too early to say, but stay tuned, there will certainly be more to follow on this.

A particularly vexing issue will be where an electronic newspaper publisher can be
sued. Further, problems arise from the fact that digital information can be easily, quickly,
cheaply and accurately copied. This means that people can easily copy electronic
newspapers in violation of their publishers' copyrights. And even authors' rights. [Note:
the July 13, 1996 issue of USA Today had an article by Kevin Maney, titled "Author!
Author? Work loses identity on the Net" on page 4B detailing his encounter with
cyberpublishing of his columns without credit or approval.]

Anita McCallum discussed copyright problems of
newspapers on the Net. Her email message ran on the NewsLib list. May 13, 1996.
15:17:24. Subject: WEB reprint permission.

Anita's message addressed the growing challenge from individuals taking articles
from her papers' electronic home page to put them on their own personal page or their
organizations' web sites.  Most often this was done without permission.  With the help of
the corporate counsel the library has developed policy and procedures to discover and
cope with these challenges.

Nora Paul (Poynter Institute for Media Studies) addressed four stages in online
databases where there are dangers of errors.

Whether fault for the inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete information lies with the data
creator, the database compiler, or the searcher, ultimately, it is the journalist, who
shoulders the major responsibility for the credibility of the information incorporated into
news reports.

Homer Martin in his chapter titled "Libel and Corrections" Guidelines for Newspaper Libraries, 1983,
ANPA, wrote:

The deletion of potentially libelous material from copy before publication is an
editorial, not a library, responsibility. . . . The library itself, however, should never be the
source of erroneous information, and reporters and editors should not have to guess at,
avoid, or write around any subject because of library inadequacies. . . .

Correcting the Files . . . .  There are several ways this can be done. . . . In an
electronic file, the text of the correction should either be appended to or embedded in the
text of the original.

(1) Adopt a policy and develop procedures for the handling of errors, corrections and
libel. 
(2) Design a form or folder, distinctive in style and color, to be used in making corrections
and flagging files. 
(3) Maintain a separate clipping file on published corrections
(4) Maintain a separate clipping file for articles on libel suits involving the newspaper.
(5) . . . . Attach published corrections to the original clippings on file and keep a separate
file for published corrections. . . .
(6) Label major corrections on microfilm storage boxes.


Ward & Hansen in their chapter titled "Social Responsibility and the Search Strategy"
in Search Strategies in Mass Communication, 1993, Longman

This is an excellent chapter on this topic discussing legal aspects of information
gathering.  "As gatherers and assessors of information, communicators are expected to
understand and adhere to their legal obligations." In short, it is wise for news librarians to
keep up-to-date with relevant federal and state laws governing media, copyright, open
meeting regulations, public records laws and privacy constraints.

Anne P. Mintz: "Ethics and the News Librarian," 1991, Special Libraries

Bruce Garrison in his 1995 book, Computer-Assisted Reporting, summarizes the
points offered by Anne P. Mintz in her 1991 Special Libraries article, "Ethics and the
News Librarian." Mintz's article is one of the defining works on this topic.

1. Obligation to be prepared and possess skills to do the job.
2. Elimination of bias and preconception.
3. Use of misrepresentation to get information.
4. Use of misrepresentation of the ability or the access to resources to complete a
certain research task.
5. Incomplete or sloppy research.
6. Presentation of "half-baked" research. (without disclaimer)
7. Disclosure of problems or errors in searches (results or strategy)
8. Avoidance of industrial espionage.
9. Violation of any law (copyright)
10. Intentional presentation of false information.
11. Breaching confidentiality.
12. Acceptance of "kickbacks" from vendors or service providers."

Special Problems (Digital)

Tom Johnson, (San Francisco State University) discussed quotations and attributions
in an email message dated Aug. 1995, 11:19:32 on the NewsLib list. Subject: cite.html.
Title: A source, a source. My profession for a source. Selected parts are offered here.
Johnson makes a plea for giving our readers the origin of source material published
in newspapers.  To give a general and relatively approximate pointer to the birthplace or
resting place of the quoted material is the bare minimum.  Johnson states,
"As we increasingly draw on digital cites and sources for our stories, we will need
to develop a new form of attribution for those quotes or sources found, contacted, and
interviewed online."

"The obvious objections are that such attributions take up too much space and will
distract the reader. But what if attributions were carried in a box at the end of each story
so interested readers, scholars, or journalists could backtrack to our sources?
"If we begin now to adopt such sourcing and attribution practices, even if it's just
for own stories saved on our private computers, we will at the very least have some
navigation chart for a portion of the infosphere."


Sherry Adams with the Houston Chronicle tackled hoaxes and urban myths on the
Net. Subject: And they said it couldn't be done. . . . October 12, 1995, 12:24:35.
A news librarian discovered the folly of accepting information on the net as valid. 
She went further to provide the corrections to the erroneous quotes.

C. Feola in "The Nexis Nightmare", CJR, July/Aug. 1994
This article is rich with examples of the problems news researchers face in
navigating the treacherous waters of digital data.  It leads with the example offered by
Elizabeth Hayworth, former Newsday researcher, asked to discover how many members
of the French Foreign Legion fought in Operation Desert Storm.  After serious searching
in the minutes before deadline, she found a number and offered it to the editor with strong
words of caution.  Further, she said she didn't think the paper should run it.  "On deadline,
any newspaper in the country would have done the same thing.  Maybe the figure was
right, maybe it wasn't.  No one knows."  Welcome to the misinformation explosion. 
Fueled by the growing popularity of commercial and in-house computerized news
databases, journalists and librarians find it too easy to repeat errors. 

R. Basch in "Seven Deadly Sins of Full-Text Searching" published in 1989 in
Database, vol. 12, pp. 14-23.


Separating Fact from Fad: journalists, editors, researchers all face challenges. Examples:

"In Revolution from Within," Gloria Steinem informs her readers that 150,000
females die of anorexia each year.  That is more than three times the actual number of
fatalities from car accidents for the total population. By careful checking, it was
discovered that the number referred to suspected "sufferers" of anorexia, not deaths.

The number of missing children did not increase in the 1980s,  but the number of
stories about them did.  (U. of Maryland Journalism Masters thesis)

Truth or Consequences

"History of Getting it Right: Corrections" excerpts from an article by Bill Marshal
published in Media History Digest, Spring 1994, vol. 14, no. 1, pp 53-56.
"Thomas Jefferson had an idea how lies and mistakes in print might be handled.
Frequently irked by the press' 'abandoned spirit of falsehood,' the country's third president
suggested that suggested that four sections of the newspapers be labeled "truth,
probabilities, possibilities, and lies.' ...  By the time the Civil War was under way, accounts
of actions were sometimes subheaded "important if true....  By World War II, use by the
Boston Globe of  "unconfirmed" over its unverified reports. 

Misinformation, Disinformation, Errors, Lies, and Ignorance. Show a 47 second
clip from "Desk Set" (1957) video about a broadcast station library being computerized.
[Kate Hepburn tells Spencer Tracy, "That's WRONG information."]

News Library Errors: Preventable? Correctable? Immortal?
Yes. Yes. Yes.

There is a story of a North Carolina newspaper library some years ago that failed
to include local political campaign ads in its clipping files. The case involved a candidate
who published record revealed that he had been allegedly involved in a crime. His clip file
contained the early stories about the case, but for some unknown reason the follow-up
story about the case being dropped was missing, not covered or unpublished. When the
man decided to run for office, his alleged crime was rehashed in the paper, but not the
dropping of the charges. The candidate took out a full-page ad in the newspaper to
vindicate himself. Unfortunately, the ad was not clipped and filed by the library staff, so
when an editorial editor collected the clipping file and wrote a story about the candidate, it
was published. Regrettably the editor did not have the benefit of information in the ad. The
candidate sued. The paper settled out of court.

News librarians must take full responsibility for failing to discover and prevent
errors of fact from being published. Librarians share the responsibility with the news staff
for accurate reporting of facts in news reports, photo identification and graphical data. If
news librarians are seeking credit lines for their news research, they should be prepared to
share the blame when they are responsible for errors. Further, every step is taken to detect
faulty procedures and institute policies supporting the highest standards of accuracy in
research and reporting.


For-Profit Libraries.  Facts for Sale?
N. Paul: Ethics of Information Selling published in the now-defunct FineLine, Feb.
1991.
Nora Paul tells the story of the Miami Herald library in 1991 being asked to select
articles from their online database that "reflected badly" on an incumbent in a local
election.  Paul refused, suggesting that if the requester wanted to avoid the expense of the
full-text articles, the library would provide an index from which the requester could make
those decisions.  The article provided quotes from several other news librarians on how
they would handle the problems attendant to selling information.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Michael Jesse's Rx for Correcting Errors in News Digital Records

Michael Jesse, librarian for the Dayton Daily News, offered an insightful approach
to handling errors in online newspapers in an email message to NewsLib subscribers on
Sept. 8, 1994. 15:13:02. Subject: Corrections in newspaper electronic libraries. 
He discusses the pros and cons for actually embedding, in the article, the
correction.  He bases his argument on the fundamental conviction that the stories in our
electronic libraries should be as correct as they can be.  If we discovered an error in a
story between the early and final editions, we'd correct it.  But for some reason, we seem
to think the final published version of the story must remain unchanged.   But by following
this presumption we leave errors in stories that keep getting reused. 

My response is that Mr. Jesse is right on target, and our division should undertake
a review of all the elements of this issue and come up with some workable guides for
newspaper libraries to follow in maintaining the quality, integrity and accuracy of their
electronic files.

Steve Weinberg, in his 1996 book The Reporters' Handbook: An Investigator's
Guide to Documents and Techniques, describes Ullmann's "line-by-line Accuracy Check."
"While at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, projects editor John Ullmann refined
the line-by-line procedure to near perfection. . . .' Near the end of each project, we go over
every word of every line to check for accuracy, fairness and context. . . . I take a draft of
the first story, starting at the top, and the reporter goes back to the original documentation
to check out each fact. When we come to quotes, the reporter reads the quotes from the
computer where the transcribed interviews reside. This is our last chance to make sure
everything is right and it is a much more thorough method than any lawyer's. We wait until
near the end because most problems arise not from the facts we use but in the words used
to characterize them, as in adverbs and adjectives. How we say something is as important
as what we say . . . . "

This procedure has relevance to news librarians, especially to Sylvia Frisch, former
researcher with the Star Tribune before her untimely death. Apparently one of the
reporters on a special projects team tried to locate an original document which Sylvia
found through a database search. The reporter lost his copy. The editor, perhaps it was
Ullmann, insisted that it be produced. The reporter went looking for Sylvia. When
informed that she was heading out for her vacation, he solicited the help of another news
researcher. To no avail. The document could not be found using any search strategy they
could think of. In desperation, the reporter drove to Sylvia's house. She and her family
were just heading out the driveway. The reporter pled his case; Sylvia gave in and went to
the newspaper library to try to repeat the search. She remembered finding something for
the reporter, but she could not remember (from all the hundreds of searches she had done)
exactly how she retrieved it the first time. After considerable effort, the document still
could not be found. The reporter was disappointed. The editor was adamant. The
paragraph with the data dependent on the document was deleted from the news report. 

 
A tour of the USA Today research library and a discussion with its director,
Barbara Maxwell, revealed that a firm policy against using their own newspaper files as a
source for verifying any information. It is Maxwell's attempt to control the repetition of
errors.

An article published in the Columbia Journalism Review in May/June 1994 took a
look inside The New Yorker's fact-checking machine, or more accurately, its library's
failure to do its usually thorough job on checking the facts in an article before it was
published. The fact checker responsible was terminated.

Cynthia Crossen in her book Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America,
Simon & Schuster (1994), gave eloquent testimony to the crisis confronting those of us
whose mission is the accuracy of newspaper records and databases.
There are ways to clean up each part of the information stream and to restore, at least partially, people's faith in numbers, fact, reality and truth.

It is unlikely that government will save us from poor information. Neither can the
public take comfort in thinking that the media protect us from the flood of dubious
information we face every day. The media also contribute to the trivialization of
information, publishing research that is so silly or obvious that  it borders on self-parody.

The media set our political and social agendas, narrowing a vast river of
information into a stream by deciding which is important.
 
The media could upgrade the quality of information simply by educating readers
and viewers about it; putting research into a historical and methodological context and
clearly stating the numerous caveats inherent in any study. They could become more
critical of it themselves and stop depending on polls, surveys and studies to be the cheap
raw material of entertainment. They could make an effort to separate the good from the
poor instead of the exciting from the boring. The media should tell the real story of
science by regularly publishing "negative" research. They should expand their concept of
what is newsworthy in science, asking themselves, when they dismiss a report of a
negative study, whether they would have dismissed the same study if it had produced
positive results.

1. Teach their reporters and editors not only fundamentals of statistics, but also
how to be critical readers of many kinds of research

2. Demand that all research submitted for publication be accompanied by a
technical index, and that the scientists involved in the research be available for interviews
outside of carefully controlled news conferences.

3. Devote more space to describing the methodology of research.

With respect to polling agencies, published reports should say who sponsored and
conducted the survey; how the questions were worded and whether interviewers and
respondents got instructions or explanations; which population was being studied and how
a sample was identified; how the sample was selected, including if self-selected; the size of
the samples; a discussion of the precision of the findings; which results are based on part
of the sample rather than the whole; and where, when and how the data were collected. In
fact television polls report almost none of these, and newspapers report whichever few
they choose.

Ultimately, the job of cleaning up the research business rests in the hands of
individual researchers themselves. They could push sponsors, media and universities
toward higher standards,

Beware of researchers calling themselves independent. Independent often just
means that there are many paying clients instead of just one.

The words "as many as" indicate hyperbole. It means that no one knows how
many, and the reporter or researcher has taken the top of the range to make the problem
seem more dramatic.

Beware of the word "adjusted." Researchers use it as an all-purpose defense
against challenges to their data. Adjustments are subjective decisions. Sometimes they are
legitimate, sometimes they are not.

Be cautious about "facts" being widely accepted.

"The tacit acceptance of untruth in daily life eats away at belief in right and wrong.
If nothing is true, how can one solution be better than another: Progress stalls. "We should
fuss, we should be indignant," wrote Ivan Preston about disinformation in advertising.
"We should call the advertisers phones, or bullshitter, or harassers, when we think that's
what they are .... We should not allow our own silence to be one of the reasons why thinks
stay the same.

"If we do not do something about our information, it is almost inevitable that we
will eventually lose our ability to cope with our problems. 'When regard for truth has been
broken down or even slightly weakened," wrote Saint Augustine about 1,500 years ago, "
all things will remain doubtful.' "

EXCERPTS FROM BOOKS AND JOURNALS ABOUT NEWS
RESEARCH, PRIVACY AND ETHICS

Nora Paul: "Some Paradoxes of Privacy" Journal of Mass Media Ethics
(Special Issue, 1994)

The ease of access to public records information and the growth of records derived
from commercial transactions have created paradoxes for the journalist. "The right to
know" and "the right to privacy" are sometimes in conflict.

Some of the issues involved are:

1. We could do it, but it would be wrong: (credit information)
2. The possibility of making connections that would have been difficult if not
impossible and certainly time consuming before. (Ron Reagan, Jr. and AIDS: why are we
doing this?)
3. Things that were intended to be private or not disclosed, such as memberships in
private clubs, can now be discovered and disclosed. (Who's Who and club membership.)
4. The press is having to be duplicitous, and it occasionally throws the privacy
people a bone. (Privacy advocates wanted no access to motor vehicle records because of
potential of stalking. There is so much personal data available through files of local motor
vehicles, it needs to be secured. Press compromised by agreeing to an "opt-out" provision.
Exemptions were extended to insurance industry, private investigators and towing
operators) An exemption for journalists is completely undesirable and unworkable. Who is
going to decide what a reporter is? It's the first step toward licensing of journalists. For
the first three years, states will be able to continue their existing policies for releasing
DMV records --- they tend to be sources of revenue for states DMV --- Then, the state
will be able to release the drivers' license data to the public only with the license holder's
written consent or if it has enacted an opt-out provision. Open access to DMV records is
being pursued by the press. (Still a bill, not an act/law?)

Here is a short list of  the paradoxes of the press and privacy:

1. Journalists fight for "government in the sunshine" and open records but fight
anyone who wants to know how reporters do business and protect their records.

(The Markey Bill: Telephone Consumer Privacy Protection Act of 1993: requires
that customers be notified within 10 days of issuance of a subpoena or court order seeking
access to phone records. The Senate's special independent counsel investigating news
leaks about Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearing sought reporters' telephone records.)

Alicia Patterson Foundation discovered that its phone records had been
subpoenaed, even though it had little to do with a free-lance journalist under investigation
because he had written something derogatory about the Internal Revenue Service. The
IRS didn't like the article and simply asked the Treasury and Justice departments to
investigate the writer. (E&) December 4, 1993) p. 8.

E&P reported that 47 federal agencies have subpoena power but few have rules
about subpoenas involving journalists. Each of the Bell companies has regulations, but
generally, they comply with all requests based on a court order, subpoena or search
warrant. Usually, they notify customers of the requests but an official request for secrecy
is good for 90 days and can be renewed at intervals of 90 days thereafter.
Bell Atlantic spokesman told E&P that in the first 6 months of  '92, it had received
1,492 requests for 12,138 months of records for 37,249 listings. And that's only one of the
Bell systems. )

2. They want to reveal secrets about others, but don't want others to know their
secrets, their confidential sources.

3. They may be using public records and pulling up private data about people, but
if others do the same thing, they are all over them.

4. They write condemning stories of others who do the very things they do (people
pulling together databases of prescription sales by individual got bad press), but media
organizations are doing it themselves, as with database marketing of subscribers and what
they buy.

5. Journalists are the worst about giving out information about themselves. Many
journalists refuse to give interviews, but a public figure who refuses to grant an interview
usually is cast in a very negative light.

6. Within a news organization there are information conflicts between newsroom
and business sides. It is almost impossible to get information from the subscribers'
database.

7. Newspapers clamor about public records access, yet they are the most
proprietary about sharing their own data when they've made it. One computer-assisted
reporting editor who spent a lot of time putting a campaign finance database together,
when asked if he was making copies available, said aghast, "No, that's my data," even
though the "public good" argument should have been in effect.

8. Newspapers write about errors in credit reports or misinformation in  public
records, but are reluctant to fully disclose their own errors in accuracy or to correct
mistakes in the record of their reporting about people.

9. Reporters look forward to being able to use caller-ID to see who is calling them
but have embraced the caller-ID blocking technology so they can screen others from
seeing that they are calling. They are using "Private Lines," a 900 number that scrambles
calls.)
10. Sometimes by trying to "help" victims by illustrating their life or background,
reporters are, in fact, hurting them by invading their privacy.

****************************************

Robert Ellis Smith publisher of Privacy Journal (Ibid., p. 230)

Privacy Guidelines:

1. Just because information is published in one place does not make it public
property everywhere.

2. The more "innocent" the newsworthy behavior, the higher the entitlement to
privacy protection. Having an illness is not evidence of wrongdoing. ...

3. We are not all open targets for press coverage. ...

4. When personal privacy is involved, reporters and editors should take extra time
and care in delaying a story, if necessary, to reexamine it accuracy, its news worthiness,
and its negative impact on the individuals. (The NYT and the post-Patricia Bowman rule.)

5. Reporters should instinctively assume that any government document
concerning an individual IS INACCURATE OR MISLEADING. ... presumption of error
over presumption of truth.

6. The ultimate question for a reporters is: Would I deserve to live with the
consequences if the information was published about me? (Deserve not like)

*****************************************

Karon Reinboth Speckman Stephens College (Ibid., p. 235)

Using Databases to Serve Justice and Maintain the Public's Trust

Reporters' use of government databases can create problems with serving justice
and maintaining privacy. Although there are many advantages to the new reporting tool,
problems can arise when the information is inaccurate or is misused for purposes other
than originally intended.

Five general areas where database control may give rise to ethical problems:

How is privacy defined:
Privacy is not an issue is stories that use government databases to show trends.
However, the potential for privacy invasion is present in stories using individual data.
Privacy is not mentioned in lists of rights along with life, liberty, right not to be harmed,
and property rights, but it has been called a "cluster right". It is not a distinct cluster of
rights, but itself intersects with the cluster of rights which the right over the person consist
in and also with the cluster of rights which the right over the person consists in.

What are the ethical choices?

"Why are we doing this story?" and Whose interests are we serving?"

(Husselbee: Defining the Boundaries: A 5-Point Test:)

1. Why is this information important? Will publication satisfy some socially
redeeming need of value? Does the public have a legitimate interest in disclosure of this
information; will publication shield the majority from imminent harm?

2. Even if the motive for privacy invasion can be morally justified by legitimate
public interest, it is possible to accomplish the same end without using information that
will invade another's privacy?

3. What procedures will be used to verify the accuracy of the information
uncovered through database research?

4. As the invasion of privacy may inflict harm on the minority, what are the
potential harms in this case and how might they be minimized?

5. What role might disclosure play in this case? Would it be helpful to explain the
mechanics of the invasion and how it is justified by satisfaction of socially redeeming needs
and values?)

The recipients of personal information must not only have a legitimate use for it,
but the purpose or use must also be connected in a positive way with the interests of the
subject of that information. This separates legal rights from moral rights. Although media
may have a legal right to public records, they must consider the rights of the subjects on
the databases. When databases are used to show trends (housing mortgage stories) every
single item need not be checked if the database is generally reliable. Spot check would be
appropriate, however.

What can media organizations do? (T. JOHNSON'S "SOURCES")
(ULLMANN'S "LINE-BY-LINE CHECKING)

1. Acknowledge the use of a database to the public when writing or broadcasting a
story, just as a source is given.

2. Treat a database as a source to be thoroughly checked by taking the database
down to an individual case and then checking out that individual case against sources if
possible. Triangulate sources just as reporters do with paper records. If a newsroom uses
a specific bit of data from a database instead of aggregate data, it should independently
verify its accuracy.

3. Consider original intent when purchasing databases.

4. Articulate a policy not to sell or share government databases. A survey of
Fortune 500 companies revealed that 80% of them disclosed personal information to
credit granters, 58% to landlords, and 25% to charitable organizations. Private credit
corporations such as TRW and Equifax profit by selling and sharing their information.
Media should not do this at the risk of losing the public's trust. Computer tapes acquired
by journalists should only be used for news gathering, not marketing.

5. Budget money to purchase current databases as others become out of date.

6. Continue to cooperate with the government on guidelines that protect privacy
and those unable to protect themselves.

7. Place the raw data in a library or research facility to be examined by anyone.
Provide the data analysis to experts to review and discuss and fill reasonable requests from
readers for more data. Use caution if individual data are contained in it.

8. Scrutinize databases for dirty data and imperfect methodology. Reporters must
understand statistical measures and realize, for example, that a correlation is different from
a "cause."

9. Provide funds to train reporters and editors about computer-aided reporting
techniques and how to correctly analyze data.


*************************************

Steve Weinberg The Reporter's Handbook, 3rd ed (1996) St. Martin's Press

"The Ethics and Accuracy of Investigative Journalism"

These ethics topics have special resonance with investigative journalists:

1. Pretending to be other than a journalist

2. Obtaining information covertly

3. The Golden Rule: how would journalists feel about being criticized by unnamed
sources in, say, the CJR for their inaccuracies?

4. Fairness, Accuracy and the Law

5. Prepublication review (controversial)

6. Line-by-line accuracy check to spot logical inconsistencies or information gaps.
Ullmann and Sylvia Frisch