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Journalists are taught from the beginning of their careers to report the truth as clearly and objectively as possible. This includes avoiding any and all conflicts of interest.
Some journalists, however, are unable to define the line at which point a friendship or relationship with a source becomes a conflict of interest.
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| Photo courtesy of hccs.com |
The idea of creating a conflict of interest with a source is not new to seasoned journalists, though many may fall victim to it without even realizing it is occurring. This is especially a risk for beat writers.
Beat writers must often interview many of the same sources for various stories, and thus are at higher risk for becoming friends with their sources. In the process of crossing the line between friendship and a journalist-source relationship, beat writers may allow their relationships to influence the way they cover certain stories.
According to Paul Willcocks of The Tyee, a Canadian publication, sports beat writers can be influenced greatly by their relations with the players they cover.
"Chat with a reporter in a coffee shop lineup or schmooze in the dressing room, and everything changes," Willcocks wrote in his 2015 article "Journalists: Never Befriend a Source."
Willcocks is not alone in his belief that journalists should not befriend their sources of information. In fact, many ethical codes in the journalism world guide against conflicts of interest, whether they be real or perceived.
Friends as Sources
While journalists risk breaking ethical codes by befriending their sources, they can do the same thing by making sources out of friends and family members.
The moment a journalist interviews a friend or member of his or her family for a story, a conflict of interest is present. Because there is a already an existing relationship, the writer's piece will be influenced by what he or she already knows or feels about the source.
One example of this is the relationship between NPR Politics podcast legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg and the Supreme Court justices.
As written about in an NPR article by Elizabeth Jensen, Totenberg's friendships with the various justices raised quite a bit of concern about her ability to objectively cover the Supreme Court. Those concerned wondered perhaps what information Totenberg was potentially not releasing to protect the justices, as well as if there were sides of the story she neglected to share.
"You have to report as objectively and interestingly as possible," Totenberg said in an interview with Reddit in 2015. "Sometimes that means you end up writing unflattering things, and sometimes, flattering ones."
Checkbook Journalism
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is one of the various number of organizations whose ethical code boasts the importance of maintaining strictly professional relationships with sources. The organization also warns against accepting gifts or money from sources, a practice also referred to as checkbook journalism.
When a journalist pays or bribes a source for information, they are taking part in the practice of checkbook journalism, an act described as a "slippery slope" by the Columbia Journalism Review.
"Once money enters the reporting equation, it has the potential to corrupt the whole journalist-source relationship," Ryan Chittum, a reporter for the Review wrote in 2012.
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