Corporate Journalism: How Can Ethical Environments Be Created?

Nicholas Snider 

sniderwx@gmail.com

 

Increasingly, especially over the last 20 years, news outlets have been acquired by large conglomerates. This has especially been true when Nexstar Media acquired Tribune media last fall, making Nexstar the largest local television media corporation in the country. Each company has a set of guidelines foe each employee. Companies also must set a culture of high ethical standards to not only prevent interference with the public's lives, but also to protect the company from the loss of the public's trust once allegations have come out.

Virgil Scudder, a writer for PRSA, wrote about this in his article Follow The Leader: Ethics and Responsibility. In his piece, he talks about many cases in which employees (including the CEO) violated various ethics codes, and in come cases, laws. Two examples he talked about in this piece that stood out to me are 1.) Rupert Murdoch's News of the World corporation, and 2.) The Atlanta School Board's falsely boosting test scores. 

 

In the case of Murdoch, his employees were caught hacking into a missing 13 year old's phone, which hindered the investigation of her murder. Employees testified of a culture that "pressured them to be ahead of everyone else". In the case of the Atlanta School Board, Beverly Hall (the superintendent) demanded that her employees produce higher test scores.

In both of these cases, the person on top (Hall in Atlanta, and Murdoch in The News of the World) claimed they had no idea. However, testimony and news reports both uncovered the pressure from the top of the organization to appear better to the public. Scudder talks about how, in most cases, wrongdoing doesn't typically start with the low level employees. "

How then should companies make sure that the culture they're creating is ethical? Scudder lays out some ideas in his piece. "Reveal the hazards of having lax ethical standards or enforcement, and use examples to highlight your points. Encourage management to set up a “whistleblower line” so that employees can report serious violations anonymously. Suggest bringing in an outside firm to look at standards and practices periodically and indicate any possible vulnerability. Promote the development of a clear set of standards and practices that the organization can convey and post on its website."

The two ideas I personally agree with are setting up the whistleblower line and setting up external audits. A whistleblower line will be very beneficial to not only the company, but also the company's employees. The employees will feel as though they can report anonymously any wrongdoing without worrying about being fired. This too can hold the company accountable. External audits are also a good idea when it comes to setting up a good culture. Companies that do these will be more likely to find areas of wrongdoing than an internal audit would, because there is no bias toward the company they're auditing--it's a third party. Following the suggestions of this third party can be very beneficial to a company's ethics, and culture.