4 Chapter 4: Integrity and Unacceptable Practices
From: NYU Journalism Handbook for Students
Ethics, Law and Good Practice
By Prof. Adam L. Penenberg
REVISED 2020
Open Access License: The author of this work, in conjunction with the Carter Institute at New York University, has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution License to this Ethics Handbook. While the author and the journalism institute retain ownership, we encourage others to reprint, amend and distribute this work for both commercial and noncommercial uses, as long as the original author and the journalism institute are credited. This broad license was developed to allow open and free access to original works of all types.
INTEGRITY
Reporters critique the activities of other people and institutions, and what they publish can have a profound impact on the people, businesses and institutions they cover, as well as society at large. Journalists must live up to the highest standards of integrity, and by integrity we mean: truth, fairness, sincerity, and avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Since the Carter Institute of Journalism at NYU is an educational entity, rigorous honesty is required in research, analysis, and writing, as well as in discussion with professors and classmates. Lack of honesty in scholarship undermines the very foundation of the learning process and can have grave consequences for the student, including failure in a course or expulsion from the university.
All work on all platforms—the page, the screen, the Web—must be original. A student may not engage in “double-dipping” by handing in an assignment for one class then submitting the same or similar material to another without the permission of the instructor. Of course, in classes engaged in long-form work, professors might actually encourage a longer and more elaborate treatment of a previously executed idea, or the project in question is so labor-intensive that two professors may agree that the student can work on the piece for both classes. In all instances, however, the prior approval of the professors involved is imperative.
A student may not conduct research for one class and then use that research in another class—again, unless they have received explicit permission from both professors. Students who work on joint projects should note that they are equally responsible for the veracity of the work. Finally, a student may not submit for an assignment material that has already been published or was contracted by a professional publisher and rejected. Of course, students are very much encouraged to submit for publication stories produced in class. Consult your professor if you have questions.
CARDINAL SINS
Plagiarism
Journalists earn their living with words, and plagiarism—using someone else’s words as if they were your own—is, simply stated, stealing. It can take many forms. At its worst, plagiarism can be copying and pasting an article off the internet and slapping your own byline at the top. Or subtler: Lifting a quote from a wire service story or taking credit for another person’s idea.
Because of the internet, plagiarism is easier today than ever before; it’s also easier to catch. To avoid charges of plagiarism, a writer must paraphrase another’s words and state the source(s); credit another person’s ideas and theories; and cite any facts that are not commonly known. Be sure to label your notes carefully when consulting material in a library or online. It is possible to inadvertently plagiarize a work this way; if you do, you suffer the consequences nevertheless.
How to recognize acceptable paraphrasing vs. plagiarism
Original passage: “In 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. It wasn’t Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou Gehrig, Howard Hughes or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit. (From Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand.)
The following is plagiarism:
“The biggest newsmaker in 1938—measured in newspaper column inches—wasn’t the president, nor was it Adolph Hitler or the pope. It wasn’t Babe Ruth or any Hollywood actor either. Why, it wasn’t even human. It was a racehorse named Seabiscuit.”
Why is this plagiarism? Because the writer has taken the spirit of Hillenbrand’s passage and simply reordered a few sentences and substituted words—including a relatively obscure fact about more newspaper column inches being dedicated to Seabiscuit than any human in 1938. What’s more, the writer didn’t credit Hillenbrand’s work.
Here is an acceptable paraphrase of this same passage:
“In 1938, the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit was so famous he accounted for more newspaper column inches than the president, pope and any Hollywood film star, according to Laura Hillenbrand in Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Or simply, Seabiscuit was extremely popular in 1938. There’s no need to cite Hillenbrand because this is a commonly known fact that cannot be reasonably disputed.
Here is another example:
Original passage: “Jaithirth ‘Jerry’ Rao was one of the first people I met in Bangalore—and I hadn’t been with him for more than a few minutes at the Leela Palace hotel before he told me that he could handle my tax returns and any other accounting needs I had—from Bangalore. No thanks, I demurred. I already have an accountant in Chicago. Jerry just smiled. He was too polite to say it—that he may already be my accountant, or rather my accountant’s accountant, thanks to the explosion in the outsourcing of tax preparation. ‘This is happening as we speak,’ said Rao, a native of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, whose Indian firm, MphasiS, has a team of Indian accountants able to do outsourced accounting work from any state in America and the federal government. ‘We have tied up with several small and medium-sized CPA firms in America.’” (From The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman.)
The following is plagiarism:
“India has become a major player in outsourced accounting, and, for all you know, someone in Bangalore might very well be crunching your tax returns—on behalf of your accountant. ‘This is happening as we speak,’ said Jaithirth Rao, whose firm, MphasiS, has ‘tied up with several small and medium-sized CPA firms in America.’”
It is unacceptable because the way it is written, it appears the writer interviewed Rao and got that original quote, when it originated in Thomas Friedman’s book.
Another example:
Original passage: “The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, a Tuesday, the most disastrous session on Wall Street to date in a month of turmoil.” (The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan.)
The following is not plagiarism: “The stock market crashed on Tuesday, October 29, 1929, following a month of economic jitters.”
It is acceptable because the day the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression, is a well-known fact.
Additional sticking points:
It can be tempting to lift highly technical passages (say, a description of BMW’s braking system or an in depth analysis of how Google’s search engine actually works). Don’t do it. Instead, find a way to describe these things in your own words. This also goes for company descriptions used in press releases. For example, HP describes itself as “a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally.” You might describe it as “a seller of a broad range of technology products and services, including PCs, printers, and IT infrastructure.”
The bottom-line rule of attribution is: When in doubt, cite the source of your information. You can’t go wrong then.
Fabrication
Making up sources or information in an assignment is a serious ethical violation. In the real world, it could lead to immediate dismissal and the end of your career. In the late 1990s Stephen Glass created in part or whole cloth some two dozen stories he published in The New Republic, Harpers and Rolling Stone, which led to one of the biggest journalism scandals in history. Jayson Blair of The New York Times plagiarized and fabricated sources and material, which became a huge embarrassment to the Times, which is still recovering. Both are out of the profession.
Shattered Glass: A lesson in what not to do
Stephen Glass
Following the journalism scandal, Glass pursued a career in law. Although he earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and passed the bar exam in New York and California, he was unable to become a licensed attorney in either state over concerns derived from his scandal.[3] Glass instead found work as a paralegal at the law firm Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley, serving as the director of special projects and trial team coordinator.[4]
Glass made a brief return to writing when he fictionalized his story in his 2003 novel The Fabulist.[5] The same year, the scandal was dramatized in the film Shattered Glass, which was based on a Vanity Fair article of the same name and starred Hayden Christensen as Glass.
Early life and education
Glass grew up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park,[6][7] and attended Highland Park High School.[8] He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as University Scholar, where he was an executive editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.[4][9] His colleagues at The Daily Pennsylvanian included Sabrina Erdely, who later became involved in a fabricated story scandal owing to her Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” and Alan Sepinwall, currently the chief television critic for Rolling Stone.[10][11]
Glass later graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center with a Juris Doctor degree and was named John M. Olin Fellow in law and economics.[4]
Career
The New Republic
After his 1994 graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, Glass joined The New Republic in 1995 as an editorial assistant.[12] Soon thereafter, the 23-year-old Glass advanced to writing features. While employed full-time at TNR, he also wrote for other magazines including Policy Review, George, Rolling Stone, Harper’s and contributed to Public Radio International‘s (PRI) weekly hour-long program This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass (no relation to Stephen).
Although Glass enjoyed loyalty from The New Republic staff, his reporting repeatedly drew outraged rebuttals from the subjects of his articles, eroding his credibility and leading to private skepticism from insiders at the magazine. The magazine’s majority owner and editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, later said that his wife had told him that she did not find Glass’s stories credible and had stopped reading them.[13]
In December 1996, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was the target of a hostile article by Glass titled “Hazardous to Your Mental Health”. CSPI wrote a letter to the editor and issued a press release pointing out numerous inaccuracies and distortions and hinting at possible plagiarism.[14] The organization Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) accused Glass of falsehoods in his March 1997 article “Don’t You D.A.R.E”.[15] The New Republic defended Glass and editor Michael Kelly demanded CSPI apologize to him.[6]
In May 1997, Joe Galli of the College Republican National Committee accused Glass of fabrications in “Spring Breakdown”, his lurid tale of drinking and debauchery at the 1997 Conservative Political Action Conference. A June 1997 article called “Peddling Poppy” about a Hofstra University conference on George H. W. Bush drew a letter from Hofstra reciting errors in the story.[15] On May 18, 1998, The New Republic published a story by Glass (by then an associate editor) entitled “Hack Heaven”, purportedly telling the story of a 15-year-old hacker who had penetrated a company’s computer network, then been hired by that company as a security consultant. The article opened as follows,
Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum. “I want more money. I want a Miata. I want a trip to Disney World. I want X-Men comic [book] number one. I want a lifetime subscription to Playboy – and throw in Penthouse. Show me the money! Show me the money! …” Across the table, executives from a California software firm called Jukt Micronics are listening and trying ever so delicately to oblige. “Excuse me, sir,” one of the suits says tentatively to the pimply teenager. “Excuse me. Pardon me for interrupting you, sir. We can arrange more money for you.”[16]
Adam Penenberg, a reporter with Forbes magazine, became suspicious when he found no search engine results for “Jukt Micronics”, found that “Jukt Micronics” had just a single phone line, and saw that its website was extremely amateurish.[17] When challenged, Glass claimed to have been duped by “Restil”. Glass took Charles Lane, the lead editor of The New Republic, to the Bethesda, Maryland hotel at which Restil had purportedly met with the Jukt executives; Lane discovered that on the day of the claimed meeting the hotel’s conference room had been closed and the restaurant where the hackers supposedly ate dinner afterwards closes in the early afternoon.[6] Lane dialed a Palo Alto number provided by Glass and spoke with a man who identified himself as a Jukt executive; when he realized that the “executive” was actually Glass’s brother, who attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, he fired Glass.[18]
Lane later said:
We extended normal human trust to someone who basically lacked a conscience… We busy, friendly folks, were no match for such a willful deceiver… We thought Glass was interested in our personal lives, or our struggles with work, and we thought it was because he cared. Actually, it was all about sizing us up and searching for vulnerabilities. What we saw as concern was actually contempt.[19]
Aftermath
The New Republic subsequently determined that at least 27 of the 41 articles Glass wrote for the magazine contained fabricated material. Some of the 27, such as “Don’t You D.A.R.E.”, contained real reporting interwoven with fabricated quotations and incidents,[20] while others, including “Hack Heaven,” were completely made up.[12] In the process of creating the “Hack Heaven” article, Glass had gone to especially elaborate lengths to thwart the discovery of his deception by TNR‘s fact checkers: creating a website[21] and voice mail account for Jukt Micronics; fabricating notes of story gathering;[22] having fake business cards printed; and even composing editions of a fake computer hacker community newsletter.[12]
As for the balance of the 41 stories, Lane, in an interview given for the 2005 DVD edition of Shattered Glass, said, “In fact, I’d bet lots of the stuff in those other 14 is fake too. … It’s not like we’re vouching for those 14, that they’re true. They’re probably not either”. Rolling Stone, George and Harper’s also re-examined his contributions. Rolling Stone and Harper’s found the material generally accurate yet maintained they had no way of verifying information because Glass had cited anonymous sources. George discovered that at least three of the stories Glass wrote for it contained fabrications.[23] Glass fabricated quotations in a profile piece and apologized to the article’s subject, Vernon Jordan, an adviser to Bill Clinton when he was president. A court filing for Glass’s application to the California bar gave an updated count on his journalism career: 36 of his stories at The New Republic were said to be fabricated in part or in whole, along with three articles for George, two articles for Rolling Stone and one for Policy Review.[23] Glass also later wrote a letter admitting he fabricated the article he wrote for Harper’s and the company retracted the story (the publication’s first retraction in 165 years).[24]
Glass had contributed a story to an October 1997 episode of the NPR program This American Life about an internship at George Washington’s former plantation and another to a December 1997 episode about time he spent as a telephone psychic. The program subsequently removed both segments from the Archives section of its website “because of questions about [their] truthfulness”.[25][26]
Later work
After journalism, Glass earned a J.D. degree at Georgetown University Law Center. He then passed the New York State bar examination in 2000 but the Committee of Bar Examiners refused to certify him on its moral fitness test, citing ethics concerns related to his journalistic malpractice.[27] He later abandoned his efforts to be admitted to the bar in New York.[28] In 2003, Glass published a so-called “biographical novel“, The Fabulist.[29]
Glass sat for an interview with the weekly news program 60 Minutes timed to coincide with the release of his book. The New Republic‘s literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, complained, “The creep is doing it again. Even when it comes to reckoning with his own sins, he is still incapable of nonfiction. The careerism of his repentance is repulsively consistent with the careerism of his crimes”.[29] One reviewer of The Fabulist commented, “The irony—we must have irony in a tale this tawdry—is that Mr. Glass is abundantly talented. He’s funny and fluent and daring. In a parallel universe, I could imagine him becoming a perfectly respectable novelist—a prize-winner, perhaps, with a bit of luck”.[30]
Also in 2003, Glass briefly returned to journalism, writing an article about Canadian marijuana laws for Rolling Stone.[31] On November 7, 2003, Glass participated in a panel discussion on journalistic ethics at George Washington University, along with the editor who had hired him at The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, who accused Glass of being a “serial liar” who was using “contrition as a career move”.[32]
It was very painful for me. It was like being on a guided tour of the moments of my life I am most ashamed of.
Stephen Glass, reacting to Shattered Glass[33]
A film about the scandal, Shattered Glass, was released in October 2003 and depicted a stylized view of Glass’s rise and fall at The New Republic. Written and directed by Billy Ray, it starred Hayden Christensen as Glass, Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane, Hank Azaria as Michael Kelly and Steve Zahn as Adam Penenberg. The film, appearing shortly after The New York Times suffered a similar plagiarism scandal with the discovery of Jayson Blair‘s fabrications, occasioned critiques of journalism by nationally prominent journalists such as Frank Rich and Mark Bowden.[34]
Glass was out of the public eye for several years following the release of his novel and the film. In 2007, he was performing with a Los Angeles comedy troupe known as Un-Cabaret, having earlier found employment at a small law firm, apparently as a paralegal.[35][36]
In 2015, Glass again made the news after reportedly sending Harper’s Magazine a check for $10,000 – what he was paid for the false articles – writing in the attached letter that he wanted “to make right that part of my many transgressions…I recognize that repaying Harper’s will not remedy my wrongdoing, make us even, or undo what I did wrong. That said, I did not deserve the money that Harper’s paid me and it should be returned”.[37] Glass has stated he has repaid $200,000 to The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Harper’s and the publisher of Policy Review.[38]
Unsuccessful California Bar application
In 2009, Glass applied to join the State Bar of California.[39] The Committee of Bar Examiners refused to certify him, finding that he did not satisfy California’s moral fitness test because of his history of journalistic deception.[27] Insisting that he had reformed, Glass then petitioned the State Bar Court’s hearing department, which found that Glass possessed the necessary “good moral character” to be admitted as an attorney.[27][23]
The Committee of Bar Examiners sought review in the State Bar’s Review Department and filed a Writ of Review, thereby petitioning the California Supreme Court to review the decision.[27] On November 16, 2011, the Supreme Court granted the petition, the first time in 11 years the court had granted review in a moral character case.[27] On January 3, 2012, Glass’s attorneys filed papers with the Court arguing that his behavior had been beyond reproach for more than 13 years and this was proof that he had reformed.[40]
On November 6, 2013, the California Supreme Court heard arguments in Glass’s case[41] and ruled unanimously against him in an opinion issued January 27, 2014. The lengthy opinion describes in minute detail the applicant’s history, record, the bar’s applicable standard of review, the appeal and its analysis of how Glass failed to satisfy the court’s standards, concluding, “On this record, he has not sustained his heavy burden of demonstrating rehabilitation and fitness for the practice of law”.[3] On that basis, Glass was denied admission to the California bar.[42]
Doctoring Photos or Videos
It is not permissible to doctor or manipulate photos for the purpose of misleading, although is all right to crop pictures or enhance clarity if blurry. With video it is OK to edit footage but not all right to alter subjects’ appearance or likewise distort reality. Increasingly photo manipulation is being used as an explanatory technique: Putting George Bush’s head onto a wrestler’s body for satirical purposes, for example. This is acceptable only if there will be no confusion between the photo manipulation—satirical or otherwise—and reality.
Fictional Devices
Names, dates and places should never be altered in any story, even to protect a source’s identity. If publishing those facts could lead to retribution against a source, or if compassion dictates omitting these facts from a story, they should simply be cut (with an explanation to the reader). Composites, which are characteristics and histories of multiple characters blended into one, should never be used.
Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Case Studies
The New York Times and Jayson Blair
By Adrian Uribarri, SPJ Ethics Committee
WHAT: Jayson Blair advanced quickly during his tenure at The New York Times, where he was hired as a full-time staff writer after his internship there and others at The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Even accusations of inaccuracy and a series of corrections to his reports on Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks did not stop Blair from moving on to national coverage of the war in Iraq. But when suspicions arose over his reports on military families, an internal review found that he was fabricating material and communicating with editors from his Brooklyn apartment — or within the Times building — rather than from outside New York.
Some Times staffers, opposed to what they viewed as favoritism by Executive Editor Howell Raines, blamed a star system that allowed Blair to advance unusually fast in an extremely competitive, mostly veteran environment. Blair’s former boss, Jonathan Landman, said race played a large part in the African American writer’s ascendancy.
The findings of a 25-member committee headed by Allan Siegal, an assistant managing editor, led to the appointment of a public editor and stricter editorial policies. But staffing changes and higher standards could not change what happened: The Times‘s reputation was deeply tarnished. Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned in a cloud of mismanagement. Journalism, in general, suffered perhaps the biggest blow to its credibility in U.S. history.
Question: How does the Times investigate problems and correct policies that allowed the Blair scandal to happen?
WHO: The consequences of Blair’s actions are so broad that it is important to have representatives from all staff levels, as well as journalists outside the Times staff, weigh in on corrective steps. Leading this group should be one or several highly ethical consensus-builders who can solicit and synthesize ideas from throughout the profession.
In the case of the Times, stakeholders range from the humble retiree who simply reads his paper in the morning to the power-wielding diplomat who relies on foreign-policy reports to inform her decisions. Journalists, too, lose ground when a colleague lowers the public’s value of their work. As a group, biggest stakeholders are citizens of democracies, which depend on journalists to grow trust in readers with accurate reporting.
WHY: The Blair case raises questions about hiring, management and overall editorial policy.
First, there is the issue of relative inexperience in a super-high-stakes newsroom. Is it fair to senior staffers to allow a fresh-out-of-college writer to step into the ranks? More importantly, is it fair to expect such an inexperienced writer, however talented, to produce reporting as sharp as that of a decorated correspondent? While a pure meritocracy allows an individual of any experience level to fill any role, talent in the absence of experience could lead to diminished professionalism: Blair’s ability to impress editors with his writing may have led to him feeling that facts are less important than prose.
Second, there is the question of who is responsible for letting Blair go so far. Is it the editor who hired him straight from the University of Maryland? How bout successive editors, who, despite their mediocre evaluations, did not object loudly enough to Blair’s promotions? Could the executive and managing editors, with their big-picture roles and busy days, truly be responsible for one staffer’s malfeasance?
Third, there must be a better way. Is it enough to know what went wrong and tighten the reigns on practices such as anonymous sources? Or does the Times need an auditor, someone it pays for a scolding? Why should an outsider be allowed to make recommendations on better internal practices? Then again, how could an insider, in earshot of the mess itself, lead the committee to fix things?
HOW: The Times decided that to remedy the nasty ramifications of the Blair scandal, it would commission an insider, along with others in and outside the Times newsroom, to investigate problems and suggest changes. The insider, Siegal, decided the Times should hire an outsider (who would be former Life magazine editor Daniel Okrent) to suggest further improvements. And Times editorial policy changed to reflect a much more cautious, conservative atmosphere concerning staff promotions and, especially, verification of reporting. A notable example of the latter aspect regards anonymous sources. In terms of staffing, the Times went so far as to require written evaluations for any candidates transferring between posts.
A particularly difficult aspect of the fallout, although one welcome by staffers who felt marginalized, was the dual resignation of Raines and Boyd. That development, at least in the view of Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, was for the greater good of the Times. Symbolically, their departures made it possible for observers to view the Times as a reformed institution.
