NY Times Reporter’s Stance Raises Increasing Ethics Issues

The increasingly convoluted ethical issues arising from what began with New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s jailing for refusing to reveal her source are proving difficult for even seasoned journalistic scholars to sift through.

A key ethical issue emerging in recent news accounts involves whether it’s ethical for a reporter to refuse to reveal the identity of a source when it appears the source’s motive for seeking anonymity may be ethically questionable, according to Elizabeth Blanks Hindman, associate professor with WSU’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communications and a leading authority on journalistic ethics.

“I think Miller did the right thing in going to jail based on the principle that government shouldn’t be able to force journalists to act on behalf of the government,” Hindman said. “But in this instance, her source apparently had what I would consider unethical motives. That’s a critical point in considering the ethics of this case, but it hasn’t come up much in recent discussions.”

Hindman said privilege law and its ethical underpinnings are based on the public need to know information that couldn’t be gathered without a promise of confidentiality – a practice intended primarily to ensure the protection of whistleblowers. However, if Miller’s guarantee of confidentiality actually involved some form of political partisanship, or her source’s motives were ethically questionable, Hindman said the ethical basis for her actions is called into question.

“But as soon as I say that, other ethical questions arise,” she said. “Should journalists have to ascertain the motives of their sources?  What if they can’t?  Those are different ethics questions, but equally significant ones, that quickly begin to arise.”

Hindman can be reached at (509) 335-8758 or ehindman@wsu.edu