SPJ NewsEvents and DeadlinesSPJ Blogs (National)Quill OnlineJournalist's Toolbox
Fred Brown is a former national president of SPJ (1997-98) and is very active on its ethics committee. He writes a column on ethics for Quill magazine and served on the committee that wrote the Society’s 1996 code of ethics.
Lauren Bartlett is currently a Director at Large for the Society of Professional Journalists, chairs the national Communications Committee and is a member of the Ethics Committee and the Finance Committee.
Elizabeth Donald has been a reporter with the News-Democrat for over a decade. She is a mobile reporter covering Madison County, with an emphasis on city government, education and the environment. She is the News-Democrat's liaison to the Latino Roundtable of Southwestern Illinois, author of several fiction novels and writes CultureGeek, the News-Democrat's pop-culture blog.
Mike Farrell serves as director of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky and as an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications. He began teaching as an adjunct in 1980 at Northern Kentucky University, continued as a graduate teaching assistant at UK in 1996, and has been a full-time faculty member there since 2000. He won the college teaching award in 2006.
Irwin Gratz has been in radio news for nearly 30 years. He worked as a reporter, anchor and News Director for the number-one rated commercial station in Portland, Maine before going to work for public radio in 1992 as local anchor of “Morning Edition.” 
Jim Pumarlo spent 27 years working at small daily newspapers in International Falls and Red Wing, Minn. He served as editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle for 21 years. He resigned in December 2003 and currently is director of communications at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest business advocacy organization. He can be contacted at www.pumarlo.com.
Mark Scarp has been a journalist for nearly 25 years, writing and editing for several newspapers in the Phoenix area before starting work at what became the East Valley Tribune, based in Mesa, a city of 450,000 just southeast of Phoenix. For 9 1/2 years he was a member of the newspaper's editorial board, writing many of the newspaper's editorials as well as his own column before being laid off in January along with half the Tribune's newsroom. Since January 2008 has been adjunct professor of journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication, teaching mass communications law, journalism ethics and diversity, and news writing and reporting. In October 2009 Mark was hired as membership coordinator for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, which that summer had moved its national headquarters to Arizona State University's journalism school. He works to build membership, raise funds and organize workshops and conferences.SPJ Ethics Committee Position Papers
Using the SPJ Code
The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists is an open document. The more it’s distributed — and used — the better. The code is not intended to be arcane or cryptic. It is not like a secret handshake intended for use only by the members of some mystic order. If it were, we would put something at the bottom similar to what is run in television ads for zippy cars: “Professional Driver. Closed Course. Do Not Attempt.”
There is nothing in the code that prevents non-journalists from accessing it and using it. It’s readily available online. Members of the public are free to refer to the code when they want to call attention to what they perceive to be a news medium’s questionable ethics.
But this should be made clear: The code is entirely voluntary. It is not a legal document; it has no enforcement provisions or penalties for violations, and SPJ strongly discourages anyone from attempting to use it that way. The code’s only check on ethical misdeeds is expressed in the final of its four main principles: “Be Accountable.” There, journalists are told that they should “expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.” We believe a free exchange of ideas — not any sort of sanction — is the best way of getting at the truth, at who is right and who is wrong.
The SPJ code is the “gold standard” of aspirational codes of ethics, and it has been used by many news outlets as the basis for more formal and detailed codes. Employers’ codes of ethics are much more specific, and there are penalties for violating them. Reporters have been fired for plagiarizing, for accepting gifts or for other ethical breaches. An employer can do that; an association of volunteers cannot. Many news media make their codes available to all, and they encourage the public to hold them accountable for the standards expressed in those codes. SPJ applauds that embrace of transparency.
At the end of the SPJ Code of Ethics, after the actual working principles, is this important explanatory caution: “The code is intended not as a set of ‘rules’ but as a resource for ethical decision-making. It is not — nor can it be under the First Amendment — legally enforceable.”
The SPJ Code of Ethics, in other words, is available for anyone to see and to refer to. But when it’s quoted, it should be properly attributed — and, we would hope, not taken out of context or misinterpreted. Such questionable uses of the code inevitably will be questioned — that’s the nature of free expression, and an extension of the principle of accountability.
Thousands of responsible, ethical journalists follow the SPJ Code of Ethics and adhere to it. The most important thing to remember is that it’s a set of principles that is open to interpretation and discussion, not a statute or a constitution or a set of regulations. There is nothing about it that can be or should be considered a legal or binding requirement.
This statement expresses the views of the SPJ Ethics Committee. It was written for the committee by its vice chairman, Fred Brown, who covered state and national politics and government for nearly 40 years for The Denver Post.
Copyright © 1996-2012 Society of Professional Journalists. All Rights Reserved. Legal
Society of Professional Journalists
Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Center, 3909 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46208
317/927-8000 | Fax: 317/920-4789 | Contact SPJ Headquarters | Employment Opportunities | Advertise with SPJ
