The Social Value of a Code of Ethics for Journalists
By ERIC W. ALLEN
Dean, School of Journalism, University of Oregon
RECENT criticisms of the American newspaper, sweeping and condemnatory, of which Mr. Upton Sinclair's Brass Check may be taken as the extremest example, ignore so many factors in the social problem of the press, in its past, in its present, and in its future, that the final result is much heat without any appreciable light.
Yet the questions Mr. Sinclair attempted to raise, and failed to raise in any effective way in the mind of the profession because of the intemperance of his methods, are important ones and worthy of study. An educated and idealistic newspaper writer, employed by one of the leading New York dailies, suggested to the writer that Mr. Sinclair's book was important enough to deserve—what? Not confutation, but rewriting by some careful, independent, trained investigator, who could work without excitement, who would accurately define all his terms, and guard and support every generalization with adequate documentation. For it is the generalizations in the book that are important if true, and in so far as they are true.
Fresh from a rereading of Mr. Sinclair's eloquent Philippic it was the privilege of the writer to serve as host to a hundred responsible newspaper editors, most of them newspaper owners, representing very nearly all the larger papers of one of the western states. They had travelled, some of them, hundreds of miles to be present at a two-day session at the School of Journalism of their state university for the discussion of newspaper problems. Nor had these discussions to do principally with advertising rates, wire service, charges for job printing, or wages. The point of most intense and general interest in the conference was the adoption of a code of ethics for journalism which has since been described by the Editor and Publisher of New York, a leading professional magazine, as striking "the highest note that has been sounded in American journalism." This code was passed unanimously, and a subsidiary motion was passed that it should be given fullest publicity in order that the public may "check us up if we fail to observe it."
Salvation of the Press with Its Own Personnel
The writer sat where he could see the faces of these men; their records, their successes and their failures he had observed for years; he knew the spark of genius here and perhaps the mental limitation there. With many he had been asked to consult in times of personal crisis and honest doubt. Then came to his mind the picture of a debased press, so fervently presented by the college professors, the sociologists, the free lances, of whom Mr. Sinclair is only one,[1]—the picture of slavish repression, malicious carelessness, conceited ignorance, and contented corruption—and the thought came to him that the salvation of the Ameri-
- ↑ No slur is intended upon the report of the Interchurch World Movement on conditions in Pittsburgh. This document is of a different type and calls for a reasoned answer from those who feel aggrieved; clamorous counter-propaganda and charges of sedition are aside from the point. The reaction of the press itself to the report is shown on pp. 311 and 312 of Public Opinion and the Steel Strike. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921.
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