Ellen Weiss’ resignation wasn’t about Juan Williams and it wasn’t about NPR. It was about a news organization trying to keep a star in orbit by bending its standards. And there are plenty of other professional news outlets in similar positions, places where one journalist can take on a side job as a commentator while his colleagues worry about what they can share with their friends on Facebook.
Buried in last week’s announcement was news that the public radio company is reviewing its code of ethics. If newsroom leaders around the country honestly assessed their own operations, they’d find that most of them have outdated, unclear ethics policies, which they apply inconsistently. That is, those with policies.
Mentioned later in the article is 2010-2011 Reynolds Fellow David Cohn:
David Cohn, founder of the crowdfunded journalism site Spot.Us, is also part of the committee. “Ethics is not a math equation where you always get the same answer,” he said. “We’re going to come up with guidelines and principles. It will be up to NPR to figure out how to interpret those.”
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