GOODY TWO SHOES: What Part Of “Conflict Of Interest” Don’t They Understand?
George Rodrigue, managing editor of The Dallas Morning News, published a mea culpa last week after D magazine called the paper out on a honking conflict of interest involving reporter Katie Fairbank, married to an American Airlines pilot, being assigned to write an article about the carrier and its pilots being at odds over salaries:
One of the canons of our ethical code is avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest. This week, we blew it. …
Business Editor Dennis Fulton, who assigned Katie to the story, asked his colleagues to scrutinize it especially closely for fairness, and I think it passed that test. So did American Airlines’ chief of media relations, Roger Frizzell. …
Indeed, our request put Katie in the untenable position of writing about something that could directly affect her bank account. The fact that she handled it well speaks to her professionalism. But we never should have put her in a position of either saying "no" to an editor or of writing a story that posed a conflict of interest.
Not only the assignment created an untenable conflict of interest, but the article lacked the necessary disclosure of Fairbank’s financial and personal stake in the story. [Hat Tip: Howard Kurtz.]
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