Ah, the blogging of personal retribution begins.
No, seriously, folks. I had a wrong put in perspective for me by a professional in my field. Which makes it a little sweeter than hot cocoa and hugs from mom. Although those are always great.
Today, out of curiosity, I called a journalism ethics line to address a small problem that cropped up. I can't disclose what it was, that would be unethical, but suffice to say, although I had pretty much figured out what I was going to do to address it, I thought I'd call this advice line I'd gotten a flyer for a few weeks ago from my editor. I'd tell you what it was, but it wouldn't be ethical.
At any rate, it wasn't terribly consequential, but I had some q's about the hotline and this was as good an excuse to chat to a Chicagoan as any.
Well, Jim Burke, ethics dude and strategic management professor (and PhD) of Loyola U in Chicago (a Jesuit University — so they know from ethics and thinking deeply), and I conferred and he said my approach was right.
Anyway, we got to talking and I asked him about the hotline and what sort of calls he got (he couldn't be specific — ethics, you know) and I told him the story of my One Big Ethical Failure.
Back in the day — 1998 — I was a business clerk at a certain statewide daily that shall remain nameless. One of my duties was to type in all the bankruptcies. Oh, lord, that was a depressing job. I would like to know if there are any Scroggins in Arkansas that have not actually filed for bankruptcy, because that was a name that came up with astonishing frequency. They ran in what is known as "agate," pron. short A-ghit, the small type of information compendium stuff. Stocks, sports scoreboards, obituaries, community events all are examples of agate.
One day I got a phone call out of the blue from a slightly hysterical woman who told me she was filing for bankruptcy and I could not run hers. She said she was divorced and didn't want her ex-husband to know where she was living because he would kill her.
Now, whether or not this was the truth is debatable. But I'd been doing this insane compiling task for about a year and she was the first person to ever call with such a story. So, I give her credibility on that front. Also, who am I to make her do the lie detector test? And, for another, any offended party that will be looking for her particular bankruptcy will likely not do it through the newspaper. Credit agencies and banks and so forth use either their own missives to bankruptcy court or learn from the defendent him or her self.
I also knew that sometimes there are bankruptcies that will never make the paper due to the way the system worked (at least at that time). It was all copied paper information that was on shelves by the clerks' desks. I was certain cagier bankrupt people knew to steal their public paperwork. For those clerks who dealt with case numbers — that is to say, people who worked at the Daily Record, an all-agate paper that specialized in long lists of court judgments and docket numbers and God knows what else — they knew to ask for the missing case numbers. Not so clerks where I worked. And, with skyrocketing poverty, you wanted every break you could get. Also, cases often got held up in processing so they would not be filed publicly until days later. It was one of those all-paper deals where you had to look very hard to find what you wanted, and that was only if you knew to look for it.
Basically, I figured there was ample room for leniency here. So I didn't run the bankruptcy and I didn't tell my boss about it.
Now, you might be wondering, "Who gives a rat's tootie about the bankruptcies?"
Well, in Arkansas there is a vibrant community of nosy busybodies. Apparently. They have nothing better to do than judge people and gossip about them. Some of them are reporters. Oh! Rim shot! But seriously, with so little to do in that state and so much Blood of the Lamb judgmentalism, some people will reach for any source of smug satisfaction they can find.
I did tell him later, when I was approached by an employee of the paper and asked to keep her bankruptcy hush-hush. Now this, I thought, was completely different. I did not think it was fair for the paper to have this sort of perk for employees. Moreover, it could get out and I'd not even have my conscience to fall back on. Or more people would want such a perk for themselves or their friends or family. And that's a sticky wicket.
I had to confront my boss, Ernie. I also leveled with him that the way I did bankruptcies, there was no telling if I managed to get in every single one filed each day. That was a shocker to him, because he had never seen how things were done. God knows he had enough to do with the work and the stress and the heart attacks.
Of course he went semi-ballistic. I didn't think, at the time, that the woman who asked me would be punished, but she was. And, since it was being put on leave without pay, I thought it was a particularly crappy punishment for someone who was filing bankruptcy and trying to get her life together. I was really naive. I was 24, tops. To be fair, I think the decision to punish the woman who asked was not altogether wrong; a message had to be sent that you can't ask editorial for favors. It was unfair of her to put me in that position.
I don't remember being punished, although I probably was. Which really meant this reporter who had to do my stupid work was the one who was punished.
I didn't expect him to disagree with me about the divorced woman, however. The fact that I leveled with him about this shows the absolute depth of my naivete in the business world. I only wanted to do the right thing at all times. I did not think about lying or covering my ass. To this day, I marvel at my insane liberalism of spirit and yet feel really proud of it. I never wavered from wanting to do right, even if it ended up being my head. Today I am a little wiser. And I don't do bankruptcies, either.
Ernie, my boss, who is long since gone, told me we *had to* run the bankruptcy I didn't run a few weeks earlier. I refused and I ended up sending it in an e-mail to him and said if he wanted it in the paper, fine, he could insert it himself. I didn't want to be a party to it because if violence resulted, I didn't think I could stand it. I was crying and possibly throwing a bit of an emotional fit. This is just who I am, little miss Quaker schools.
I went to my folks' home and cried some. Mom told me if this was the worst ethical mistake I ever made I should be glad as she cuddled with me and stroked my hair. Dad just laughed about it and pointed to this being one of the most ridiculous tempests in a teapot he'd ever heard of. If I lost my job over it, he said, I should be grateful to not have to work in such a petty environment. This was like microethics, as he described it, look at the stakes; how could the reputation of this big paper be smeared by something so tiny as one woman in a rural community's bankruptcy and a clerk? Was the uproar worth what had been uproared about? Ultimately, had I not shown judgment between protecting a possibly abused woman and covering for a fellow employee? For comment on this particular paper's macroethics — the kind that refer to its content, its business partnering with Wal-Mart and Dillards, its Clinton-bashing and more — I would refer you to the alternative weekly, Arkansas Times.
They were right, and I was right, and Jim Burke agreed. He told me I sounded like a "very ethical journalist." He read from a guideline book that said journalists must be compassionate above all things (we're the preistly class, I guess).
Frankly, this sort of professional vindication was something I needed. I probably could have stood to hear it then, so that I could realize how much more idealistic I was than the environment I was in. And this is something that is happening to journalism everywhere, this creeping lockstep of rules and agendas and believing that treating everyone the same way is the same as treating our community ethically. I am yet an idealist in the face of all this. And I just got some professional, third-person recognition of this.
That was nice.
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