Everyday Ethics

How should newsroom leaders respond when they learn about a long-past conflict of interest that could still lead to a negative public perception?

That's what they're sorting through at The Tuscaloosa News today. This is complicated, so stick with me while I explain. Over in Scottsboro, Crimson Tide alum Ray Keller is in court, suing the NCAA for defaming him. Seems the NCAA, back in 2002, labeled Keller a "rogue booster" for his involvement in Crimson Tide football. In an attempt to document that Keller had a pattern of inappropriately influencing the workings at the University of Alabama athletic department, the NCAA introduced evidence that Keller had co-signed a $4,000 loan for Tuscaloosa News Sports Editor Cecil Hurt.

The loan was issued in 2000, long before NCAA sanctions against the Crimson Tide. According to an article in the Tuscaloosa News, Hurt told his editors the loan was for medical expenses. Hurt told editors that he met Keller in 1988 and they would often talk football on the phone. The paper did not say whether Hurt considered Keller a friend or a source.

Hurt has been covering the Crimson Tide for The Tuscaloosa News since 1988. In addition to his column and other newspaper work, he is host of his own Internet show.

Editors at the paper learned about the loan this month during the course of the trial.

"I should have spoken about it to management," Hurt is quoted as saying in his own paper. "I made a decision that it wouldn't affect my work. In my opinion it did not, but I should've left that decision to my superiors."

Doug Ray, executive editor at The News, said he was troubled by the loan and that Hurt was reprimanded.

It was a fairly small amount as loans go, $4,000. The loan has been paid off, so the conflict no longer exists, right? Should the newsroom respond?

When I spoke to Assistant Managing Editor Anna Maria Della Costa Wednesday, I predicted, based on my work around conflicts of interest in other newsrooms, that journalists in her paper would divide into two camps. One group would fall out of their chairs in shock and wonder aloud why Hurt wasn't immediately fired. And another group would shake their heads in dismay at the rigid editors running the show. The first group would conclude the newsroom has lowered its standards. The second group would throw out a variety of hypothetical comparisons and claim an utter lack of clarity.

For newsroom leaders it's a difficult place to be. The ethical breech is obvious and compounded by the fact that it was kept secret for so long. It's also old and small in scope. In surfacing now, it has the potential to make newsrooms leaders look rigid and unreasonable or lax and ineffective.

An agile leader will figure out a way to strike just the right balance by conveying the severity of the issue, reviewing policies and practice with the staff and efficiently investigating the scope of the particular events at hand.