Everyday Ethics

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told Townhall blogger Hugh Hewitt that she's "surprised that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics."

She was responding to a prompt by Hewitt that suggested that Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric had both been unfair in their interviews with the Republican nominee for vice president.

Here's the full exchange:

This weekend, the Internet went wild with a rumor that Sarah Palin's youngest son was really her grandson.

On Saturday, a YouTube user named AmpersandPilcrow posted a nine-minute video asking the question and offering up some old family photos as evidence that Bristol Palin was really Trig Palin's mother. On Sunday, a DailyKos user named cityzenjane linked to the video, provoking many in the DailyKos family to criticize.

By Monday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rebutted the rumor by telling folks that her son Trig is really her son, but her daughter Bristol, 17, is pregnant, planning to keep the baby and will be getting married.

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This prompts a lot of soul-searching among traditional journalists. When do we investigate rumors involving politicians? How should we address stories involving the minor children of politicians?

A reporter from Wired called me today to ask: Is the blogosphere dragging the news media into the mud?

Not really, I told her. Chances are, even without the Internet, reporters would have addressed the pregnant teenage daughter of a vice presidential candidate. But the Internet does speed things up. And savvy professional journalists will find this story an opportunity to distinguish their work from the chatter of the masses.

It used to be that journalists had the luxury of more time and little competition when it came to rumors about politicians and their families. We spent weeks, even years, asking ourselves if rumors really mattered to a politician's ability to lead. Starting with Gary Hart and running through Clinton-Lewinksy, former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevy, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and presidential hopeful John Edwards, I think I can safely say that rumors do matter. It's not whether we professional journalists report them, but how.

That takes us back to our current object lesson. Watch the YouTube video, then read any news story on this current rumor, and you will see the difference between speculation and verification. You will see the difference between anonymity and accountability. And you will certainly see the difference between uncertain sourcing and certain sourcing.

There's a good chance that the average Joe out there in the audience is picking up on these differences too. And yes I know, there are times when old-school media are guilty of all the failings of the blogosphere and more.

Yet, what it comes down to is this. Our values are different and we serve a different purpose. I'm not suggesting that bloggers become more like professional journalists or that we become more like bloggers. Instead, it seems that we are destined to closely co-exist in the information ecosystem. We are bound to influence each other. The blogosphere is transforming the mainstream media, not replacing it and certainly not dragging it into the mud.

The call came from a journalist who said he thought he had a simple question: “Can a journalist’s spouse participate in a political campaign?”

His tone of voice suggested he was not having an easy time finding a solution.

The caller said his wife wants to work for one of the presidential candidates by volunteering at a campaign office with what we might call “back office” work. She would stuff envelopes, initiate and answer telephone calls and do the behind-the-scenes stuff that thousands of faceless citizens perform during political campaigns.