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September 2006 From the President's Desk: Ethics Made Simple

by Jack El-Hai

Charles Baudelaire once remarked of ethics that "there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle." The danger is much easier to come by than the glory. Create an ethical code that tries to cover every circumstance, and you abandon common sense. Craft one that lays out only the obvious, and you'll be ignored.

Efforts to set down ethical codes of conduct usually begin when something goes terribly wrong. Way back when, bar associations developed codes when members of the legal profession saw their peers stealing money from clients, failing to act in their best interests and not keeping confidences. One of the world's oldest ethical mandates, the Hippocratic Oath, arose in response to physicians who harmed and killed their patients, and who did not recognize the limits of their skills.

ASJA does not currently endorse a code of ethics for writers. We used to have one, a list of recommendations that received prominent display in our membership directory. Unfortunately, most of the mandates in this code did not apply to writers. Instead, we exhorted editors and publishers to pay promptly, treat writers fairly and give credit where credit was due. These are good and important guidelines for the people we work with, but the code had little effect. For one thing, editors and publishers in need of ethical instruction were not likely to turn to the ASJA membership directory for guidance. More importantly, however, many people-including our own members-questioned our right to set ethical standards for people who did not belong to our organization. While we may be able to help direct the professional conduct of our own members, we have limited leverage on the behavior of others. Several years ago, at the request of ASJA's board of directors, the old ethical code vanished into oblivion, freeing valuable space in the directory for more names, phone numbers, and addresses.

ASJA then faced an ethical vacuum. Something going terribly wrong-an epidemic of members plagiarizing, misquoting or rushing toward conflicts of interest-would have inspired us to create an ethical code for writers. But we have seen no such epidemic. Instead, we've observed highly publicized cases of bad behavior from writers outside of ASJA. James Frey fictionalized his memoir, Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass invented people and quotes in their articles, and Timothy Barrus, writing as Nasdijj, claimed a fabricated Navajo background and past in his books.

As we witnessed the fall of these writers into an ethical morass, it has become clear that codes of ethics can do more than simply give cause to blast the misdeeds of present and future wrongdoers. They can also guide those of us who want to do right in our professional relationships and decisions. Every week in this time of rapid change in our profession, we wonder whether it's OK to follow contractual obligations that feel onerous, when we should share privileged information with others or whether we owe our main allegiance to our editors, our subjects or our readers.

Questions like those have brought ASJA's attention back to the task of developing a sound and sensible code of ethics for our members. As I write this, the board of directors is drafting new ethical guidelines. It looks like the draft of the code will cover such matters as respect for copyright and the intellectual property of others, the importance of holding up our end of the contracts we sign, confidentiality and the proper way to identify ourselves as ASJA members. It will be brief and clear.

Soon all ASJA members will have the chance to look over that draft and offer suggestions. With those suggestions in hand, the board will then craft and approve a final code of ethics for our organization. Writers outside of ASJA will also be able to use this new code for their own guidance.

What about writers who don't follow the guidelines? Few members have made serious ethical missteps in ASJA's history, but our organization's by-laws already give us the means to handle such problems.

In the end, though, I hope our forthcoming code of ethics will serve us more as a beacon than as a reprimand. And we can all use a beacon at times.

Jack El-Hai of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is president of ASJA. E-mail the president through www.asja.org/contact.php.