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Fred Brown is a former national president of SPJ (1997-98) and is very active on its ethics committee. He writes a column on ethics for Quill magazine and served on the committee that wrote the Society’s 1996 code of ethics.
Lauren Bartlett is currently a Director at Large for the Society of Professional Journalists, chairs the national Communications Committee and is a member of the Ethics Committee and the Finance Committee.
Elizabeth Donald has been a reporter with the News-Democrat for over a decade. She is a mobile reporter covering Madison County, with an emphasis on city government, education and the environment. She is the News-Democrat's liaison to the Latino Roundtable of Southwestern Illinois, author of several fiction novels and writes CultureGeek, the News-Democrat's pop-culture blog.
Mike Farrell serves as director of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky and as an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications. He began teaching as an adjunct in 1980 at Northern Kentucky University, continued as a graduate teaching assistant at UK in 1996, and has been a full-time faculty member there since 2000. He won the college teaching award in 2006.
Irwin Gratz has been in radio news for nearly 30 years. He worked as a reporter, anchor and News Director for the number-one rated commercial station in Portland, Maine before going to work for public radio in 1992 as local anchor of “Morning Edition.” 
Jim Pumarlo spent 27 years working at small daily newspapers in International Falls and Red Wing, Minn. He served as editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle for 21 years. He resigned in December 2003 and currently is director of communications at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest business advocacy organization. He can be contacted at www.pumarlo.com.
Mark Scarp has been a journalist for nearly 25 years, writing and editing for several newspapers in the Phoenix area before starting work at what became the East Valley Tribune, based in Mesa, a city of 450,000 just southeast of Phoenix. For 9 1/2 years he was a member of the newspaper's editorial board, writing many of the newspaper's editorials as well as his own column before being laid off in January along with half the Tribune's newsroom. Since January 2008 has been adjunct professor of journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication, teaching mass communications law, journalism ethics and diversity, and news writing and reporting. In October 2009 Mark was hired as membership coordinator for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, which that summer had moved its national headquarters to Arizona State University's journalism school. He works to build membership, raise funds and organize workshops and conferences.
WHAT: Think of all the types of situations in which you might need a policy to help you decide, for instance, whether to use an anonymous source, or whether to let a source review what you’re planning to write. List all the angles. Enlist other people in your discussion, including — if you can — people who aren’t journalists. In policy decisions, the question usually comes up front.
Let’s say you want to write a policy for your newspaper or magazine about pre-publication review, or that you as a free-lancer want to have a policy for yourself that’s well thought-out. Here you start with the question: Do we let sources see what we’re planning to write? And if we do, when?
It used to be that a reporter would absolutely NEVER let a source check out a story before it appeared. But there has been growing acceptance of the idea that it’s more important to be accurate than to be independent. Attitudes have changed because of the importance of credibility. And there are some very complicated topics where it is probably a good idea to go back to your source and say something like: “Here’s what I understood you to say about down pillows and bird flu. Do I have it right?” Stories involving figures — budgets, taxes, business reports — are ripe for errors. Sometimes you’re unsure whether a source said “an important thing” or “unimportant thing.”
WHO: This is the sort of decision that should involve a large and representative sample of the people who will have to follow it. Ultimately, the decision may be made by the highest level of management, but it should be an informed and collaborative decision.
Consider, too, the people outside the media organization who will be affected by what policy you decide to follow.
Even if you’re a lone free-lancer, you’d be wise to consult a few others in arriving at your personal policy for pre-publication review. Discuss. Argue. Test your ideas. Pre-publication review may give a source confidence that the reporter cares about getting it right. It could enhance your credibility and reputation. Offering to let them check what you’ve written may get them to open up. On the other side of the argument are tradition, and the worry that sources will want to take control of your story. They’ll try to change what you’ve written, to put themselves in the best light. They, and your colleagues, will think you have no backbone or professional pride.
WHY: These are principles (standards) you will use in deciding what to do. In most cases, it comes down to a balance between telling the truth and minimizing possible harms. Identify these and other moral responsibilities. The best decision is the one that does the greatest good for the greatest number of stakeholders.
You might want to consider what others have done, and what standards they used. Steve Weinberg, former head of Investigative Reporters and Editors, is quoted in one journalism ethics textbook as saying, “I have practiced PPR as a newspaper staff writer, a magazine free-lancer and a book author. Never have I regretted my practice. What I do regret is failing to do it during the first decade of my mindless adherence to tradition.”
Jay Mathews, a veteran education reporter for The Washington Post, shows whole stories to sources, even though it makes his editors uneasy. He wrote about that in The Post’s May 31, 2003, edition.
“I have shown every story I have written to all the sources I could find,” he said. “... They are welcome to argue about the tone, the analysis or anything else that bothers them, but I change only the things that I am convinced are inaccurate.”
The balance here is between being as accurate as possible in truth-telling, and maintaining your independence as a journalist.
HOW: How do you achieve the outcome you’ve identified as the best? This is definitely a situation where you want to write it down, and consider sharing it with your readers and audience.
Here’s one possible policy for pre-publication review:
1. Make it clear to your source that only you or your editor can change what you’ve written.
2. The review is for accuracy only. Just the facts, not context, tone or organization.
3. Don’t change direct quotes. You should have them on tape. But it’s OK to negotiate if the source says his first quote was wrong.
4. The best time to double-check is during the interview.
5. It’s best to review specific passages; not the entire story.
6. Remember: YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE ANYTHING! But if it’s wrong, you certainly should.
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