A Sample Protocol for Ethical Decision-Making
in Computer- Assisted Journalism
By Bob Steele and Wendell Cochran

Inevitably, ethical decision-making involves the need to choose between two or more strongly held principles. One way to help your newsroom reach these decisions is through the use of specially drafted decision-making protocols.

The members of the team who drafted the original version of the protocol were Wendell Cochran, then special projects editor at Gannett News Service and now assistant professor of journalism at American University; George Jordan, a senior government reporter at New York Newsday; Kevin Woodward, wire editor at the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel; Chris Hawley, a journalism student at Bowling Green (Ohio) State University and Bill Bilodeau, a graduate student at the University of South Florida.

What of the co-worker who routinely reads the messages of his or her colleagues? Or distributes salary lists? Or logs onto a system and sends inflammatory e-mail to a news group under another's ID? Or taps into a Pentagon data base with a stolen password? Or takes information that another person improperly retrieved from a computer? Or asks a source to provide access to a corporate database?

By most definitions, these and many other imagined possibilities would constitute "hacking." A more formal term might be intrusion. And for journalists, the use of intrusion in the course of newsgathering has profound implications.

Some news organizations have chosen to simply forbid such practices, not just as they apply to the use of computers. Others proceed in a more ad hoc fashion, of making ethical decisions in the heat of pursuing a story.

Neither approach seems to be an adequate way in which to deal with the substantial questions the issue presents.

We believe newsrooms need to adopt protocols for ethical decisionmaking. A protocol is not a policy setting down specific rules. Instead, a protocol is a process and a framework for making good decisions. A protocol includes key principles and important questions.

The principles provide reference points on your moral compass, represent "what you stand for," and guide you in ethical decision-making.

The checklist of questions is a pathway to follow to resolve conflicting principles and to help determine your actions.

Here is a sample protocol that pertains to issues of intrusion and privacy related to computer-assisted journalism.

Principles

• We are committed to truth-seeking, full and fair reporting, independence from news sources and to minimizing harm to all who are touched by our actions. This standard does not change with the mode of newsgathering. All of our actions should be weighed against this backdrop.

• We respect the property of others, regardless of the forms it takes: ideas, words, physical possessions. This includes files, messages, data and other electronic property.

• We respect the privacy of other persons, including the privacy of their electronic persona.

• Truthtelling is enhanced by truthful newsgathering. Using deceptive methods to gain information, including the failure to reveal one's identity as a journalist while using a computer or the use of false identification to obtain access to computer systems, is corrosive to truth telling.

• We respect the importance of law in a democratic society. Directly breaking the law, including laws relating to computer access, in the pursuit of news, or asking others to break laws on our behalf, erodes institutions, and should be avoided.

Key questions checklist

1. What are we thinking of doing? Why?

2. Who should be involved in the decision making process?

3. What else do we need to know to make a good decision?

4. What alternative actions have we tried or should we consider to obtain the same information?

5. Who would benefit and who would be harmed by our actions?

6. Which actions maximize our truth seeking and truth-telling duties and best honor the other principles related to intrusion/privacy?