Ethics leaders stand firm in shaky times.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

A reporter who cooked up fake stories at The New York Times also burned the public's trust in the media, but that hasn't made these "the worst of times" for the country's journalists, a prominent media critic said Thursday.

Tom Rosenstiel, vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, said the consternation in newsrooms over recent revelations of fabricated stories by former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair shows that most news organizations already are setting high standards. And he said the affair will push reporters to do even better.

"Historically, these crises, as often as not, have resulted in higher standards for the press," he said.

Rosenstiel was in Eugene to deliver the annual Ruhl Lecture at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. His comments on the current state of journalism were made during a meeting with reporters, editors and journalism educators at The Register-Guard.

His appearance coincided with the presentation of the school's annual Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism. This year's awards honor a Florida newspaper that fought off an effort by state investigators to obtain notes from a series of stories revealing problems in the state child welfare system; a Native American reporter whose investigative stories led him to conclude Indian activist Leonard Peltier is guilty of murdering an FBI agent; and the student newspaper at Mount Hood Community College, which came out against a college bond measure.

Like most other issues of the day, Rosenstiel said the Blair incident was amplified through the constant barrage of news and commentary that pours from cable television, the Internet and print media. He said that kind of coverage often makes issues seem bigger than they actually are.

"In some ways you could argue that everything today is over-covered," he said.

That said, he believes "we're all tarred" when reporters are caught subverting the values that most news organizations put at the center of their work. Using a twist on the old financial axiom, "bad money chases out good money," he said the worst examples of the craft, no matter how rare, too often end up being the ones the public uses to judge the profession.

"Bad journalism kind of chases out good journalism to some extent," he said, "in that examples of lower standards in journalism predicate what people think about us."

The worst thing about the Blair episode, he said, was that so few of the people Blair claimed to have quoted bothered to complain that he had never interviewed them. Some later said they didn't think anyone at the paper would listen or that they assumed that sort of thing happened all the time.

"That's really terrible," Rosenstiel said. "That's a sad commentary."

One solution, he said, is for more news organizations that stand by their codes of ethics to do more to toot their own horns and let readers and viewers know they're being vigilant about accuracy and fairness.

"One solution is we who have higher standards have to play more like the NBA - we have to use our elbows," he said. "We have to show people there's a difference."

The Payne Awards recognize newspapers and reporters that stick to their ethical standards in the face of powerful outside forces. This year's award for news organizations went to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, which published more than two dozen stories outlining how the state's child welfare system had lost track of hundreds of children in state care.

In a four-week project, the paper found nine of 24 children "lost" by state caseworkers and documented extensive lapses. Megan O'Martz, who co-authored the series, said state officials began asking for the paper's files soon after the stories ran, but the staff was determined not to let itself be turned into a government accomplice.

"We really decided it wasn't our responsibility as a newspaper to act as an arm or extension of the government," she said after the awards presentation Thursday. "We wanted to be perceived as being independent. We thought that by handing over files it would blur that line between being a watchdog over government and being an arm of government."

In the professional journalist category, Paul DeMain, editor and publisher of The News from Indian Country, won for work spanning almost 30 years examining the arrest and conviction of Peltier for shooting an FBI agent during a standoff at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier and a vocal group of supporters have long proclaimed his innocence, but DeMain ultimately concluded Peltier is guilty and put his findings in print, despite strong pressure to support the activist.

"This story is difficult to be happy about because it means breaking the perception of millions of people around the world," DeMain said. "But no matter where the story goes you have to cover it and tell the story, even if you don't appreciate the outcome."

The Advocate, the student newspaper at Mount Hood Community College, won in the university/college media award for a three-part series looking at a construction bond measure and an editorial that concluded voters should defeat it. Randi Moody, the paper's editor in chief, said the $68.4 million bond measure would have spent most of the money on two new buildings of questionable need with less going to needed repairs of existing buildings.

Although the measure had no organized opposition, it was defeated.

"We thought it was unnecessary at a time when they are cutting programs left and right and eliminating faculty positions," Moody said. "We didn't set out to write any award-winning stories. We just set out to do what we had to do."