The following case study actually happened. It highlights a number of ethical issues confronting writers. Perhaps the most egregious issue is the idea of sharing notes. It is customary for writers to not share notes, even negatives from photographs, with anyone outside the publication with which she is working. The idea is that notes are inchoate thoughts that may be misinterpreted as unduly offensive to people who are involved in the article. Should a writer be called upon to testify in a court case, she can argue that her publication makes it a policy not to reveal notes to outsiders. However, a court can prevail on the writer to share the notes, or punish the offender with a contempt of court order.

Beyond the notion of sharing information and questions of source reliability, the narrative explores the idea of showing compassion for others. In this case study, the writer put the publication at legal risk, but he did so in an attempt to perform a public good. For his violation of policy, he went on probation and later redeemed himself. It was I.

Rabbi-turned-evangelist provokes questions

Short of publishing a news story, is it ever appropriate to warn a source about the credibility of a speaker who an organization has hired?

Several years ago, I loaned a pastor some notes hoping to warn him and his church about an evangelist I suspected of phony credentials, but lacked the proof to print it. The offer backfired on me. Here’s what happened.

In 1984 in Chambersburg, Pa., a rabbi-turned-evangelist came to town and Public Opinion, a 20,000-circulation Gannett daily, published a short press release on the speaker who was scheduled to preach in a nearby community.

“In an attempt to disprove the New Testament, he became a Christian,” the article said, adding the speaker was a York, Pa., rabbi when his conversion occurred. “In the days following his decision to become a Christian, he was shot at, his home was burned and he and his son . . .were beaten up.”

Dr. Robert Chernoff, the rabbi in Chambersburg at that time, took exception to the account and questioned the newspaper’s source, saying the article suggested the speaker encountered persecution from Jews following his conversion. Those questions prompted a yearlong investigation of the evangelist and included a flurry of letters from church officials and others. Many of the sources had a similar response: He’s clean but there’s something unusual about his background. For instance, he had a family but now he doesn’t, they said.

Most of the people wouldn’t go on the record, but tantalized me with stories about county agencies that were investigating the man. One said that the man’s wife died mysteriously shortly before he agreed to care for two children from a previous marriage. It was unclear if these were his children, or foster children. Some sources said the man was married more than once. The various narratives left the sequence in a vortex of confusion. When I asked the minister about the stories, he offered little explanations, and said others were using me to hurt his ministry.

The Jewish community where the man was a rabbi denied he ever worked in York. Later members of the York synagogue admitted the man had worked there as a rabbi for a few months, but he was fired because the congregation thought he was crazy.

The evangelist was said to have memorized a portion of the Old Testament as part of his rabbinical ordination, so I called Israel a half-dozen times looking for the rabbinical school he said he attended. I never found it, and the evangelist explained that schools open and close frequently in Israel.

As an ordained minister, the evangelist’s credentials were more accessible. A church leader went on the record saying the former rabbi served a parish church in Central Pennsylvania for a time but resigned because he wanted more freedom to express himself as a charismatic believer.When the traveling evangelist returned to Chambersburg in 1985 for a follow-up series of meetings, I discussed my findings with then executive editor Frank Keegan, now editor of a newspaper in Connecticut. We agreed the article would be incomplete if it didn’t contain sources on the record alleging misrepresentation. We could have printed the church leader’s remark that the evangelist was ordained and information from a Florida seminary, which praised the man’s research on Hebrew-Christian parallels as scholarly, but the story would be woefully one-sided.

At the time, I thought that the information was sufficient enough to warrant a friendly warning to the pastor of the church where the evangelist would be speaking, but the pastor was unmoved. However, the pastor said he thought I was trying to trick him into making a remark, which might fuel some bad publicity. To the pastor, writers will stop at nothing, or in the words of former presidential candidate Ross Perot, the press is only after a “Gotcha” story.

Ignoring this rebuff, I told the minister about my file on the speaker and loaned it to him.

Keegan learned of the transaction, and demanded the file be returned. He threatened to fire me, but at my $14,000-a-year salary, six weeks’ probation seemed severe enough.

“I didn’t fire Smith because it was not evil intent, but I put him on probation, so he’d get the point,” Keegan told others. “He put the paper at risk. We gather information to print the news for all readers. It’s immoral to do anything else with it. It’s a violation of trust to gather information for private use. We later gave the story to the regular religion writer to follow up and that was as good as taking a gun and shooting it. That writer wasn’t highly motivated.”

Any writer on any beat for any time knows the value of quid pro quo when it comes to sharing information. Even Keegan, known in Chambersburg as Samurai editor for his animated defense of press freedoms, uses the maxim: “Sometimes you give a little information to get a little information.”

I don’t think I really expected the pastor to provide any new information because I shared my file, but I thought he might begin asking the same questions I was asking, and demand his own inquiry. Wasn’t it my responsibility to share my concerns with this unsuspecting pastor? I thought so, but I was wrong. When a writer’s gut tells him that something is amiss but he can’t prove it, then it is old-fashioned gossip to repeat it. I may suspect someone is a hypocrite fleecing the flock, but it’s wrong to point the accusing finger without a fistful of facts.

A telephone call may be appropriate, but only to explain that a story won’t appear either as an announcement or an in-depth story because the reporter can’t verify some information.

That’s all. If pressed, the reporter shouldn’t divulge the unsubstantiated information, but might suggest where a person could look to find what the reporter found. The best response, however, is to keep digging until that one person steps forward or the relevant document appears to provide the missing piece or pieces.

At last report, the traveling evangelist was faring well and his reputation remains unsoiled. Press critic Frank Kelly says society is a tremendous cave of sound, in which voices bounce back and forth with the puny journalist listening to the roar in the chamber trying to form his own judgment.

In our mass-mediated world with no lack of voices, writers are too aware that no one has to listen. For you and me as writers, our goal is to offer solid information that may help readers make good decisions. If a reporter can’t nail down the information, he shouldn’t serve up unsupported specifics hurting innocents and damaging the reputation of a press working for all readers.

What would you have done in this case and why? How does the question-approach suggested earlier in this chapter help in this case study?

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics is used widely by journalists, but it is apropos for feature writers as well.

This is an excerpt from Dr. Michael Ray Smith‘s book FeatureWriting.net. Used with permission.

Download the entire book for free from our MTI Online resource center.