Chron Reader Rep. Steve Jetton notes that the newspaper’s set-in-concrete-and-rebar Ethics Policy has claimed a victim:
The Chronicle’s Ethics Policy has cost one of its sports columnist his extra job as a radio talk show host. Jerome Solomon was hired by KNFC to host a talk show after the radio station adopted an all-sports format last year. All went well until the station decided it needed Solomon to contribute to the bottom line by doing commercials. The Chronicle’s Ethics Policy prohibits editorial employees from endorsing products. Solomon had to decline and the station replaced him.
At the Chronicle, there is a wall between editorial employees and advertising employees. Editorial employees don’t sell ads and advertising employees don’t write stories or edit copy. The paper doesn’t want readers to get the impression that the business side of the paper seeps into the editorial product. To allow otherwise would call into question the paper’s editorial integrity. For example, if Solomon accepted pay from the Texans or Rockets to tout the team, readers would be justified in wondering if the opinions he expressed in his column had been softened because of the financial relationship. Furthermore, if Solomon and other employees can’t sell ads for the Chronicle, they sure can’t sell them for a radio station or other media.
Back in 2005, Banjo Jones blogged about Jeff Cohen’s Ethics Declaration:
It turns out the rodeo spends a preposterous amount of money to furnish its offices and provide free booze to its friends and volunteers. And, oh, by the way, they give free tickets and free drink coupons to media organizations that provide the interminable, over-the-top coverage of the world’s largest rodeo.
(The Chron was quick to point out that only two of its employees made use of the free drink coupons while a shocking seventeen Channel 13 employees used them, which the newspaper evidently felt gave it the moral high ground.)
In addition, the media freebies gave Chronicle Editor Jeff Cohen an opening to flex his ethical muscles and declare the city’s only newspaper won’t be accepting any more free tickets (“outside our sponsorship agreements“), which should further endear him to rank and file employees who will feel better about themselves now that they’ve been ethically cleansed from on high.
Jetton doesn’t elaborate on the what the Chron’s Ethics Policy says about the “firewall” between opinion and news. Maybe he can scan the entire Chron Ethics Policy and provide a link to it, in the interest of transparency. Maybe we’ll see that the Policy addresses plagiarism.
