Reporters’ Creed: Keep It to Yourself
At the bottom of the ad was a list of 62 names of “Chicagoland Jews” who “support the courageous Israeli reservists…and join with them in their call to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a crucial step to peace.” Other Jews were urged to speak out.
Peres had sent them a check too. And though today she’s not certain whether she’d told Not in My Name she didn’t want her name on its ad, she has no doubt about Tikkun. “I made it 100 times clear my name was not supposed to be on there.” Nevertheless there it was, one in a sea of names in print almost too small to read. She was furious.
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As Peres well knows, the Tribune has been assailed for months by local Jewish groups convinced its coverage of the Middle East suffers from a pro-Palestinian bias. Such a critic would regard the Peres ads as proof of the bias. It was an official of a local Jewish organization who alerted me to Peres’s name in the “Courage to Refuse” ad and cited the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists: “Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know. Journalists should: Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility…”
Wycliff told me what the rules are. “There is no provision of the Tribune ethics code that directly addresses contributions of the sort involved here,” he E-mailed me. “The closest approximation is a section that reads: ‘Fundraising for any organization or cause, no matter how worthy, has the potential to create a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. The rule of thumb is that no staff members should engage in or lend their names to fundraising efforts, even if their Tribune connection is not explicitly mentioned.’”
She’s had an important career at the Tribune. She spent most of the 80s as an editor on the foreign desk. As national editor for five years in the 90s, she coordinated her paper’s coverage of the 1992 presidential campaigns. In 1996 she was awarded a yearlong fellowship to Yale to study law. Talking to me today, she’s full of regrets and questions.
The “Courage to Refuse” ad was written as a summons. “It is time for American Jews to also find the courage to speak out,” it declared. “We must act to break the cycle of violence that threatens so many lives. Please add your conviction, voice, and action to ours.” There’s no doubt or pain in a bugle sounding the charge, which is why the ad didn’t begin to suggest Peres’s cast of mind these days.
