I have a couple of great ethics questions from a reader puzzled by two posts on our Business Casual blog recently. Barry read posts by Carrie Rengers, our business columnist, referring to a lunch she had with a local businessman. In a previous post, Carrie said she flipped a coin with the businessman to determine who would buy lunch (she lost). She was soon leaving for a vacation in Las Vegas, and the man also gave her $100 and asked her to bet it for him.
Barry asks what our ethics policies are regarding sources buying lunch for Eagle reporters, columnists or editors. What if she had lost the coin flip? And, he asks, “Secondly, is it acceptable practice to receive ‘a crisp $100 bill’ from that source?”
We do have a specific ethics policy regarding a wide range of issues, including meals and gifts, and we are in the process of updating that policy. As soon as the revisions are complete, I’ll post the entire policy on Kansas.com for readers to see.
Our current policy on buying meals says it’s preferable to pick up the tab or split it. If paying or splitting isn’t feasible, or the source insists on picking up the tab, then make plans to reciprocate and take the other person to lunch in the near future. This is fairly common practice in our newsroom with sources we meet frequently for lunch or dinner.
Our policy on accepting gifts is also clear: We don’t. In this case, the businessman did not give the money to Carrie as a gift. He gave it to her asking her to wager it on his behalf in Las Vegas. Our ethics policies are clearly not meant to cover every imaginable situation, and do not address what to do if someone asks you to bet money for them.
But here’s the “however” – I still wish we had not accepted the $100 and agreed to wager it. It doesn’t violate the letter of the ethics policy, but, simply put, it looks bad. It opens us to the perception, as Barry interpreted it, that we took money from a source. It could potentially compromise our impartiality in the future. The best course of action in this case would have been to explain that we can’t accept the money or bet it for him.
But here’s another “however” – those types of decisions are difficult to think through on the spur of a moment when a source is asking you (with no ill intent) to bet the money for him. I know Carrie to be an ethical journalist who takes great pains to discuss potential conflicts with me or other editors. Many readers don’t know that about her, and know only that she wrote about taking $100 from a source. Given the benefit of time to discuss that decision, I believe she would have handled it differently.
Hindsight, as always, is much sharper than foresight.
