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Sometimes ethics can conflict with interests
© St. Petersburg Times, There's a story floating around Pasco County now that I would love to have a piece of. It has all of the earmarks of good satire fodder -- squabbles, name calling, a buffoon or three -- but I can't write about it because I am personally close to one of the players. That's just how it is sometimes. Staying on the right side of the ethical borders that define a conflict of interest can be tough when you work in the same small town for 28 years and tend to get married a lot. It is a basic public misconception that journalists have at their fingertips the means to punish or reward people over personal disputes, or to help their friends do that. Actually, it works just the other way. When I have a conflict of interest with someone, I am extremely limited in what I can write abut him or her. For instance, I might write about some personal humorous situations involving someone close to me, but as soon as he or she hits the news, I have to back off, and if I was inclined to lobby the reporters who are covering it, they would ignore me. In 1975 I was divorced from one woman who worked at the courthouse and married another who worked there, placing two persons in the same building with the same last name and first initial. It was always fun at home when they got each other's flowers, mail or telephone calls. The first was a court reporter who, when we began dating, was working with a grand jury, the proceedings of which are secret. When, after our second date, we went to tell her boss about the conflict and recommend that she not cover grand juries any more, he was already on the phone with a screaming state attorney who was sure I was getting inside info. I wasn't. The same, now former, state attorney, Jimmy Russell, also heard the going joke around the old Pasco County Courthouse that I had current or ex-wives on the first and third floors and would go for the trifecta, marrying someone on the second floor, where his office was. He advised his female employees that would not be a good thing. I don't think any of them were interested anyway. My late wife worked in the Circuit Clerk's office, and I actually went and talked to the clerk who was in office at the time before I asked her out, explaining that I couldn't write about him any more if we dated. He had been the subject of a column or two, and enthusiastically endorsed our relationship. The name of his successor, Jed Pittman, only appeared in my column three times during the 21 years that she worked for him, and always only in passing. In 1970 I was married to a woman who was also a competitor, working for a cable television company owned by the same family that owned the Illinois newspaper for which I wrote. That brings about a whole different area of conflict. She came home one day desperate to take our (only) car because our newspaper that day had broken a major story, and she had nothing on it for her upcoming newscast. I pretended reluctance before relenting and letting her rush off to cover what had been an April Fool's Day joke, a story about a live dinosaur egg being found in the excavation at a building site next to the newspaper. I made sure that there was a welcoming committee from both the newspaper and television offices on hand when she arrived and started videotaping. That was shortly before the divorce, as I recall. You can't work in an area for the better part of three decades without making friends and enemies, some of whom wind up in the news. Sometimes it seems like once a month that I have to stay away from a story because of the involvement of a close friend or someone I used to date or someone I once had a dispute with (or all three). Traditionally I either write the boss a memo or drop into his office to explain the situation, so that he will be prepared for telephone calls accusing me of purposefully overlooking something. It means that he has to hear a lot more about my personal life than he wants to. I don't think he bought the one about me and Julia Roberts, though. It's okay, she doesn't come up that much around here.
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Times columns today Jan Glidewell Gary Shelton John C. Cotey Joanne Korth Eric Deggans From the Times North Suncoast desks |
