Ethics Upside Down
Everyone he consulted,
including me, told Stuart Taylor he'd be in the doghouse if he went to work for
Kenneth Starr. Taylor is the Washington journalist whose 1996 American
Lawyer article forced the world to take Paula Jones seriously. Since
then, in print and on television, he has been a prominent anti-Clinton
commentator on Flytrap.
Taylor
told Starr no thanks. But now he's in the doghouse anyway--for even
considering a job with the special prosecutor. "A massive conflict,"
says White House spinner Paul Begala. "He conveyed a sense of independence and
objectivity that I now think is fraudulent." The White House had not previously
revealed its admiration for Stu Taylor's independence and objectivity. But many
of Taylor's journalistic colleagues, who do admire those qualities, agree that
they are now called into question. Taylor thus finds himself dropped into the
maw of a journalistic ethics controversy. This is a simultaneously terrifying,
infuriating, and boring place to be. (While there, perhaps, he may even bond
with Sidney Blumenthal, a journalist who is suffering a similar--and, in my
view, similarly unjust--torment for taking a job in the Clinton White
House.)
With a flurry of documents, Taylor can demonstrate--and
will, if you don't stop him--that he was never concurrently considering Starr's
offer and writing about the case. Furthermore, what he considered seriously was
not exactly a job but a full-time unpaid advisory role. But the interesting
question is: So what? What if he had considered an actual job? What if he had
actually gone to work for Starr? Why should that taint his past output or harm
his future career as a journalist?
"Conflict
of interest" is an overused and underanalyzed concept. Why is a conflict of
interest a bad thing? For a journalist, there are two possible answers. 1) The
conflict causes some kind of personal advantage to distort either your
perception of the truth or your willingness to honestly state what you
perceive. In other words, it amounts to a bribe. Or 2) the conflict reveals a
previously hidden incentive or tendency to misperceive or misstate the
truth.
As it happens, Taylor--a pal of mine--is a
zealot for the truth and driven to distraction by lying. That's what got him
into this mess. He is not a conservative or a Republican. He voted for Clinton
in '92. But he believes, as he wrote in the March 21 National
Journal , that there is "powerful evidence ... implicating the President
of the United States in dozens of perjuries [and] efforts to obstruct
justice and cover up" matters both sexual and financial. And he sincerely
believes it would be a tragedy for the country if a president was allowed to
get away with "mendacity" on this scale, if proved. You may find this a bit
overwrought (I do), you may question the facts or take a more worldly view of
what should be done about them. But these are his views, and he has made no
attempt to hide them.
So Starr
comes to Taylor and says: Please work for me. And Taylor thinks: If I really
believe what I've been writing, don't I have a patriotic duty to do whatever I
can to prevent this tragedy? In other words, he feels an ethical obligation to
live according to his publicly expressed beliefs. But in the topsy-turvy world
of "conflict of interest," it seems there is an ethical obligation not
to act on your publicly expressed beliefs. To act on your beliefs discredits
your expression of them and taints any beliefs you might express in the
future.
But how? Was the job offer, in effect, a bribe? Hardly.
Even before Taylor--not a rich man--proposed working at no charge for six
months, he would have made far less than he makes now. It would have meant
quitting a brand-new, prestigious journalism job, giving up all those TV
appearances, and the prospect, in just half a year, of unemployment lethally
combined with extreme unpopularity. No doubt the frisson of history was
a plus in Taylor's calculations, but only the call of duty--however unwelcome
and however misheard--can really explain why he would even consider giving up
what he had for what Starr was offering. If you're trying to corrupt Stu
Taylor, it's hard to think of anything less promising than this particular job
offer.
So does
the fact that Taylor paused to consider these questions (rather
than--what?--immediately declaring, "No, no, a thousand times no!" and running
Starr through with his scimitar?) reveal a disqualifying lack of "independence
and objectivity"? It certainly suggests Taylor is generally sympathetic to
Starr's mission--but that is clear enough from his writings. There's nothing
wrong with having an opinion--especially if your job, like Taylor's, allows you
to express it. Anyone who can study and write about controversial topics
without ever developing an opinion is an idiot, not an independent thinker. An
independent thinker is someone whose views are based on an honest assessment of
the facts and arguments. The fact that Taylor considered a job offer totally
consistent with his expressed views casts no light at all on the question of
his "independence." (Click for .)
The fallback ethics argument against Taylor is
that he should at least have disclosed the approach from Starr to his readers.
Taylor has a complicated defense of this one, too, but on balance and in
general, sure: Disclosure is a good idea. How can a journalist be against
disclosure? Keep in mind a couple of things, though. First, if there is no
actual conflict of interest involved, all you are protecting with disclosure is
your readers' right to reach the wrong conclusion. That's his or her right, all
right, but it's surely one of the lesser rights around. Second, a journalist
like Taylor is not like, say, a stock picker, the value of whose words depends
heavily on whether he can be trusted. Taylor makes arguments based largely on
public facts. These arguments stand or fall on their own, and readers don't
need to trust the author in order to evaluate them. Original reporting can't be
evaluated by the lay reader sitting in his or her armchair. But even here, an
ethical evaluation of the author isn't crucial. Especially on a big,
competitive story like this one, no one need be imprisoned in some biased
reporter's web of falsehoods unless the reporter's biases are comfortably
compatible with one's own.
Taylor
says the job discussions provided valuable information and insights that helped
him as a journalist. That's easy to believe. Suppose, then, that when Starr
approached him, Taylor had strung the prosecutor along, not overtly lying, but
milking him for information while only pretending to be interested in the job.
And then he published a triumphal scoop. Would the ethics cops have complained?
Unlikely. He'd be a hero of the profession. It's only the sincere consideration
of a job doing something you truly believe in that can wreck your career in
journalism.
Missed the link to more
blather on independence? Click .
