Gov. Palin: Asking tough questions is what we DO

 I’m not sure what Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin learned “all those years ago” when she got her journalism degree, but teaching journalism students then and now to ask tough questions is not an ethics issue.

 Asking tough questions is what we do. Asking tough questions is what we’re supposed to do. And our audiences should be demanding that we ask tough questions because we represent them in our wonderful Democracy.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was responding to a blogger’s question about whether network anchors Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric had been unfair in their questioning of her.

Palin said that she was “surprised that so much has changed since I received my education in journalistic ethics all those years ago.”

So just what about asking important questions in a thoughtful and respectful way is unethical? As Kelly McBride points out in her Everyday Ethics column http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=67&aid=151526, Palin was essentially interviewing for a job — Vice President of the United States. She is, in an often overused reminder, a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Don’t Gibson and Couric have a right, even a duty, to ask her about foreign policy, economic plans, health care and more? Don’t reporters owe it to viewers and readers to ask tough questions because as McBride points out, it’s unlikely that voters will be able to ask those questions themselves? Aren’t journalists the ones who get blamed when they don’t dig deep enough into significant issues (see the debate about reporting leading up to the Iraq war)?

Neither Gibson nor Couric asked “gotcha” questions. Both asked fair questions in a straightforward manner, with respect and deference to the candidate. The reporters neither led Gov. Palin to an awkward response nor ambushed her for one.

I got a journalism degree nearly 10 years before Palin did and I remember the lessons pretty clearly. I teach media ethics now after a newspaper career of more than 20 years. The lessons were and are still relevant, but the issue of media credibility has become more urgent.

We were taught, among other things, to be fair, to avoid bias and to seek the truth. There are important media ethics issues involving deception, conflicts of interest, sensationalism, manipulation, anonymous sources, etc. that journalists should learn and avoid. But the Gibson and Couric interviews don’t veer into those issues. Where is the ethics dilemma?

Ethics is part of journalism education. Good journalists do what Gibson and Couric did, without sensationalism, without ambush, without bias.

That’s what we do.

Filed under: Ethics