Magazine Aims Ethics Message at Politicians

Readers won’t find a picture of Princess Di or Michael J. Fox on the cover of a new magazine published in Southern California. They won’t even find a picture, just words, and lots of them.

Words like honesty, integrity, fidelity, fairness, accountability, listed in red and defined in gray--words the public sometimes thinks are foreign to the magazine’s target audience: politicians.

The magazine, Ethics: Easier Said Than Done, is the brainchild of Michael Josephson, an independently wealthy former law professor and founder of the Marina del Rey-based Josephson Institute for the Advancement of Ethics.

Its Audience

It is written for public servants who are interested in doing good, or at least should be, Josephson said.

The second issue--a 154-page double edition--has an “Ethics in Government” theme and features articles on ethics culled from a variety of sources and essays by lawmakers, journalists, attorneys and others.

Josephson is distributing the quarterly magazine to 10,000 public servants nationwide, a readership he calls “every major politician in the country.”

“Even if it’s not read, people will say, ‘There’s something going on here, there’s a movement,’ ” Josephson said recently.

The spring-summer 1988 edition includes essays from such people as former Iowa Sen. John C. Culver, Connecticut legislator Irving J. Stolberg, Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, California Sen. Alan Cranston, U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard Thornburgh, and U.S. Atty. Rudolph Giuliani.

An article by Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox calls for a “rebirth of the sense that public office and public employment are sacred trusts.”

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd writes that politicians should “consider their actions, not just in the light of tomorrow’s headlines, but also with reflection on their consequences a month, a year, five years later.”

‘Over-Simplistic View’

Nick Kotz, author of the well-received book, “Wild Blue Yonder: Money, Politics and the B-1 Bomber,” writes that many people have an “over-simplistic view of ethics” and that “real ethical decisions are very complicated.”

The magazine is an outgrowth of Josephson’s nonprofit institute founded nearly two years ago as a public service venture, sponsoring workshops on ethics for public officials, their aides and journalists.

The quarterly has no advertising, except for a couple of plugs for the institute.

Each issue will focus on a specific topic, with future editions dedicated to ethics and the law and ethics in business.

Josephson is distributing the magazine with the help of the National Conference of Mayors, the national associations of state legislators and state attorneys general, and other similar groups.