A Question of Journalistic Ethics

They seemed more like the bad guy extras in a James Bond movie than any photographers I have ever known, the pursuers with their cameras and motorcycles who chased after the beautiful princess in Paris.

But every journalist had to wince last week at the first reports of the death of Princess Diana. Not just because of the tragedy itself, but because we recognize that some people see no difference between tabloid paparazzi and the mainstream press.

And after that, it was time for some soul searching.

Obviously, as the mainstream press pointed out ad nauseam, there are major differences between it and that other world where people who can barely get a lens cap off their cameras can walk away with $500,000 for a photo of a celebrity on a beach.

But it’s convenient for some people who would like to blame the press for every imaginable evil to blur the differences. And that is as true in Ventura County as in any other community where journalists go about their daily chores.

Simply proclaiming our virtue to the world isn’t sufficient. And thus the importance these past few days of taking a little more time than usual to look at ourselves, to ask if there is anything we are doing here that we really shouldn’t.

This week’s quick morality check by the reporters and editors and photographers I work with left me feeling prouder than ever of them and the motives that drive them.

Please listen for a moment to Larry Bessel, photo chief of the Ventura County Edition and a man I have worked with for 20 years, who was horrified by the scene in Paris and more than a little worried about the possible fallout here.

“I know that we look alike,” Bessel wrote. “Cameras hanging from our shoulders, the motions that we make while trying to compose and capture that elusive image. But please don’t prejudge us as paparazzi. To a real photojournalist, that’s a dirty word.

“When we go on assignment and become visible to you, we not only carry camera gear in our bag, we carry our education, our experience, our love of getting the story, our compassion, our dedication to getting the truth to you, the newspaper reader,” he added.

“You see our images every day. They bring the world, your community, to you when you sip your morning coffee. Through our eyes you see the agony of war, the storms, the floods, the earthquakes and the disasters that we all face.

“We lead exciting lives to give you these images and sometimes we risk our lives for you,” he concluded. “We do this because we hope that once in a while one of our images touches you and lets you feel some of the emotion that we feel in bringing them to you.”

It was pretty much the same from others I talked to this week. There are difficult ethical decisions made every day at any newspaper, sometimes made even tougher by the pressures of competition. And we don’t agree on everything.

When a police officer has been fatally shot, for example, should we press to interview the widow and other relatives, as both we and our competition routinely do? On one hand, nobody carrying out such an assignment enjoys it. On the other, only relatives and friends can really tell the world what kind of human being the community just lost.

We’re not perfect. But we take these questions of ethics seriously, and we know you do, too. Just as this is a good time for us to take a look in the mirror, it’s a good time to ask how we appear to you. Please send us your thoughts.

We can probably all agree that high-speed chases of celebrities aren’t a good idea. But, with your help, I would like to refine the debate a bit more in terms of press ethics in Ventura County.