Handling Conflict: Well, Recuuuse Me

Odds are you couldn’t care less about my personal life, and I actually have no desire to share details with you. But in the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should take time to divulge one new development, however self-indulgent it may seem.

My name is Brian Lowry, and I have a conflict of interest, and I thought it best to come clean so you can judge for yourself. My wife, Joanna, has just taken a job as head of publicity at the UPN network. As a result, I won’t be writing about UPN and its shows, recusing myself in the same way a judge wouldn’t preside over a case involving a family member.

This will pretty much keep me out of chronicling doings at UPN for some time. Even if we get divorced, after all--and if Tom and Nicole and Alec and Kim can’t make it, what chance do we really have?--then my ex-wife will be employed by UPN. (She previously worked for an independent company that produces, among other things, the Fox series “Boot Camp.” I’ve recused myself on that front as well, though a small company is easier to avoid than an entire network.)

To be clear, this doesn’t mean I can’t mention UPN in the broadest of strokes, as in “There are 20 new comedies on the six networks, including the WB and UPN.” Still, any specific coverage of the network or its programming is off limits, leaving colleagues to explore the cultural significance of “WWF Smackdown!” and “Chains of Love.”

Admittedly, I have grappled with professional conflicts before. Before joining The Times, I wrote two authorized companion books to “The X-Files,” and though that was five years ago, for appearances’ sake I still recuse myself from any extensive coverage of the series, other than the occasional reference to its ratings.

Speaking of “The X-Files,” humorless types with a penchant for conspiracy theories could easily see a problem in me covering TV at all in light of this awkward new entanglement. The obvious fear is I might unduly punish other networks to benefit UPN, which I assure you will not be the case.

For starters, in a sign of just how fraught with conflict the media world has become thanks to corporate consolidation, UPN’s principal competitor is the WB, which is part-owned by Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times. So theoretically, I have more interest in the WB being healthy--Tribune ultimately signs my checks, after all--than UPN any old day.

It’s also worth pointing out I’m hardly alone in dealing with this kind of dilemma. In fact, there’s a long, sordid history of such conflicts, some more nettlesome than others.

When I was at the Hollywood Reporter in the mid-1980s, our senior TV reporter was married to the head of TV publicity at a top public-relations firm. On more than one occasion, he would come in, pick up archrival Daily Variety and announce in a loud voice his wife had stabbed him in the back, albeit in somewhat more colorful terms.

In another parallel, CBS’ senior vice president of public relations is married to a former producer at “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood,” a conflict eliminated when his wife had the audacity to choose seeing her children during daylight hours over haggling with publicists.

Currently, Bernard Weinraub, an entertainment reporter at the New York Times, is married to Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures. And with all due respect to UPN, I’m pretty sure Pascal ranked ahead of UPN’s publicity chief on Premiere magazine’s annual “power” list.

As for TV journalists, Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s respected international correspondent, married then-State Department spokesman James Rubin in 1998. Other couples facing possible two-career issues include NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell (married to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan), ABC News’ Diane Sawyer (wed to director Mike Nichols) and Willow Bay, co-anchor of CNN’s “Moneyline” program, the wife of Walt Disney Co. President Robert Iger.

Journalists must also be wary of the appearance of being in bed with those they cover in less literal fashion. New York Times TV reporter Bill Carter, for example, has sold rights to two nonfiction books as the basis for made-for-TV movies--HBO’s 1996 production “The Late Shift” and TNT’s upcoming “Monday Night Mayhem”--and worked on the scripts for both.

The point here is it’s not uncommon for such situations to arise, particularly given the way media mergers have placed more outlets in fewer corporate hands.

These other examples of potential conflicts in no way diminish the seriousness of my own dangerous liaison from a journalistic standpoint. The Times’ Howard Rosenberg summed it up in 1999, writing in regard to highly paid TV news stars who hobnob with celebrities in the same social strata, “Perceptions do have a way of becoming reality in the public eye.”

News organizations don’t always tell you when these situations crop up, and the truth is they should. Because while most of you probably don’t care, those who do deserve to know. As Bob Steele, senior faculty and ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, recently stated regarding the seldom-mentioned corporate ownership of “Access Hollywood” and “Entertainment Tonight,” “Even if some viewers don’t want it, it’s valuable information, upon which [people] can make decisions about journalistic quality and credibility.”

In other words, you should be able to decide whether this influences how you perceive my work. Because the plain fact is, credibility and fairness are all I have to offer, my most marketable commodity. Unless you’re Brad Pitt, boyish charm and good looks only go so far.

So now you know, and to be honest, the confessional process wasn’t as tough as I anticipated. In fact, as long as I’m baring my soul, now seems a good time to unburden myself of a couple of other biases I harbor, just for the record.

As a UCLA graduate, I become ill at the sound of USC’s fight song. I try to be fair when I write about USC, and since it has the Annenberg School for Communication and a respected journalism department, I end up quoting their professors more often than those from my alma mater. I just suppress the urge to wave dollar bills at them.

Also, I find it hard to believe anyone can relay messages to us from dead relatives with an A, E, I, O or U in their names who “need to be acknowledged.” So if you see me discuss “Crossing Over With John Edward,” a series on the Sci-Fi Channel bound for local TV stations later this year, let’s just say I’m skeptical.

Other than that, I reserve my opinions for television, and there’s a wide world of it out there beyond UPN. So as Indiana Jones would say, trust me . . . or don’t. It’s your call.

An afterthought: Ruminating about journalistic ethics brought to mind Tom Pryor, the former editor of Daily Variety who died March 19. Pryor was nearing the end of nearly three decades at the trade paper when I began my own 9-year tenure there.

Pryor had his sacred cows--I recall a negative review of a Bob Hope special that never found its way into print--but he was staunchly committed to the sanctity of news coverage and keeping it wholly separate from business considerations.

In short, Pryor radiated integrity--a trait that seems increasingly rare and precious. While I have no idea what he would say about my current predicament, all I can say is thanks for the memories.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.