Pondering journalistic ethics

Two recent articles in the Glens Falls Post-Star daily raise some interesting questions on journalistic ethics.

In the last week, one of the paper's big stories was an allegation against Hebron (NY) town supervisor Ken Talkington, a Democrat. A few Republican members of the town board accused him of showing up drunk to a town budget meeting. Was it appropriate to publish these unsubstantiated allegations against a politician made by his political enemies? It's questionable.

If they'd run anonymous attacks, I'd have no problem condemnding the paper's actions. But in fairness, The Post-Star published the actual names of Talkington's accusers. Does that automatically make it ok? I'm a bit uncomfortable with printing rumor as fact, especially when it's something fairly serious. The paper could reasonably counter that the report was justified since Talkington landed in hot water earlier in his term for driving while under the influence of alcohol and thus even though it's a rumor, it points to the possibility of a pattern of negative behavior.

However, I think the paper crossed the line when it ran an editorial condemning Talkington's judgement even though the allegations against Talkington remained unsubstantiated and were made by political opponents. In doing so, it implicitly accepted the accusations against the supervisor without explaining why.

Another recent story was that of Dr. Stephen Serlin, an obstetrician/gynecologist who was recently arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated.

On Friday, the paper reported a rumor that Serlin was not only intoxicated, but on his way to the hospital to perform a cesarean section on a pregnant woman. The woman claims she was told that Serlin was on call and that she was waiting for him in labor for some two hours but he didn't show up (presumably because he was arrested). Finally, another doctor in Serlin's practice, Dr. Ann Soucy, arrived to deliver the baby. Serlin claims that he passed off his on-call duties to Soucy earlier in the day.

The baby spent the next five days in Albany Medical Center with blood problems and continues to have medical problems, according to the paper.

Now, if it were certain that Serlin were on call, this would clearly be a story. But the new mother is the only one to make that claim, at least in the pages of The Post-Star.

Serlin, not surprisingly, denies he was on call. The president of Glens Falls Hospital would not comment, pending an investigation. Ditto the state health department. Soucy and the anesthesiologist in the surgery were also unavailable for comment.

So in other words, the paper had the allegation of the patient, a denial from the accused but comment from none of the many third parties in the case and it still decided to run the story.

There's just something about this approach that I find distasteful. At this point, it's merely a bunch of hearsay. A headline in the paper (or at least the edition I received) read: 'Doctor charged with DWI possibly on call.' This is too serious an allegation to be based on the adverb 'possibly.'

Couldn't the paper have waited until the health department or hospital concluded their investigations or until the paper had something, ANYTHING, more substantive?

The daily has tremendous power in the community. It's completely irresponsible of the Post-Star to be assassinating people's reputations unless they have something more concrete than mere he said-she said.


Update (sort of): The Post-Star has 'updated' the situation with an article with the illuminating title 'On-call status unclear in case of doctor charged with DWI.' Nothing's new and the paper felt the need to remind us that they know nothing new. Thanks guys!