Metro Pulse/Editor's Corner/Conflict Is As Conflict Does

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Mixing government and media roles is risky

by Barry Henderson

Mike Hammond, the radio executive who rose through the ranks of journalism, joins the Knox County Commission in September. As director of operations for Citadel Broadcasting, which owns one AM and three FM stations, including the market leader, and operates another FM station in Knoxville, he has lots of media access. Does that constitute a conflict of interest? That depends on how he exercises his dual positions.

As one who endured an awkward situation for the past three years as a Metro Pulse editor whose wife was director of development for the city of Knoxville, I know what kind of dilemma Hammond will be in for. With my wife, Leslie, gone on to serve as the chief executive of the Roane Alliance, Roane County’s industrial development, tourism, and chamber of commerce overseers, I am relieved of that problem and can now write and edit and assign stories on city issues and discuss them openly in my office. That’s quite a relief, because this is Metro Pulse’s own city, after all. Even though I’ll refrain from discussing Roane County issues, that new potential conflict won’t be nearly so crippling.

Commissioner-elect Hammond, on the other hand, is just getting into the fray, so to speak. He’s had some fringe experience in the media/government arena, as he served as chairman of a panel that examined government efficiency, or lack thereof, for Knox County a few years ago.

Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming that his service on Commission will pose conflicting possibilities, I put the question to the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, a service sponsored by journalists with the Chicago Headline Club and the Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics. The partnership offers guidance and, if possible, provides answers to sticky questions of ethics that may confront journalists anywhere.

Frank Pantaleo, the AdviceLine member who got back to me about my concern over Hammond’s situation, said there was certainly the potential for conflict there, just as there was for my wife and me.

He told me to get back with them if an occasion arose when I thought a conflict was manifesting itself for me or other media members locally, including the commissioner-elect.

For his part, Hammond talked openly about the possibility of conflict. “The question came up a couple of times in the campaign in media interviews for TV,” he said. His answer was and is that his “goal is to do the right thing” were a conflict to arise. He announced his candidacy on Hallerin Hilton Hill’s talk show on a Citadel company station, but he said that wasn’t his idea. “They [Hal Hill and his producer] asked me to,” he said.

“I have taken myself out of the news department,” Hammond said, and he explained that the news is now under a different chain of command, headed by Ed Brantley. He said he no longer hosts a talk show, as he has in the past, but does appear occasionally as a “guest commentator” on talk-radio shows. He said county issues shouldn’t be expected to be taken up in that setting. “If something does come up,” he said, “I want to do what’s appropriate and handle it in a proper way.

“I don’t want my credibility damaged,” he said. Fair enough. Needless to say, other media members will be looking over his shoulder as he discharges his duties on Commission and maintains his official capacity as Citadel’s local operations director.

Hammond said he still considers himself a journalist. I hope so. Even though journalists are not licensed or regulated or bound by any formal code of ethics, they grow to know the importance of ethical behavior and performance and the avoidance of conflicts of interest in ways that the average politician may not understand.

Codes of ethics are imposed by some news organizations on their employees. They often seem complex, but they readily distill down to a few simple proscriptions, such as “don’t sleep with your sources,” “don’t plagiarize from other material,” “don’t accept gifts from subjects or potential subjects of news stories or objects of editorial comment,” “don’t lie or deliberately misrepresent yourself on the job,” and “don’t take advantage of your position to secure favors.” To that, I would add, “Don’t take part in any government that your institution is covering,” but that doesn’t necessarily apply in Hammond’s case.

Well-considered and formulated codes themselves, no matter how they are framed or enforced, are only as good as the individual ethics of the persons expected to abide by them. Our personal code of conscience is what guides us in our work—that and the First Amendment to the Constitution, which leaves things pretty open-ended for the calling of journalism.

There is one check on our conduct that I should mention, and that I hope will never go away. That’s the notion...nay the promise...that if we do unethical things in the course of our journalistic practices, our colleagues and competitors are sure to rat us out. Good for them. Good for us. There’s an eye somewhere back there over each of our shoulders.