Field Notes: The Media School Travel Blog

“Seek truth and report it,” goes the Society for Professional Journalists code of ethics. “Minimize harm. Act independently. Be accountable and transparent.”

In the abstract, these guiding principles are easy to follow and abide by. But not everything’s black and white. Poynter Institute senior faculty member Al Tompkins focused on just that in his session, “Tough ethics calls on deadline.”

Using a viral photo of an Ohio overdose (warning: graphic photo at link) as the situation, Tompkins had a simple question: If you were the editor, would you publish this photo?

The answer, we discovered together, is that there’s no right, wrong or easy answer.

“Your gut reaction almost always forces you into a yes or no,” Tompkins said.

My gut reaction after seeing this photo, for example, was to not publish the photo.

Of course, there’s more to my “no,” — there’s my own feelings, concerns and convictions about the situation. There’s outside context to the situation, there’s a community to consider and, of course, there’s the fact that the police department posted that very photo on its Facebook page.

The mistake editors often make is feeling trapped into binary decisions. Instead of getting stuck in the binary, editors, management and decision-makers within newsrooms can free themselves by finding alternatives.

It starts with making sure with a diverse set of people have a seat at the table, Tompkins said. But it shouldn’t end with that. Diversity — whether that’s race, experience, class, sexuality, gender — doesn’t matter if those people don’t have a voice.

It doesn’t end with just one other choice. Every situation has more than two choices. A balance exists between the two extremes. Going with the balance isn’t always the ideal situation, I learned, but the compromise between the two binary choices should be on the table.

How would you handle this situation?