News judgment vital

Having been a working journalist and journalism professor who entered the professional journalism field in 1974, I can attest to the importance of advertising dollars as fundamental economic support for media outlets. I do not, however, see those dollars as philosophically more important than the judgment of news media employees, so I cringe each time I read the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s “Statement of core values” that appears daily on the newspaper’s page 2A.

The statement lists, in order of importance, the paper’s five constituencies, with readers, advertisers, and employees listed as first, second, and third, respectively. The implication of these rankings is that advertisers are held in higher regard than employees.

Though they may not mean to do so, these rankings could also imply that a major advertiser’s wishes concerning a story involving that advertiser might overrule an editor’s judgment about running the story or how the story should be written.

Advertiser power is not unknown to the journalism field, and in the history of the field such power has both “killed” or adjusted negative stories about individual advertisers and saved from the trash bin non-newsworthy stories that promote certain advertisers.

Despite the current statement’s references to impartiality and truth, I believe the constituency rankings undermine those laudable sentiments. To place the Democrat-Gazette’s news and opinion content above suspicion of advertiser influence, the paper’s publisher should revise the core values statement to reflect the ultimate editorial decision-making power of the paper’s news-editorial employees. BRUCE L. PLOPPER

Conway