Tuesday’s Editor & Publisher story about a proposed update to the ethics policy at the Associated Press detailed some concerns among union leaders about some of the restrictions involved. That being said, it appears that many of the tenets put forth are basic principles that AP staffers - along with journalists elsewhere - have followed for years.
A veteran AP reporter tells TMD that the rules surrounding anonymous sources “are not controversial at all,” and reiterated that this concept has been applied for quite some time. However, the idea that “editors and writers who regularly cover the financial markets may not own stock in any company” need additional clarification, as fixtures such as specialized mutual funds “could present some conflict-of-interest problems” for staffers. This is the type of feedback that AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll was looking to receive before making this policy formal, as discussed in the E&P article.
One thing I found to be curious was the new guideline for approval of any and all freelancing, irrelevant of a staffer’s perception of conflict of interest, at the same time that there are reportedly discussions within AP’s management circles to be “more supportive” towards staffers who are looking to write their own books. E&P’s Joe Strupp points out that AP staffers are permitted to freelance, according to their News Media Guild contract, “as long as there is no conflict with a writer’s AP assignments.” The issue here is that many reporters have books that evolved out of stories they covered for the AP at one point - so a case-by-case scenario may come out of this.
[update] Doug Fisher has more, including a link to the entire policy.
