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Marlow [host]: Welcome to all of you and, since we've made some reference, Bill Boyarsky, to the Staples Center issue, this was when the times put out a special magazine on the new Staples Center, not as an advertising supplement, but as one of the Sunday magazines, without divulging that they were sharing all the ad revenue for the magazine with staples. How could something like that happen?
Boyarsky: Well, it happened because the line had been crossed. The publisher and the CEO had gradually forced the paper, forced the staff, inch by inch to cross the line, you know, of letting advertisers, of letting the business practices, influence the news.
Marlow: The newsroom didn't know that?
Boyarsky: No, the newsroom -- well, the newsroom -- I always thought that that issue -- I never liked that issue. I thought it was an advertising-generated issue. I was the city editor and I would not have -- I didn't want to have any of my people do it and they wanted Jim Newton to write this story on how the Staples Center would help downtown. Newton absolutely refused. Then there was incredible pressure on me and I finally, not realizing there was this business arrangement, I got another reporter to do it and he really wrote a very, very tough story, saying Staples wouldn't help downtown and they published it in the magazine. They agreed that they would make no changes after I had edited it.
Zavala [host]: Now the L.A. Times learned its lesson. It was very embarrassed in public and it's one of the reasons why they now have an ethicist. But, Jeff, in television news, you know, both Jess and I have worked in commercial news, there's no such things as ethics teams. Is there an ethicist at channel 5?
Wald: Well, we have a managing editor by the name of Hal Fishman who's been around the block a few times, 42 years as an anchor in Los Angeles. He's our gatekeeper. He reads every bit of copy that goes out on our ten o'clock news in the morning. We have Marcia Brandwynne, our executive producer. She checks everything over. So it's a little different arrangement in a television news operation than it would be in a newspaper.
Zavala: So you're saying the ethics are integrated into the individuals in charge and you just depend on their personal integrity?
Wald: You hire good people and you trust them, yes.
Marlow: Now we don't have sponsors. We don't have commercials here, but we do rely, Van Aauter, on foundations giving us grants, individuals giving us grants. Is it the potential for unethical conduct as a result of that?
Sauter: Oh, I would imagine there is always a vulnerability. I think the likelihood is truly quite small. And I think we live in a world today in the news business where the possibility, with the rare exceptions as the Staples, of someone shilling for an endeavor or some reporter selling out for cash under the table. That's very, very small. The real ethical issues in journalism today come down to fairness, balance, impartiality. that's where the struggle takes place. That's the terrain and it's very rocky.
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