Judith Kaye got right to the point of Thursday night’s ‘Sex, Money and the Press’ panel before it even started. Looking out into the audience, she pointed to the students and asked, ‘What better groups to include in our discussion than a generation that will very soon fall likely to the error of today’s journalists?’

Kaye, chief judge of New York State, served as the opening speaker for a panel of judges, lawyers and journalists at Thursday’s event. They addressed ethical dilemmas that occur when the interests of the free press clash with the privacy rights of the accused to a full house. The event was held at 7:30 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The discourse followed a hypothetical format, in which moderator Albert Rosenblatt, a retired associate judge with the New York State Court of Appeals, would pose a hypothetical situation for the 11 panelists to address.

Rosenblatt began the panel by proposing that an imaginary man named Samuel Wilson, founder of a Fortune 500 company, became embroiled in a lawsuit involving a sexual harassment complaint from a former assistant. The situation then diverged into more complex ethical situations for the panelists to address what they would do in each situation.

The panel, free and open for the public, was set to end at 9 p.m. but continued until 9:40 p.m. The question-and-answer session with the audience got cut short after a prolonged debate between several of the panelists.

Katherine Hughes, who is taking a documentary class in television, radio and film and whose husband is an emeritus professor in education, was the only audience member the panelists had a chance to answer in the delayed session. Hughes felt there was an important voice missing from the panel of judges, lawyers and journalists.

‘If a person that is innocent of charges could have been up there, it would have added a dimension to the discussion we didn’t get to see,’ she said.

Hughes witnessed local newspapers in her hometown smear a fellow community member and attended the panel out of concern for media coverage of innocent or guilty persons.

‘They said he had ties to a terrorist,’ she said. ‘They destroyed his life and they continue to do so. I feel very passionately about civil liberties and really appreciated this discussion tonight.’

Lorraine Branham, dean of Newhouse, served as one of the panelists. She said she thought the lineup of panelists did a good job highlighting the complexities of the issues on the table.

‘It touched on the difficulties journalists face when making decisions for stories,’ Branham said, ‘especially in the world of new media and how complex it’s become.’

At times during the discussion, some panelists did not get a chance to voice their opinion as much as others and it was difficult for all voices to be heard, Branham said.

Irene Liu, one of the featured panelists and a staff writer for the Albany Times Union’s Capitol Confidential blog, capitalized on her role as a blogger to address whether bloggers should maintain the same standard of ethics conventional journalists do when it comes to reporting inflammatory stories.

‘Nothing goes in our blog that I’m not confident in,’ Liu said. ‘We have a different role than print media, but we have the same standards. If there is something shady going on it is our job to investigate it.’

William Easton, another panelist and a Rochester defense attorney, engaged in an extensive debate with Liu and Mike Grygiel – an attorney with Hiscock and Barclay -toward the end of the discussion in response to whether reporters have an obligation to hand over subpoenaed video of a crime they witnessed and recorded.

‘The reporters I’ve always talked to relish the prospect of jail time,’ Easton said as the audience laughed. ‘They want a story and there’s no better story for them than a reporter going to jail. And they want their sources to know that they will go to jail for them.’

Liu conceded Easton’s point. ‘Journalists around the world risk much more than jail in order to do the public justice.’

blbump@syr.edu

Published on November 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm