ASBPE releases new editorial ethics
guide
Approved revision of ethics
guide calls for increased transparency.
After a six-month review
of ethical issues that face business-to-business
(B2B) magazine
editors, ASBPE has approved a new set of
standards. They are detailed in a document
called “ASBPE Guidelines for Preferred Editorial
Practices.”
The
new guidelines were approved unanimously
by the 18 ASBPE board members in April
and are available to anyone.
(View
as web page or download
Adobe PDF [128K].)
To be introduced at national conference
The guide will be formally introduced in
detail at the National
Editorial Conference in Chicago on July
20–21.
One of the most important differences between
the old guidelines and the new one is the
call for transparency. The guidelines urge
editors to help ensure that publishers
thoroughly publicize their ethical standards
and codes that guide them, whatever they
are, to its internal staff and externally
to readers, advertisers, and others in
a publication’s marketplace.
Transparency is important
because the press often gets a bad name
when it clearly does
not tell its various constituencies what
standards and procedures it uses and why.
In general, these new
guidelines provide more detail about the
previous guide’s
provisions. It also delves into new territory
covering graphics, photography, research,
trade shows, contests, and other operations.
The major topics covered are:
- Conflicts of interest
- Standards for editorial operations
- Graphics and photography
- Special
advertising sections
- Conferences, trade
shows
- Nonprofit publications
- Digital publications
The
ethics committee’s job
The ethics committee
named last fall by the ASBPE board thoroughly
analyzed the
organization’s old “Code of
Preferred Editorial Practices,” last
revised in November 2000. The group also
studied ethics codes of numerous other
journalism associations and publishing
houses and consulted with journalism ethics
educators and consultants.
Ethics committee members
included
- president Roy Harris;
- vice president Portia Stewart;
- treasurer Ira Pilchen;
- Philadelphia
chapter president Michael Lear-Olimpi;
- past president
Paul Heney, and
- associate director
Robin Sherman.
Jeffrey Seglin, the
noted business-ethics writer, now an associate
professor of publishing
at Emerson College, served as special consultant
to the committee.
“The committee did an amazing job of researching
and analyzing media ethics codes,” Seglin
said. “It thoroughly questioned every
aspect of the existing ASBPE guidelines
to make sure the strongest guidelines for
ASBPE member publications was the end result.” Said ASPBE president
Harris: “Our
organization can be proud of the extremely
hard work that went into this, including,
at times, excruciating examinations of
standards that have been made part of more
than a dozen other codes. We wanted to
make sure that what we adopted was just
right for B2B publishing.
“We also needed
our guidelines to be flexible enough to
change with the expanding ethical
scene, and yet to provide firm boundaries
for editors who raise ethical questions
in their organizations.”
The ethics committee’s work goes
on. The new guidelines establish a standing
committee to monitor ethical issues, suggest
updates, and be a sounding-board for editors
who may raise ethical questions. The committee
also will solicit comments from ASBPE members
and others and pursue continuing ethics
conversations
on the Society’s online discussion
forum and at conferences and chapter meetings.
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