What ethical code, if any, does the journalist feel obligated to honor?
In McCarthy’s era, the official code of journalists — espoused in ethics canons of journalism associations and journalism textbooks — had objectivity as its backbone (even when journalists acknowledged that true objectivity was impossible). The “Canons of Journalism” of the American Society of Newspaper Editors called for old-fashioned impartiality: “News reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind.”31 But one-sidedness seemed to be the principle in play at numerous news organizations. On the left, Ralph Ingersoll’s PM newspaper in New York City told its journalists to seek the truth, not objectivity, which in effect meant pro-labor, anti-isolationist reporting and editorializing.32 On the right, Hearst’s newspapers lived by the anti-labor family bible — Hearst’s thick, self-published book, Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Randolph Hearst.33 Today, some news organizations, out of laziness or lack of concern or on the advice of legal counsel, do not as
