Bribery and Ethics

Today when we were talking about ethics and accepting gifts from people I thought about a story in my college photojournalism class:

My photojournalism teacher, John Smith (yes, that was his real name), was adamant about not accepting gifts from any sources because of an experience he had. He worked for KSL and he was covering a feature story about a fish farm (I want to say it was trout, but can't remember). It was just a fun, light feature and the farmers gave him about a $100 worth of fish. He really didn't think much of it and accepted it. A few months later the farm had a recall on the fish and were facing bad publicity. My teacher was in charge of this story and when he called the source he dealt with before, the source reminded him that they gave him a lot of free fish and said that should mean something. Of course, he still published the story but he saw a bad consequence of accepting gifts ... well, unless the fish made him sick.

Dana Savage
Innovations High School
Salt Lake City