The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists - About Free Services Provided by Ethics AdviceLine. seems like a distributed toolset for providing ethics advise from a trusted source. We should look into setting these up for campaign workers and environmental professionals as a mechinism to provide a community "sounding board" for ideas and strategies.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists is provided as a public service at no charge by the Chicago Headline Club Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It is funded in part by the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists got a call from a reporter who began: "I am about to do a story that may cause something bad to happen." This was one of more than 350 calls Ethics AdviceLine has taken in the last four years from journalists who are struggling to do the right thing. Ethics AdviceLine is a free service to professional journalists who are seeking the correct course of ethical conduct while covering the news. Just call 866-DILEMMA. Calls are usually answered within 24 hours. The service is national in scope. Ethics AdviceLine's goal is not to tell callers what to do. "About two-thirds of the people call because they are really puzzled and are glad there is someone to talk to them," said Dr. David Ozar, director of Loyola University Chicago's Center for Ethics and Social Justice. "What they get is a way of thinking, to think through the problem." Questions often involve conflicts of interest, relationships with news sources and weighing the harm that might come from reporting a story.
Great stuff.
