James Carey, a professor of ethics at the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism, has castigated a Detroit television station for refusing to
comment on a recent scuffle that reportedly broke out between one of its
news crews and a group of young people who objected to the station’s
coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
Asked about the incident, Jeff
Murri, manager of Fox-owned WJBK, told Detroit’s Metro Times, “We
have no comment, and it’s a company policy not to comment until the
investigation is complete.”
Carey called such a response “unacceptable,”
telling the newsweekly, “Just to say to another journalistic
organization, ‘We’re not going to talk about it,’ is to violate the
implicit contract that journalists have with readers and viewers. …How can such an organization expect people to feel under any obligation
to answer their inquiries when they won’t answer themselves when charges
are brought against them, in one sense or another? I really don’t have
much tolerance for that, at all. And I don’t think any of us should.”
