The Sources’ Stake in the News

[deminks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17pubed.html ?

WHEN The Times interviewed Michael Chertoff about airport security after the underwear bomber tried to blow up a passenger jet on Christmas Day, he said full-body scanners should be deployed at airports. Chertoff, the former secretary of homeland security, did not volunteer that he is a consultant to a company that makes such equipment, and though they spoke to him twice, reporters never asked if he had a financial stake in the matter.

Peter Galbraith, a former diplomat, wrote several Op-Ed columns a few years ago supporting a strong and independent Kurdistan. The editors who published his pieces learned only in November — from a front-page article — that Galbraith’s business ties to a Norwegian oil company operating in Kurdistan positioned him to earn millions.

Jonathan Gruber, a prominent M.I.T. health economist, wrote an Op-Ed column and was quoted frequently in other Times columns, news articles and blogs on health care reform before it came to light that he had a contract worth nearly $400,000 to analyze health proposals for the Obama administration.

Neil Sadick, a famed Manhattan dermatologist, was quoted in a Skin Deep column discussing electronic devices for the home treatment of acne, but the article did not say that Sadick has a business relationship with a company that makes one of the devices.

These examples have resulted in five embarrassing editors’ notes in the last two months — two of them last week — each of them saying readers should have been informed of the undisclosed interest. And on Thursday, the standards editor sent Times journalists a memo urging them to be “constantly alert” to the outside interests of expert sources. The cases raised timeless issues for journalists and sources about what readers have a right to know and whose responsibility it is to find it out or disclose it.

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Chertoff further adds that it isn't his job to disclose his financial affiliations. It's the reporter's job to ask.