In media we trust?

Car dealers, politicians, journalists. What do these professions have in common? People don’t trust them.

A September 2004 Gallup poll placed members of the media below nursing home operators and state officeholders in terms of trustworthiness. Given the recent spate of high-profile editorial failures -- from The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair fabricating articles whole cloth, to Dan Rather basing a major investigative report on unauthenticated documents -- it’s no surprise the media is held in such low regard.

Sadly, such things happen. And when they do, journalists must own up to their mistakes and make changes to prevent further occurrences. That’s what we’re up against this week, after learning that four InfoWorld articles -- covering blogs, phishing, spyware, and identity-based security -- published since September may contain fabricated quotes. The pieces, by freelancer Michelle Delio, include statements from seven unverifiable sources -- subjects for whom a company name or affiliation was not supplied. Although the quotes may, in fact, be legitimate, Delio has not responded to our requests for her sources’ contact information.

Delio’s “sourced” attributions -- quotes and information for which identifiable persons or sources are given -- appear legitimate, although we’re still investigating. In the meantime, we have re-edited all four articles to remove anonymous quotes and have reposted the revised pieces online with notes explaining what was done.

To prevent any reoccurrence, InfoWorld is changing its editorial policy to forbid anonymous or incompletely identified sources within stories, except in exceptional cases personally approved by the editor in chief. On the rare occasion when we publish information from an anonymous source (say, an investigative piece in which an interviewee insists on anonymity), the writer will be required to share that person’s full contact information with InfoWorld.

While we’re on the subject of journalistic practices, I’d like to direct readers to the American Business Media’s Editorial Code of Ethics. The first two bullet points best sum up the spirit of the document. In it, member publications commit to “honesty, integrity, accuracy, thoroughness, and fairness in … reporting and editing.” They also pledge to “avoid all conflicts of interest as well as any appearances of such conflicts.”

InfoWorld is a member of the American Business Media trade association, and we have enthusiastically adopted its published standards. Ethics guidelines are nothing new to InfoWorld: We have maintained a strict editorial code for more than 26 years. But by signing on to this very public set of rules, we are sending an unambiguous message: Ethics matters at InfoWorld.