Not with a 10-foot poll

Being Frank/by Frank Ameduri

Last week a friend sent me a copy of a recent Gallup poll. It asked folks to rank professionals and public-service people according to honesty and ethics.

Nurses topped the poll as the most ethical and honest people in America, and grade-school teachers were number two.

Way down the list at number 16 were newspaper reporters. Yikes! The people who voted in this poll are convinced journalists are only the 16th-most ethical and honest Americans. We newspaper journalists finished behind state office holders, TV reporters and auto mechanics. TV reporters wear a lot of hairspray. Can you really trust someone who looks unmussed in a hurricane?

I have a very ethical mechanic, it's true, but I'm a journalist for Pete's sake. I was a little wounded by the whole thing. Didn't I choose this noble profession because I wanted to serve and protect my community? Didn't I commit to adhere to the strict ethical journalistic code?

Let me tell you, the soldiers' code pales in comparison. The presidential oath makes hardened journalists chuckle, and the Boy Scout code is child's play. I can't reveal most of the journalists' code to the public, but I can tell you that one line reads, "I'd rather have splinters in my gums than publish a falsehood, even if it's an accident." Another line reads, "I agree to have all political convictions and personal agendas surgically removed (without the benefit of anesthesia) before writing a single news article."

We're members of the Fourth Estate, you know? This is the only job specifically protected by the U.S. Constitution. Every year each journalist must make a pilgrimage to the basement of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where additional ethics and honesty are sewn into our spleens during a painful procedure.

Afterward, we must confess our journalistic transgressions to Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein in front of a statue of Horace Greeley. It's a ceremony that brings many young journalists to tears.

So, I got a little indignant about the poll. That's what journalists do. We get indignant. Then I started analyzing the situation, which is the other thing journalists do when we're supposed to be writing stories or editing copy or some other such nuisance.

First, I noticed the other professions that finished further down the list than one might expect. Clergy limped in at number seven, for instance, behind medical doctors and military officers -- Ollie North and John Poindexter excluded, I assume. Judges were number eight. Think about that one next time you head off to traffic court.

Then, near the bottom of the list were business executives, congressmen, lawyers, advertising practitioners and car salesmen in positions 17-21, respectively. On the scale of honesty and ethics, I'm closer to car salesmen than I am to pharmacists (number three)! I've never added undercoat to a story without telling the readers, and that's all I'll say about that.

That's what journalism has come to. It was once a proud and respected profession. Journalists were considered the first line of defense against tyranny and fascism -- the pen is mightier than the sword and all that.

Journalists were described with such words as intrepid and integrity. Now we're thought of as big liberal liars, trying to sell the country out to godless communists and people-hating tree huggers.

Instead of intrepid, we're thought of as insipid. Instead of hawks, we're associated with things that crawl on their bellies. I felt embattled and defensive. I was ready to lash out with a ferocious disquisition. Like the Barry Manilow of the written word I would shout, "I am ethics, and I write the news!" It didn't last long.

A good journalist is cursed with an unrivaled sense of justice and fair play. We must, according to the code, apply the weight of our highest standards to ourselves. In that spirit it occurred to me -- we had it coming.

We've relied upon polls to turn political campaigns into sporting events and important social issues into pie charts and bar graphs. We've cited polls to proclaim, in condescending tones, that some politician or some policy or program is vile beyond redemption.

It's only surprising that it took this long for Karma to find us and beat us with our own poll. "Let's see how you like it," Karma said.

In truth, I like it just fine. I know we're no better than anyone else, but then just try to run a democracy without us.

Hate the message if you like. Talk dirty behind the messenger's back if you will. But kill the messenger at your own peril. Besides, I'm still more ethical than advertising practitioners, who came in at number 20.

Frank Ameduri soaks in a tub of Essence of Ethics every night.