Jewish journalist reflects on ethics

There are those who believe that journalism today is unethical and, therefore, incompatible with Jewish culture. Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia's largest Jewish newspaper, set out to address that issue Tuesday night in Hillel West. Tobin's lecture, "Ethics in Journalism" -- sponsored by the Hillel Education Committee -- was the first in a series called Ethics and Jewish Life. Tobin maintained that the answers to his initial questions -- whether journalism is ethical and whether a Jew can be a journalist -- depend on the individual's view of the purpose of reporting on Judaism. And while he explained that not all journalists are completely ethical, he said that journalism itself is actually a vital tool for the Jewish community. "Do you necessarily want to read what's going on in Jewish institutions, do you want to know what's happening or do you just want to get what we in the journalism business call 'happy talk?'" he asked the students in attendance. Tobin spoke about the constant pressure on the Jewish media not to publish anything that might harm the Jewish community. He gave an example from his days at a Jewish newspaper in Connecticut, when he learned of a financial scandal involving a local Jewish day school and felt the paper had a duty to cover the story. He immediately received outside pressure not to publish it, he said. "I will admit to this circle that the more pressure you get? the more likely you are to want to publish it," Tobin said. After weighing the potential damage the story might cause against the community's right to know what its institutions were doing, he decided to publish the story. Tobin also talked about complaints he received from defeated Philadelphia mayoral candidate Sam Katz's campaign team during this year's heated election. "The Katz camp thought we weren't being fair because we were being fair," he said. "They thought that as a Jewish newspaper, we were obligated" to endorse Katz, who is Jewish. According to Tobin, these examples are indicative of the tendency of some Jews to want to ignore opinions that differ from their own. In his view, the main obligation of a Jewish journalist is to "resist the impulse to tell everybody else to shut up." Tobin spoke about the problems facing secular journalists as well as those confronting the Jewish media. He said many members of the media pride themselves on learning their craft but prove to be ignorant of the subjects on which they report. "Too many [journalists] went to school to become Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings," Tobin said. "They didn't study history, political science or English." Etan Orgel, a College sophomore and co-chairperson of the Hillel Education Committee, said, "I think it's very interesting how he delineated between secular journalism and Jewish journalism and how he was able to relate both back to our everyday lives." Future topics in the Ethics and Jewish Life series include Jewish ethics in medicine, law, politics and business.