Comment this week on SABEW ethics code revisions

Gail DeGeorge, the president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, sent out the following e-mail Monday morning about revisions to the organization’s code of ethics:

“A hallmark of our organization has been a strong Code of Ethics, developed amid much discussion early in SABEW’s 40 year history with an addendum hammered out and appended later. That code served us well for many years.

“But with support from a grant from the Ethics & Excellence Foundation, SABEW has been updating our Code of Ethics. Some of you participated in a workshop on this project at SABEW’s Annual Conference in Anaheim and we thank you for your help.

“A revised Code of Ethics, developed out of that workshop by a task force of the Board of Governors and the SABEW Chair, has been circulated to members of the Board of Governors and Past Presidents of SABEW for their review.

“Now it is your turn.

“Please take a look at http://www.sabew.org/ethics/ethics.htm and send any comments to sabew@missouri.edu by 5 pm EST THURSDAY, JULY 26.

“While you’re on the Ethics page of our website, please take the ethics survey distributed during the SABEW Annual Conference in Anaheim and see how your answers compare to those of your colleagues. The survey was a focal point of a lively discussion during the Fifth Annual Gary Klott Symposium, named for SABEW founding member Gary Klott whose passion was ethics in journalism. The Ethics page of our website also includes Codes of Ethics of other journalism organizations and newsrooms.

“The Ethics webpage, survey and revision of SABEW’s Code of Ethics are all part of a year-long project focusing on ethics funded in part by the Ethics & Excellence Foundation. As part of that focus, we have held special sessions about ethics at our Annual Conference and Fall Workshop and published a special edition of TBJ. We thank the Ethics & Excellence Foundation, the Klott Fund and of course, you, our members, for your support.”