Do you have business journalism ethics?

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference kicked off Sunday with the Gary Klott Ethics Symposium, where SABEW members were asked to answer what they would do to certain ethical scenarios.

Here are a few:

1. Your business desk covers Ajax Chemicals, one of the biggest and most important companies in the area, and one of the ways you keep up to date with the industry is by subscribing to Chemicals Digest, a publication that costs $950 a subscription but it has provided insights that have improved your paper’s coverage.

Your boss wants to cut costs, however, and wants to cut the subscription. While the decision is pending, you have a meeting at Ajax and see a copy of Chemicals Digest on a table outside the president’s office. You make a remark, and the PR person tells you that the company can provide a copy as they get 50 of each issue for free.

Do you: a.) Turn down the offer flat; b.) Accept the offer, noting gthat it doesn’t cost the company anything; c.) Tell your Ajax reporter to get an old copy from an Ajax source when they’re done; d.) Ask your staff and editor if they would feel compromised.

Here is how the SABEW membership responded: 59 percent answered A; 14 percent answered B; 11 percent answered C and 16 percent answered D.

2. Budget cuts recently forced your business section to drop a management column that has run for years. A local businessman is unhappy with the decision, and offers to pay for thje cost. He does not want to be involved in the editing, and he does not want any credit for buying it. He just wants it in his Sunday paper. Your publisher sees no harm, although he thinks a small ad or credit at the bottom of the column might be appropriate.

Do you a.) Take the money and put the column back in the budget, with no changes and no credit; b.) Run a disclaimer at the bottom of the column; c.) Laugh it off and cut the column.

Here is how the SABEW membership responded:  7 percent answered A; 47 percent answered B; and 46 percent answered C.

3. As part of a multimedia initiative, your reporters are doing podcasts on therir stories. Your editors have come to you and said that the reporters need to read a brief promo ad before they start their reports. The ads read: “Investors Trust, working with high net-worth clients to plan for the future and achieve a lifetime’s worth of goals. Visit us at investorstrust.com.”

Do you: a.) Protest the use of reporters to read ad copy; b.) Allow the reading, but argue against the word “us” in the ad; c.) Ask that you, the business reporter, read the ad for all of the reporters; d.) Suggest that the paper insist that Investors Trust provide their own reader for the content; e.) Read the ad as is because it will be clearly identified as an ad.

Here is how SABEW members responded: 30 percent answered A; 10 percent answered B; 3 percent answered C; 54 percent answered D; and 2 percent answered E.