Ethics Policy

Ethics Policy Last revised: November 2011 Members of the Organization Contributors. Includes writers who have written fewer than four articles in a given semester.

Daily Staff. Includes writers who have written at least four articles for any department in any one semester. Status as staff may be maintained by continued contribution, but is lost after a semester entirely without contribution. They are regular contributors to the paper, but do not have the voting power on the editorial board. Senior Staff writer is a title given either after nine articles, or at the discretion of their respective department head. Also includes columnists. Also automatically given as a courtesy to members emeritus of the Editorial Board.

Daily Editorial Board. Consists of assistant editors, editors, and department heads. Have voting power on the paper and also editorial responsibility.

Executive Board. Comprised of the editor-in-chief, managing editors, associate editors, the production director, and all heads of departments (executive editors). The executive business director is not a member of the Executive Board, but shall be included in its discussions as necessary and shall be included in any Executive Board vote that relates to the business operations of The Tufts Daily.

Managing Board. Consists of the editor-in-chief, all managing and associate editors, the production director, and the executive business director.

Responsibilities of Members in content Every member submitting content to the Daily should be aware of the standards of conduct.

Speeches, concerts, and other events on-campus evidently intended for public viewing are by default the “public sphere� and are fair game for coverage. All public club meetings are public sphere, though reporters should introduce themselves as members of the Daily as a matter of courtesy. Identity of attendees at said meetings are not public sphere and require permission to disclose. A meeting intended only for club members is considered private sphere. Reporters should request permission to cover the meeting beforehand. Additional public information: federally mandated reports such as crime statistics, public university tax forms and SEC filings, any public documents from student organizations, police blotter/reports, and/or other documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Online content within reasonable boundaries, such as e-mail lists and content from Facebook.com, is also considered the public sphere.

Reporters should not use this content to invade privacy under the guises of journalistic motives.

When interviewing a source, reporters, photographers, editors, and columnists must always announce themselves as such, and make clear the basic topic of the article. While certainly acceptable to refine the focus of the topic, reporters should not be intentionally deceptive. A reporter may speak to a source on a general basis and then use the quotation for another article, but not without first checking the new context with the source.

Interviews should be conducted in person when possible, with the telephone as the next best option. Anything written as “said” in the paper can be assumed that the statement was made in person or via telephone. Use of electronic communications should be kept to a minimum and only used when in-person or telephone interviews are not possible. Quotations given over e-mail must be attributed as such, “Source told the Daily in an e-mail.” Instant Message conversations should be kept as a last resort, and should be referenced as such. Whenever possible, electronic communication should be kept to supplementary or background information; the main substance of an article should come from telephone or personal interviews. Finally, any piece labeled as an “interview” (one source with Q&A format) should be conducted in person or over the phone.

Reporters should be as scrupulous as they can when interviewing sources. Use of recorders is excellent when possible, provided the source has given permission. When in doubt, reporters should fact-check quotations with sources, particularly when dealing with complicated, technical, or sensitive material. Fact-checking can consist of a slow reading of the quotation over the telephone, or an e-mail message. The source has the right to correct factual errors made by the writer in their notation, but cannot use the opportunity to tweak wording or retract what was said. Final discretion on phrasing is the reporter’s. Sources have the right to see quotations, and paraphrases thereof, but under no circumstance should portions or the entirety of an article be shown to a source before publication.

All specific pieces of information not obtained through direct interviews, including statistics, references to legislation, and additional reports, MUST BE attributed to their original source.

This need not be a detailed attribution (Journal X, Issue 34, No. 23, page 34), but a publication, institution, or website. A time modifier, when possible, can also be useful: “According to a 2006 report by the Centers for Disease Control...” This is not necessary for general knowledge: “Larry Summers resigned from Harvard on Feb. 21, 2006” or “On Sept. 11, 2001, two planes flown by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center" The intentional failure to attribute information or the use of work that is not one’s own (intentional or unintentional), constitutes plagiarism, a very serious academic and professional offense. Writers or editors caught plagiarizing or fabricating information, upon first offense, may be suspended from the Daily indefinitely. Reporters should retain all notes from interviews and keep them on file (including e-mails and Word documents) for at least one year, in case they are called upon to defend their work.

Responsibilities of Members outside of the Daily Given that the college experience is a time of intellectual, academic and extracurricular exploration, the detachment that professional journalists maintain in their communities is both impossible and impractical for student journalists. To that end, members are free to engage in groups to facilitate their personal and intellectual development, with a few restrictions.

Reporters should not write about any project/initiative/club/group they are engaged in oncampus. They are welcomed and encouraged to submit such topics as story ideas and provide contacts, but should not be involved with interviews or writing of the story.

Examples:

A Tufts Democrats member should not write about a Democrat or even Republican, campaign rally.

A member of a fraternity or sorority should not write an editorial on Greek life.

A varsity lacrosse player can write the Fall sailing beat.

Editorial board members should not contribute in any way, including photographs, production, letters to the editor, or op-eds, to any other campus news print publications, including the Observer, Primary Source, or any other publications that may arise. Placing an ad in other publications on behalf of another organization in which an editorial board member is involved is permitted. Expressly cultural, humorous, academic, or literary publications do not count as such, though these two spheres should remain separate. Should they prefer to transfer their affiliation to another campus news outlet, they must resign their position on the editorial board, and either stay on as Daily staff or dismiss their Daily affiliation altogether.

Separation between the Daily’s editorial board and business department is important to maintain due to the risk of conflicts of interest. As such, members of the business department are restricted in what they can contribute to the Daily. Similarly, members of the Daily’s editorial board should not join the business department. Members of the business department may not write or edit for the News and Features sections. Furthermore, they cannot contribute photos, editorials, Letters to the Editor or op-eds to the daily. Finally, they should not contribute to the layout of sections, and they should not write about an organization that has been recently advertised in the Daily or is likely to advertise with the Daily in the near future. Because of the restrictions in contributing content to the Daily, members of the business staff are allowed to contribute content to other campus news print publications, but only if they choose not to contribute editorial content to the Daily.

Contributors, staff, and editorial board members should not give interviews to other Daily reporters, except when the member plays a key role in a particular topic or initiative unrelated to their duties at the Daily. If they must appear in the article, the article should indicate the person’s position on the Daily.

Reporters, particularly News writers, should not write on any subject in which their neutrality could be called into question. Members are welcome to write for, or develop a column for, different departments or within their own department, but not without compromising their own neutrality.

No staff writer or Editorial Board member may write an op-ed or letter to the editor. Members cease to be subject to these submission conditions a) when they resign or b) one semester after their name appears on the masthead.

Editorial board members should use discretion when developing relationships with sources, and be aware that public perception of their role does factor into the Daily’s reputation and perception of reliability. The Tufts community is far too integrated to impose hard-and-fast guidelines regarding roommates and classmates, so members should be mindful of this concern and use their own good judgment. Reporters who enter into or become involved in any sort of romantic activity with sources should privately notify their editor and be reassigned to different

coverage. Any problems or conflicts that arise will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the managing board.

Editing Responsibilities People join the Daily to learn. Naturally, it is the job of supervising editors to modify and refine content submitted in concordance with Daily standards. Final edits are up to the discretion of the supervising editor and the managing board.

Particularly for Features and Arts reporting, every effort will be made to preserve the reporter’s voice. But articles are still subject to editing for flow and content if necessary. Columns and oped submissions, however, receive very minimal edits, only for fact-checking, AP style and basic grammatical errors.

When problems with reporting are found, the editor is responsible for bringing it up to Daily standards. Possible/probable changes include the following: lede, organizational flow of the article, wording of clauses, headlines. They may also make calls to answer final questions to fill gaps or holes in the reporting. If additional reporting takes place, a brief note (“Editor A contributed reporting to this article�) should be added. If significant re-reporting takes place, the editor may be incorporated as a double-byline. In the case of heavy editing or rewrites, the editor should send the article in question to the reporter, who has the right to correct any factual inaccuracies. Disputes, if unresolved, will be settled by the managing board.

Editors are responsible for fact-checking all facts in articles. In particular, the names and titles of members of the Tufts community should be checked in the Tufts directory or other relevant sources.

Daily content also passes through the hands of the production and copy departments. Only the managing board has the authority to make changes to the content of an article once it has reached the InDesign layout stage. Copy staff should comb carefully for grammatical and style errors and are free to make grammatical suggestions, with a light hand to op-eds and columns. They should not make severe changes and final discretion is left up to the managing board.

Corrections: whatever the safeguards put in place, mistakes do happen. If a staff or community member recognizes a factual inaccuracy in reporting, a correction (brief statement recounting the error and recording the correct version) will be run as soon as possible on the editorial page. The correction will be also added to the website and appended to the article's place in the online archive. If an important article is wholly incorrect or seriously misleading, the staff will place a front-page statement making sure the record is straight and write a correct article, if necessary.

Terms of Reporting The Daily does its best to cover a broad-based variety of events on-campus. News attends particularly to student government, city government, faculty affairs, student life, and police. It also does its best to cover a wide sample of speakers and events on campus. Features covers student life, higher education trends, and news analysis. Arts covers on-campus and off-campus cultural events, as well as cultural reviews. Sports covers all seasons of on-campus sports, with

perspectives on national leagues. Departments have no obligation to cover any particular event and final decisions as to coverage are left up to the discretion of department heads.

Anonymous Sources The Daily will in all cases attempt to secure the names of sources for articles.

In the event that speaking on-the-record carries serious personal cost or threat to the source’s well-being, the reporter may extend the invitation to a source to speak anonymously, in which case the reporter would use direct quotes without attribution. The reporter may also offer an interview “off the record” or “on background” where no direct quotes are taken but information may orient the reporter with the situation and direct him or her to other useful sources. The reporter and source should set the terms of the interview beforehand, and the reporter reserves the right to abide by the initial terms of the interview should the source request a change.

Sources should only be quoted anonymously when they disclose vital facts that can be found under no other circumstances -- not to offer speculation or opinion (AP Ethics policy).

Acceptable examples include: Members of organizations speaking out against employers or officials for fear of professional repercussions, names of victims (rape, assault, sexual harassment, etc), students engaged in incriminating behavior, illegal drug or alcohol use, students with confidential medical conditions If multiple anonymous sources are used, the article should clearly delineate them as such. If anonymous sourcing is used, the article must explain the exact reason why the student’s name is withheld.

The sourcing should give the most information possible about the source if not their name. E.g. “an official with ties to the investigation” or “a former RA in Residential Life.”

In addition to the writer, only the department head and the managing board has the right to know the identity of the source.

Police reporting The Daily’s News department places a special premium on police reporting. To that end, if a serious crime has taken place, the Daily reserves the right to seek the details of the incident even if withheld by the Tufts Police, TCU Judiciary, or the Tufts’ administration.

The Daily reserves the right to print the student’s name after he/she has been found guilty of the infraction. The Daily also reserves the right to print the student’s name if he/she is accused of an infraction. However, this should be done only when necessary and is based on the discretion of the managing board.

The Daily will always contact accused students, whether they are named or not, if they are to be included in such a story and give them a chance to respond/defend themselves, to which they have the right to remain silent.

The Daily will seek this information from eyewitnesses and hold itself to the highest standards of accuracy when following the chronology of the events. Witnesses, too, will be offered protection of anonymity; at least two witnesses should be contacted to confirm details on a given event.

Again, the circumstances of withheld names will be thoroughly explained in the context of the article.

Online content The Daily is not obligated to remove any content from its website, tuftsdaily.com, irrespective of when the content in question was originally posted and/or published in print, unless the content contains libel or defamation. In the case of factual error, copy will be amended to be factually accurate, but the piece will not be removed in its entirety. The Daily retains the right to remove any content on a case-by-case basis.

Questions, comments, or objections to coverage are welcome and encouraged, in the form of Letters to the Editor or op-ed submissions.