Strong ethical principles guide journalists

Newspaper journalists shop at grocery stores, eat at restaurants and go to the movies like anyone else in the community.

They might be your next-door neighbors, the patient you chatted with in your doctor's office or the person at the other end of the pew in your church.

Although generally less recognizable than those whose faces you see on television or whose voices you hear on the radio, some people even consider newspaper journalists to be "celebrities."

I know few print journalists who are comfortable with that status.

What we are is ordinary people doing a demanding job generally fueled by a great passion for the importance of good journalism.

Jobs in journalism usually aren't high-paying, so we have to have that passion to continue to do what we do, every day.

Journalists sometimes are compared to teachers, in recognition that teachers also have a passion for their work and generally are rewarded more by the experience of teaching than by their paychecks.

Although the hours and the schedules of print journalists sometimes make it difficult, many in the newsroom have passions for causes as well. Whether it's literacy, child abuse, disease prevention, hurricane recovery or mission trips, many are actively involved in good works.

The main difference between journalists and others is that we have guidelines for our participation in such extra-curricular endeavors.

Newsroom staff members are required to make their supervisors aware of their outside interests to avoid any participation in coverage of or publicity for organizations they support.

Sometimes our efforts to maintain autonomy are perceived as being non-participatory or antisocial.

Our editorial staff members, for example, generally avoid events that are promotional media-only parties.

The thought behind that is that we care about attending and covering events that our readers participate in -- not events for our peers.

When we are invited to luncheons or dinners and need to attend them to gain information and write stories about the event, we pay for our meals, or make a comparable donation to the organization to cover the meal costs.

Newsroom employees don't accept most gifts, nor do they accept free tickets to attend events.

We cover events because they need to be covered, not because we had free tickets.

We do not participate in political campaigns, place signs in our yards or bumper stickers on our cars, and for good reason.

Although we, like other citizens, certainly are entitled to our own opinions, political or otherwise, we also are required to suppress any biases in our reporting.

Imagine if a candidate drove past The Enterprise parking lot and saw it filled with vehicles bearing bumper stickers for his or her opponent.

It certainly would, at the least, affect the appearance if not the reality of impartiality.

Some readers might be quick to point out that the newspaper is indeed biased by virtue of its political endorsements, which appear before elections.

Those endorsements, formulated by a group of managers serving on the editorial board, appear on our Opinions page -- the one place in the newspaper that opinions are not only allowed, but solicited.

All these guidelines are in place to protect the interests of unbiased journalism and fair reporting and should make readers feel better about where they get their news.