In a July 16, 2007 column on the Chicago Tribune website, public editor Timothy McNulty discusses the ethics of building relationships with sources. He shares the Tribune's policies on this matter and analyzes lessons learned from the recent firing of a local Chicago TV reporter, Amy Jacobsen, for being caught on video by a competing station while she was visiting with a story source. The Jacobsen case was a high profile story in the Chicago area and gained national attention.

McNulty writes:

I must first admit to wearing a swimsuit and taking my young children to a source/subject's home swimming pool, not unlike former WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter Amy Jacobson, who was fired last week for that breach of ethics, "lapse in judgment" and whatever else it has been called.

The home I visited did not belong to the estranged husband of a missing woman, however. It was the summer home of then-president George H.W. Bush, who had invited the traveling White House press corps to Maine for a swim party in Kennebunkport. Nothing happened. Context is everything.

The relationship between a reporter and a source can be as mundane as talking to a traffic accident witness, a congressman or a parent. The bulk of the daily newspaper is based on such sources. General assignment reporters try to build instant rapport and ask sources to share what they know. Most people do indeed want to comment. But reporters who cover institutions and businesses create a different relationship with sources they see routinely, if not daily. Those are based on experience and trust.

Relationships for those reporters and investigative reporters are more complex because even as they need to be close to sources, they also need to keep a professional distance; they need to be friendly but not friends. Such relationships, especially evident in Washington in the wake of stories about anonymous leaks from the White House and elsewhere, get increasing scrutiny from the public.

In Jacobson's case, was she too close to the subject of a police mystery? That story is still developing, and unnamed sources told the Tribune Thursday that this incident was the last straw. Her firing from the NBC station was not exactly Greek tragedy, but it prompts some questions about journalism, about TV mores and about what society is and is not comfortable with...

Click here for McNulty's column in its entirety on the Chicago Tribune website.
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