Ethics Hotline   

Loyola University Chicago provides service for journalists with ethical dilemmas.

T HEIR NAMES LIVE ON in infamy, names like Patricia Smith and Janet Cooke. They are journalists who made the wrong ethical choice. But is there any way things could have been different? "Maybe--just maybe--if they had a place like Loyola...," says a slightly wistful Casey Bukro, overnight editor at the Chicago Tribune.
Loyola University Chicago is the headquarters for the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, which opened January 22. The AdviceLine is a free service for journalists to call and talk to someone about ethical dilemmas. Five volunteers from Loyola will take turns each week responding to calls. (Messages are checked regularly.) Three of the volunteers teach ethics and two are on the school's ethics advisory board. As of February 9, the service had received four calls.
The AdviceLine is the brainchild of Bukro and David Ozar, a philosophy professor and director of the Center for Ethics at Loyola. In addition to dispensing advice, Bukro says the center will catalogue calls to identify areas where journalists are having the most difficulty.
The AdviceLine--that's 312-409-3334--is being funded by the Chicago Headline Club, Loyola and outside foundations. The first-year budget is about $10,000.
"You can take it [the advice] or leave it, but the point is you can talk to someone about it," Bukro says. "It's hard to figure it out all by yourself."