Tufts Daily Ethics and Best Practices

Members of the Organization

Contributors. Includes writers for section who have written fewer than three articles for any one section of a department in a given semester.

Daily Staff. Includes writers who have written three articles for any department in any one semester, or per the discretion of the department head. Status as staff may be maintained by continued contribution, but is lost after a semester entirely without contribution. These 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 automatically given as a courtesy to members emeritus of the Editorial Board. Also includes columnists.

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

Executive Board -- comprised of Section heads (executive editors), managing editors, and editor-in-chief

Managing Board -- Editor-in-Chief, managing editors, production director, and 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. Public meetings that are intended solely for club members are public sphere, though reporters should introduce themselves as members of the Daily and request permission to cover the meeting beforehand. Identity of attendees at said meetings are not public sphere and require permission to disclose. 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, such as e-mail lists and content from the Facebook.com, is, within reasonable boundaries, also considered the public sphere. Acceptable: searching an individual on the site to find her name or report on a political or social group. Unacceptable: using the site expressly to invade privacy under the guises of journalistic motives.

When interviewing a source, reporters, photographers, editorial page 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: 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. In all cases, 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. Reporters should, whenever possible, 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 supplemental information: facts, statistics, references to legislation, 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 Web site. A time modifier, when possible, can also be useful: "According to a 2006 report by the Center for Disease Control..." This is not necessary for general knowledge: "Larry Summers resigned from Harvard" or "On Sept. 11, 2001, two planes flown by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center"