Not old news

National journalism educators’ organization raises legitimate questions about how to teach ethics

Note: On Sept. 3, SPJ ethics committee head Michael Koretzky posted a column called “Old News: Let’s revive a 5-month-old non-controversy.”

His column is reprinted, with replies in italics from an ethics committee member who also is an AEJMC member.

Old news
Let’s revive a 5-month-old non-controversy!

By Michael Koretzky
SPJ ethics chair

I must be SPJ’s worst ethics chair ever.

Sometime this month, I might be censured by something called the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Elected Standing Committee on Professional Freedom and Responsibility.

You are not about to be censured, because this is not just about you. The entire SPJ faces questions about what many see as a misguided way to teach its ethics code to college students. Your actions continue to detract from SPJ’s international reputation as a leader in promoting journalism ethics.

As a 12-year member of SPJ’s ethics committee, and a 20-year member of AEJMC with four years on its board., I recognize this as being about the relationship between a pair of national organizations who respect each other and have been working together for decades. This is also about the many AEJMC members who sponsor student SPJ chapters. While some AEJMC members may not vote to support this resolution, it comes from professors who devote their lives to study and writing about media ethics, and to teaching and contemplating media ethics pedagogy.

Many AEJMC members recognize that while a “Spread Immoral News” (SIN)  exercise is fun, there may be better ways to provide their students with the basics of journalism ethics.

Law schools don’t have students to write the worst legal briefs they can muster. Medical schools don’t have their students purposefully hurt real people, much less stab a cadaver, to teach the Hippocratic Oath. Religious leaders don’t suggest that new adherents should literally sin to receive grace, or to harm others to best learn the tenets of their faith.

And there are enough real-life examples of journalistic shortcomings that students don’t need to create their own. And they do not need to publish unethical content to a general audience who might not read closely enough to understand, which occurred in 2025.

No, I’ve never heard of them, either.

As I told you and fellow committee members in my Aug 30 email, AEJMC has been around for more than century. This organization of college professors is early in its second century, as is the Sigma Delta Chi college fraternity that spun into the current SPJ. You seem to think that AEJMC is irrelevant because you’ve never heard of the nation’s largest group of journalism professors and researchers. That suggests a myopia about the larger issue related to AEJMC’s proposed resolution that its 2,300 members are scheduled to vote on later this month.

This is about the relationship between a pair of national organizations who have worked together for decades – and of the many AEJMC members who sponsor student SPJ chapters – who want SPJ to reflect best practices in teaching ethics.

I also haven’t heard from them. This (elected and standing) committee is considering a resolution that officially hates a program I created. That would be SIN, an alternative to those butt-puckering parody issues some student newspapers do.

As a former AEJMC president explained to me, its Professional Freedom & Responsibility committee almost always weighs in on controversies after they have received news coverage from multiple sides. In this case, criticism and responses began when the SIN content was announced. You defended SIN to The Nutgraf and in your April blog post after the drumbeat of criticism rose. The resolution shows that AEJMC understands the dilemma, and you and others have responded during the comment period.

I learned about the resolution, which you can read below, from an SPJ Ethics Committee member who also hates SIN. About half of them do.

“No one is going to let this happen again on a national level,” Dan Axelrod says. “It’s an embarrassment.”

Some don’t like me very much, either.

“He has gone from firebrand to arsonist,” Chandra Bozelko says. “I’m finding it very hard to see how he is trying to protect the organization.”

I’d argue that this entire column is example of failing to protect the organization.

Those quotes come from a website called Breaker. You can’t read the article without a subscription, but here’s how it describes SIN…

Create fake news to highlight the reputational damage that can be caused by legitimately fake news, all the while tarnishing the very code that acts as the backbone of ethical journalism.

I wrote how SIN really works during April’s SPJ Ethics Week, and how some nervous journalists never read the instructions. Nine former SPJ leaders asked in an open letter to SPJ’s board of directors: “Have you considered how it will affect SPJ’s reputation?”

Of course, SIN didn’t affect SPJ’s reputation at all. Three student newspapers published SIN issues, and no one complained on any of their campuses. SPJ survived SIN.

Of course it has hurt SPJ’s reputation. SPJ survives in spite of SIN, not because of it.

A deontological ethicist would say this is about principle, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s three campuses or 300. That no one who took part complained is a myopic standard for measuring a program’s effectiveness. Many on the listerv of the College Media Association – professional advisers of student newspapers – called SIN into question, too. That only a mere handful of student papers participated suggests most voted with their feet.

A utilitarian would argue that it’s important to consider all stakeholders when measuring greatest good. This is why many who disagree are saying the good gained from this activity is less than the bad that comes from producing fake content or publishing to be seen by the public, which can reinforce misconception that we teach students to create fake content when they’re on the job. AEJMC members who also sponsor SPJ chapters may find better ways to spend time on things for which they are not compensated. Journalism departments who spend money to support student SPJ chapters might reconsider sponsoring an organization they see making unforced errors in ethics pedagogy, or paying to send students to SPJ conventions.

A virtue-focused ethicist would say it’s better to teach people how to do things the right way.

Moreover, of course it affected SPJ’s reputation, or we wouldn’t be talking about it or hear from the many who objected. All we have to do is revive the quote in your April 2025 blog the communications professor who said SIN was “one of the most ill-conceived idea that SPJ has ever come up with.”

Or Lexington Herald-Leader editor Richard Green, who said SIN “feeds into the national anti-journalist narrative” and called SPJ “aloof to what’s happening in our profession at this moment.”

Now, five months later, an AEJMC (elected and standing) committee is considering a resolution to “go on record opposing any efforts to intentionally produce and distribute false or misleading content.”

As one Ethics Committee member put it…

“Regardless of the merits of the contest, this is the frickin’ news business. That was 14,000 news cycles ago. Is AEJMC gonna expound on the menace of yellow journalism next? Remember the Maine!”

This is not about news cycles, but about the future.

  I agree that AEJMC’s resolution process is slow, and I’ve said that in person to the committee’s head. As an AEJMC member, I know the organization handles such resolutions only once a year.

But raising questions a few months later doesn’t make the resolution wrong.

 AEJMC has offered a forward-looking resolution, saying SPJ should steer clear of anything that muddies its ethics efforts, and that AEJMC can work with SPJ to find alternatives. It also is aimed at AEJMC members, reminding them to advocate “for the importance of always operating with the highest of ethical standings,” another forward-looking aspirational statement.

The resolution is funny for five other reasons…

• Who cares? Journalism organizations love passing resolutions no one reads.

“No one” reads? This is supersonic-hyperbolic writing (as you wrote in your April column) at best, or at worst an attempt to denigrate the efforts of well-meaning people who write resolutions, whether it be AEJMC or SPJ’s Resolutions Committee. Flippancy to a legitimate concern, especially when voiced with respect by well-meaning people, is beneath SPJ’s ethics committee.

• As I’ve pointed out before because I savor the irony, SIN was created in 2013 with an SPJ Foundation grant. No one said anything until this year.

SIN’s beginnings are irrelevant to the AEJMC resolution, which says this teaching approach is as wrong now as it was then. Moreover, the stakes are even higher since 2013.The past decade has seen further falls in journalism’ credibility as politicians and others lie about journalism. Pew Research Center reported in August 2025 that four-fifths Americans say they want “authenticity” from journalists, third after honesty and intelligence.

AEJMC is telling SPJ that as its code of ethics is a mainstay in ethics classes, so a contest that has students do the exact opposite from what that code recommends –produce inauthentic, dishonest news – is not intelligent. Worries about how it looks in the current environment was only one of the “Whereas” clauses in the resolution.

• The very top of SPJ’s Code of Ethics says, “Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.” Even AEJMC’s Code of Ethics says, “We inform subjects of our status as researchers.” Yet no one with the (elected and standing) committee has contacted me before resolving that SIN sucks.

The SPJ code says journalists should “diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing,” I again note that you responded many times publicly to some of AEJMC’s concerns noted in its resolution.

The part you cite from AEJMC’s code of ethics shows a fundamental misunderstanding of AEJMC. Your reference to informed consent is from the research portion of the code, and it refers to conducting scientific research, not weighing in on the conduct of journalism practitioners.

If you’re going to refer to the AEJMC’s code, it’s better to cite the teaching section that says members “recognize and attempt to fulfill our role as exemplars, both in scholarship and in ethical behavior.” Having students intentionally write wrong things is not worthy of an exemplar. We don’t have to do unethical things to teach people the right thing to do.

We can disagree about this, of course, and talk more. That’s what journalism and journalism education have in common.

• The resolution ends with the (elected and standing) committee wanting to “forge a better relationship with the SPJ Ethics Committee.” Does AEJMC need a resolution to email me?

Again: This is about two organizations, not you.

• While my time as SPJ ethics chair ends during MediaFest, I’ve decided to do SIN again during Ethics Week 2026 – and I’ll use this resolution and all the hyperbolic quotes as marketing materials.

It’s illogical to dismiss AEJMC’s concerns as “old news” when you say you’re doing this again in 2026. This is precisely why AEJMC’s resolution is timely.

You cited Dan Axelrod saying that SPJ national won’t sponsor a SIN-like activity  next year. I hope we will listen to AEJMC – and the many others – who care enough about journalism and SPJ to voice their concerns.