4 CHICAGO READER | JUNE 2, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Hot Type

By Michael Miner

The press is forever tellingmajor institutions—cityhall, big business, the

church—to clean up their acts.What about the press’s own act?Last month Medill’s journalismschool issued a report that con-cluded the level of self-criticismin the nation’s newsrooms is toolow, though it didn’t say what theright level is.

“I think it’s going to be hard tochange if we say it’s not ourfault,” assistant dean EllenShearer told Gretchen Helfrichon WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight.Shearer was discussing thereport, “Newspaper Reporterand Editor Attitudes TowardCredibility, Errors and Ethics,”for which 527 journalists at 218daily newspapers were surveyed.She told Helfrich the journalistscomplained about Jayson Blair,TV news, and “agenda-drivenmedia,” saying they undermined

the journalists said they’d beensuspicious. Again, welcome tojournalism. These can bemoments of anguish forreporters, but they’re not neces-sarily evidence of turpitude.

The list of scenarios is titled“experience with mistakes or dis-honesty.” But the genuinely trou-bling misbehavior, the kind thatdoes need cleaning up, doesn’tappear to happen very often.“Suspected peer of plagiarism”—12 percent. “Editor pressure tochange”—9 percent. “Publisherpressure to change”—5 percent.

Let’s look at some other num-bers. When the journalists wereasked why public confidence innewspapers has declined, 71 per-cent of them listed “external fac-tors,” such as national mediascandals, and only 47 percentlisted problems at their ownpapers or with newspapers gen-erally. The Medill report inter-

prets this disparity as evidencethat journalists are in denial, butI don’t see why. Public confi-dence is declining for lots of rea-sons—some external, some inter-nal, and some having to do withchanges in the nature of the pub-lic (which 44 percent of journal-ists polled mentioned). Externalfactors are the most obvious andthe most universal—Jayson Blairis a cross every journalist bears,even ones whose own news-rooms are beyond reproach. The report offers no evidencethat the journalists who citedexternal factors or audience fac-tors were closing their eyes towhat went on around them intheir own shops.

Then there are the findingsabout who blows the whistle onbad journalism. “Instances ofunethical behavior by newspaperreporters are much more likelyto come to light through passive

Actually, the active critiquing of each other’swork that goes on in newsrooms—editing, fact-checking—is stan-dard procedureand probably prevents mostmistakes, includingethical lapses,from ever gettinginto print.

A Self-Policing PressA Medill survey concludes that journalists don’t do enough to stop unethical behavior in their own newsrooms. But what would “enough” be?

public confidence in theirpapers’ credibility. But most feltunethical behavior was “not anactual problem at their newspa-pers—it’s more other people,”she went on. “That’s a little con-cerning to me.”

The Medill report strains tosupport the proposition thatwhat’s going on in Americannewsrooms needs to change. Itsays at the outset that it’s con-cerned with “inaccurate, mis-leading or fabricated” newspa-per content. But when it askedthe journalists about their ownexperience with tainted journal-ism in the previous year the listof possible scenarios led offwith: “Reader accused you of‘bias.’” Seventy-two percent ofjournalists said that had hap-pened to them. I’m only sur-prised the number wasn’t high-er. Next was: “Suspected sourcemisled you,” and 39 percent of

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processes than as a result ofactive investigation,” Medillreports. Fifty-three percent ofthe journalists said there’d beena problem with ethics or unpro-fessional behavior in their news-room in the past five years, and47 percent of this group said theproblem “simply came to lightover time as information accu-mulated, facts failed to mesh andinconsistencies became obvious.”A “tip” brought the misbehaviorto light 34 percent of the timeand a “confession” 26 percent ofthe time, while an “internalinvestigation” was a “significantfactor in uncovering ethical mis-conduct” 30 percent of the time.

“To us that seemed low,”Shearer told me. “It seemed tome that you would have liked tohave seen that first—the leadingway misconduct is discovered isthat the people in the newsroomare actively critiquing eachother’s work.”

Actually, the active critiquingof each other’s work that goes onin newsrooms—editing, fact-checking—is standard procedureand probably prevents most mis-takes, including ethical lapses,from ever getting into print. Butif the discussion is limited onlyto ethical lapses that get pub-lished, and 30 percent is too low,what’s just right? I asked her.She couldn’t say.

Journalists might say the more internal critiquing the better when they’re talkingabout federal bureaucracies,research labs, and police stations.But they don’t want their ownnewsrooms to operate likeMoscow in the 30s.

I asked Chicago’s ethicsSavonarola what he thought.Tribune reporter Casey Bukrohas crusaded for decades to getjournalists to hold each otheraccountable. All that his effortshave accomplished is a line at theend of the code of ethics of thenational Society of Professional

Journalists declaring that “jour-nalists should . . . expose unethi-cal practices of journalists andthe news media.”

It’s a vestige of a pledge SPJratified in 1973. The pledge,which Bukro wrote, was thegarnish on that era’s code ofethics. It said, “Journalistsshould actively censure and tryto prevent violations of thesestandards, and they shouldencourage their observance byall newspeople.”

No one was ever censured,Bukro says, and SPJ didn’t evendescribe a process by whichcensure was supposed to takeplace. In 1986 Bukro wrote aresolution that specified aseries of steps—complaint,hearing, recommendation—anda range of punishments, from aletter of reprimand to dismissalfrom SPJ. But instead of adopt-ing the resolution that wouldhave given the censure pledgeteeth, SPJ dropped the pledge.That step was taken on theadvice of SPJ’s Washingtonattorney, who worried that acensured member of SPJ wouldturn around and sue.

“SPJ considers adherence tothe code of ethics voluntary. Itdoes not enforce the code,”Bukro told me. “Code enforce-ment was what I was pushingfor, and that became a dirtyword.”

I asked him for his seat-of-the-pants opinion about howmuch internal misconduct apaper can reasonably be askedto uncover on its own.

Most papers don’t haveombudsmen, he replied, butwhere there is one—a personstaffers can talk over their sus-picions with so they don’t feelthey’re tattling to the boss—maybe 50 percent.

But not all?“One hundred percent,” he

said, “would suggest BigBrother.” v

Comments, questions? Take it up with Cecil on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com, or write him at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Cecil’s most recent compendium of knowledge, Triumph of the Straight Dope, is available at bookstores everywhere.

The Straight Dope®by Cecil Adams

F or a minute there I thought I hadthe perfect solution—castration!No more shaving, and as a bonusyou don’t go bald and are happy

to ask for driving directions when lost.However, on calmer consideration I real-ized that while castration prevents thedevelopment of male sex characteristics,it generally doesn’t reverse those you’vealready got, facial hair in your case appar-ently being one. So we’re forced to turn toplan B, namely the treatments you referto, which unfortunately are just as likelyto involve a lot of pain, money, and fuss.

Temporary chemical hair-removal prod-ucts like Nair—depilatories, they’recalled—can dissolve some of the hair onyour face, but they’re primarily intendedto remove the relatively lightweight hairof women. One male Straight Dope stafferhas tried several such products on his faceand been disappointed with the results,claiming he saw pretty much no hairremoval and got a serious headache fromthe fumes. Beard hair often won’t respondto topical treatments before the skinbecomes too irritated to continue. (Somedepilatories are marketed to men as ameans of fighting razor bumps—ingrownwhiskers that can interfere painfully withshaving—but anecdotal evidence suggeststhey don’t always work so well in this roleeither.) Vaniqa (eflornithine hydrochlo-ride), an increasingly popular prescriptionointment, is said to suppress facial hairgrowth in women, but it’s not recom-mended for men, and even among womendoesn’t appear to have an especially highrate of effectiveness.

What else can you do if you’re deter-mined not to shave? A local hair-removalexpert told me some men have tried facialwaxing or sugaring (both techniquesinvolve pouring on sticky stuff toppedwith a layer of fabric, then ripping thefabric off quickly, taking the goo and ide-ally the hairs with it), but generally thisdoesn’t work due to the thickness, depth,and tenacity of the roots. Some hardyindividuals pluck their beards, but asbeard hairs typically number in the hun-dreds per square inch, well, making anyserious progress becomes a real test ofmanhood. Worse, none of these methodsis permanent—you’re simply acceleratingthe hairs’ normal growth cycle, in which

old ones fall out and are replaced by newones pushing up from below. While pluck-ing will eventually damage hair follicles,men who’ve tried it estimate the regrowthrate at something like 98 percent.

That leaves electrolysis, laser treat-ment, or a combination of the two.Electrolysis has been around for morethan a century and can achieve nearly100 percent permanent removal if doneby a skilled practitioner. The drawbackwith using it on beards, I’m told, is that ithurts like hell—any prior belief that bigboys don’t cry will be sorely tested bythis procedure. Anesthetics are availableand a gradual course of treatment canhelp spread out the pain, which may be agood or a bad thing depending on howyou look at it. I don’t recommend homeelectrolysis kits—due to user inexperi-ence they tend to have low permanenceplus increased risk of burns, skin lesions,scarring, and infection.

Laser treatment is a popular choice forpermanent beard removal, offering theadvantages of speed, less pain, and fewcomplications if done properly. But theeffectiveness of laser is highly dependenton your hair and skin type. Some peoplecan get close to total permanent removal,but for those with red, light blond, or

white hair, deep roots, or thick, dark skin,permanent removal may require manytreatments and in some cases may not bepossible. Laser treatment carries a risk ofsevere burns, although the technicians Ispoke to claim that this can be avoidedby patient feedback, i.e., when it hurts,you scream. (No joke—a common problemapparently is that patients, not wishing tocomplain, don’t warn the technician whentheir skin is getting too hot.) Finally, laseris expensive: permanent beard removaltypically takes from six to more than adozen treatments at a cost of anywherefrom $50 to $300 per. Some experts recommend a mix of laser and electroly-sis—laser to beat back the worst of the facial hair and thin out the roots,then electrolysis to finish the job. This isgood for tough cases but can be evenmore expensive.

Given these options, Dan, you mightrecall a story attributed to GeorgeBernard Shaw: As a child Shaw was watch-ing his father shave one day and askedhim why he did it. Shaw senior stopped,stared at his son, then threw his razor outthe window, saying, “Why the hell do I?”Thereafter he grew a beard, an approachfamously adopted by G.B. Maybe youshould do the same.

I hate shaving every day. What would happen if I used one of thosetemporary hair-removal products on my face? What about thepermanent ones? —Dan, Merrick, New York, via e-mail

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CHICAGO READER | JUNE 2, 2006 | SECTION ONE 5