My favorite Abraham Lincoln legend goes something like this:
Long before his ascendancy at the White House, and prior to his service in the Illinois Legislature, Lincoln worked as a railroad lawyer.
One day, a local politician paid Abe a visit, and shortly after the meeting began, it was quite clear that Lincoln was being offered a bribe for one salacious act or another.
After listening to the sales pitch, Lincoln stood up, physically picked up his visitor and flung him down the stairs of his office.
From the bottom of the stairs, the shocked politician looked up at Lincoln and asked why he had been treated so violently by the young attorney.
Lincoln answered, “You were getting too close to my price.”
Lincoln’s political integrity is a good model for journalists to follow.
When it comes to media ethics, everybody, it seems, is an expert-except for journalists.
When it comes to praising good journalists for good work, willing readers are few and far between.
Journalists are subversive elements in a society where many people want the Iceberg of Truth to go no deeper than the tip.
Like any other profession, journalism has its foibles. It’s driven by egotism, greed and the occasional back-stabbing.
Kevin Cantera and Michael Vigh were The Salt Lake Tribune’s lead reporters on the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case from the day she was abducted until her safe return in March.
Despite their reportorial duties to The Tribune and-oh yeah-its readers, Vigh and Cantera struck a deal to sell information to the National Enquirer for $10,000 a piece. Turns out the information they gave the Enquirer was wrong, and if you’re lucky, you may see Cantera and Vigh at Wendy’s on Main Street trying to keep up the mortgage payments on their homes.
I don’t think, however, the actions of Cantera and Vigh will send The Salt Lake Tribune spiraling off into a world where readers distrust the written word or question the validity of a photograph.
If anything, I would hope that what comes out of the you-know what hitting the fan is an idea that truth shouldn’t come with a price, but it should have a cost.
Cantera and Vigh have avoided getting themselves sued by revealing their sources on the Enquirer story to the Smart’s family attorney.
Cantera also admitted making up the claim that police found a journal describing a sordid sexual affair between Ed Smart and Elizabeth’s two uncles.
Truth shouldn’t have a price, and $10,000 shouldn’t separate the truth Cantera and Vigh owe Tribune readers from the “truth” that the National Enquirer owes Jerry Springer.
Truth should cost people their jobs when they betray it.
The truth should be priceless, no matter how much it costs.