Journalistic ethics used to be simple. Though not necessarily easy to observe, the lines were clear. You couldn’t take gifts of any kind from current or potential sponsors. You mustn’t own their stocks or play golf with their executives. You needed corporate money, in other words advertising, but you balanced that out with monetized public trust, in other words subscriptions. This way, you didn’t need to rely that much on the former, which you knew could lead to all kinds of problems.

When people stop buying news, or buy news less and less, subscription money dries up. This is where the real trouble begins. You have to depend more and more on corporate money, and the lines that used to be clear get muddier and muddier. You need the corporates and worse still, they know you need them.

The imbalance in the relationship is glaring. With the help of information technology and social media, the corporates can do their own advertising. A video commercial posted by a corporate intern on YouTube or Facebook can go viral overnight and have a bigger impact than any full-page newspaper ad. Thus, when corporates turn to journalistic media outlets for advertising, they do so with a big upper hand.

They know full well you need them more than they need you. This lopsidedness is always exploited in any relationship. At first, you feel bitter at having to yield to one corporate demand after another, but, as they say, when a line gets crossed too often, it can disappear forever.

Of course, I am talking about print journalists. TV journalists have never had to rely on subscriptions, and theirs is a different story entirely. It is print journalists who are experiencing an ethical upheaval. In effect, they are getting to know how it feels to be TV journalists, whose survival depends on anything but income from the newsstands.

I’m sure that if a group of online journalists, backed by George Soros’ money, could choose a less controversial source of funding, they would go for it.

But let’s face it: In today’s world, they might be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The hard truth is that corporate money, be it a direct handout or something given through a foundation, is never completely free from controversy, prospective or genuine.

What should you do? The answer lies in ordinary comments given in response to the George Soros and Prachathai (independent, nonprofit, daily) issue. It’s what you do that counts, period. You can take bad money and do something good with it. On the other hand, good money is meaningless if it sponsors something bad.

The moment of truth comes when you’re faced with reporting unpleasant or downright repulsive things your sponsors do. People say you mustn’t bite the hand that feeds you, but, unfortunately, that doesn’t work in journalism. You must have the courage to bite that hand. That’s all that matters.

If the Prachathai reporters can maintain their independence, then their sources of funding mean little. If they can’t, it will mean everything in the whole world. And what measures independence is not the ability to cover grassroots plights -- because any media outlet can do that. What speaks “independence” is the audacity to turn against any sponsor if needs be.

Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, a code of journalistic conduct could have prohibited funding from George Soros, simply because of how he allegedly got the money. That principle was meant to prevent rich and controversial figures from buying their own mouthpieces, leading to an unwanted situation where news was what wealthy folks said it was.

Journalism demands that you have the impudence to be the most ungrateful creature while holding your head up high. And yet the Soros controversy is not the only problem journalism presents. Ethics are not just about what happened in the past, but also what may happen in the future. Money from a “clean” corporate body is no guarantee that the journalists will not run into a major ethical conflict sooner or later.

I agree with the argument, made in defense of Prachathai, that sources of funding are not as important as what the recipients do with that funding. Which means it’s up to Prachathai reporters to prove themselves. Simply put, they can choose to work for George Soros, or they can use his money to work for themselves, ethically.

It’s a tall order, because 99 percent of the time a bitten hand will pull back, and understandably so. Good journalists, however, have no choice but to keep jumping from one “hand” to another. It’s the only way to go.

By Tulsathit Taptim

Tulsathit Taptim is a former editor-in-chief of the Nation, which is published in Thailand. -- Ed.

(The Nation/Asia News Network)