Tribune: Let the Reader Beware

In the first of two twisted responses to Yours Truly, former Tribune Public Editor Don Wycliff confessed in his Aug. 18 column that Tribune policy requires reporters to include an ethical disclosure -- the minimum standard of ethical conduct -- in all stories about the Cubs except routine game coverage. "After that," he said, "it's up to the reader/viewer to follow the age-old caution: Let the buyer beware." In other words, if the Tribune cons you, it's your problem. That's how passionate the Trib's in-house watchdog was about ethics.

In the months that followed this column, Tribune staffers ignored Wycliff and continued to cover the Cubs with no disclosure of their conflict of interest, and Wycliff didn't seem to mind. Wycliff has since resigned to compromise journalism more overtly as a public-relations wag for the University of Notre Dame. He also teaches the occasional course in journalism ethics at ND, which is a bit like the Unabomber teaching chemistry. During his tenure as the Tribune's reader representative, Wycliff defended the newspaper more often than he criticized it, he condescended to readers, and he quoted without permission from private correspondence and unpublished letters to the editor.