Baltimore 'Sun' Breaks Ties With Writer in Ethics Dispute

By: E&P Staff The Sun in Baltimore has dropped the regular weekly column written by its longtime reporter, and now freelancer, G. Jefferson Price, ending a very complicated relationship, according to article in the Baltimore City Paper by Gadi Dechter.

Price has been associated with the Sun for 37 years, and is a former foreign editor and correspondent. He took a buyout in June 2004 but kept writing for the paper. During this time, a he has also been on the payroll of the Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which is run by the U.S. Roman Catholic Church.

City Paper said under his most recent contract, "The Sun has been paying Price $100 per column. CRS has been footing the considerably more expensive bills of Price?s travels to many of the world?s most dangerous and distressed locations -- Uganda, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Haiti, among others -- enabling him to report his observations and opinions in a newspaper with a proud heritage of foreign correspondence, but one in which exotic datelines from local reporters are increasingly scarce.

?In exchange for CRS' s contribution to Price's journalism (it also pays him a consulting per diem while traveling) the Catholic aid agency got to dictate where Price would go, with whom he would travel, and, at least to some degree, what he would write about. And what Catholic Relief Services wanted Price to write about was Catholic Relief Services."

After the Price columns appeared The Sun -- and other newspapers -- CRS would frequently use them in publicity and fundraising efforts.

"This is an ethical breach of major proportions," Sun editorial page editor Dianne Donovan told City Paper. She confirmed that she canceled Price's column early this month after she discovered that he was routinely writing about CRS-affiliated programs in his columns.

Calls by E&P to Sun editors were not immediately returned.

Dechter's City Paper story continues: "What tipped her off, Donovan says, was Price's most recent contribution, filed from Ciudad Ju?rez, Mexico, in which he weighed in on a labor dispute between a major U.S. hat manufacturer and its Mexican factory workers. Price came out sharply in favor of the workers, and his primary source for the story was the workers' lawyer, who herself works for a CRS-supported organization called the Labor Apostolate, run by the Ju?rez Catholic Diocese.

"Donovan refused to publish the piece, which was to run in early May.

"When Price was informed of that by his immediate editor, Richard Gross, he called Donovan to discuss the matter. It was during that phone conversation that Price told Donovan what he assumed she already knew: that he often wrote about CRS-related programs and people.

"That was news to The Sun, Donovan told Price, and unacceptable besides. Price demurred, insisting that the three editors beneath Donovan were well aware that he sometimes wrote about CRS, and had never expressed any objection to previous columns in which he did."

Donovan told City Paper: "It was our understanding he would be traveling for Catholic Relief Services, but that he would not be writing about Catholic Relief Services-related entities, you know, because they're paying him. I thought that it would be OK for him to travel on their dime, if while he was traveling he would find other things to write about for the op-ed page. Jeff apparently misunderstood and thought it was OK for him to write about CRS-supported organizations. And I was not aware that that was happening, quite frankly."

But City Paper adds: "Price says his editors at The Sun never questioned these stories or inquired about his CRS-related sources or subjects. The fact that so many such columns ran, he says, was indication that they passed editorial muster and were in conformity with his agreement with The Sun."

The complete article can be found here.