Ethics Corner: pseudonyms make for phony bylines

By: Allan Wolper Her name was Claudia Elena Amaya Montalvo in San Salvador. She became Claudia Elena de Redd when she migrated from El Salvador to Salt Lake City, Utah, and got married. She writes under the byline Claudia Elena Redd for Mundo Hispano, a Spanish-language weekly newspaper. But she was never "Elena Montalbo" ? and therein lies a tale. It began March 10 when Claudia picked up Mundo Hispano and saw the byline "Elena Montalbo" over a story on the resignation of Yvette Diaz as executive director of the State of Utah Department of Community and Culture.

Montalvo was embarrassed. The article omitted the fact that the official nearly lost her job after The Salt Lake Tribune reported she knowingly employed an undocumented nanny. It also didn't mention that Diaz had appointed Leo Gonzalez, the son of Mundo Hispano's publisher, Gladys Gonzalez, as director of Hispanic/Latino affairs for the Utah State Office of Ethnic Affairs.

Claudia telephoned managing editor Patricia Quijano to find out how two parts of her name (with one misspelled) became a byline on a story she didn't write. "Patricia and I had talked the night before about me [possibly] using the name 'Elena Montalvo' over some of my stories because I was writing so many under my name, Claudia Elena Redd," Claudia told me. "But I never gave her permission to use it. Patricia apologized and said she messed up."

But the Hispanic community was buzzing. Jennifer W. Sanchez, the minority affairs reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune who had broken the Diaz undocumented-nanny story, figured out quickly that "Elena Montalbo" was a pseudonym, and pounced. The Tribune ran a story headlined, "Spanish-language journal uses fake bylines" and repeated the "Montalbo" spelling error.

Mundo Hispano's managing editor saw the story as a corporate maneuver. The Salt Lake Tribune had announced it would be publishing Fronteras de la Noticia, a Spanish-language weekly distributed nationally by Universal Press Syndicate and Danilo Black, that would compete with Mundo Hispano for advertisers.

"I cannot help but be suspicious of the Tribune's motives in sensationalizing a practice that is commonplace in our culture and in our industry," Quijano wrote in an e-mail letter to the editor, alleging the use of pseudonyms was a common practice in Hispanic publications in South America, Central America, and the United States.

But Tribune Editor Nancy Conway didn't back away from her paper's report. "It was a legitimate story," she said. "It is not the custom in this country to use pseudonyms. People need to know who is writing our stories. We have to use real names. Newspapers have to be transparent." She added that the story was not part of a plot that involved its Spanish-language competitor: "We, like all good newsrooms, stand independent. The story was fair to their point of view."

Still, Mundo Hispano's Quijano maintained there is nothing wrong with publishing pseudonyms over her news stories, noting that even The New York Times has done so.

Lupita Colmenero, president of the National Association of Hispanic Publications, agreed. "A lot of newspapers in the United States use pseudonyms," she said. "I don't think there is anything wrong or unethical about it as long as the paper knows who the writer is."

But the incoming chair of the NAHP ethics committee has some concerns. "The key thing is whether using a pseudonym is meant to deceive the reader," said Robert Bard, publisher and CEO of the Arlington, Va.-based Latina Style magazine. "Using pseudonyms when reporting hard news is inappropriate."

Meanwhile, Allan M. Siegal, assistant managing editor and standards editor at the Times, said no one at the paper "currently" uses a pen name. He added that the Times' late music critic Harold Schonberg used the pseudonym "Newgate Callendar" to review mystery novels and a freelancer had taken over the byline, although it hasn't appeared since last September.

But the National Association of Hispanic Journalists seemed to be of one voice. Pseudonyms have no business in the news business, said NAHJ President Veronica Villafa?e: "If you put up a pseudonym on a news story, you're hiding something. The reader won't know who wrote it. In a news story, you have to be accountable."

That refrain was repeated by Elizabeth Aguilera, an urban affairs reporter for The Denver Post and a member of the NAHJ board of directors. "I think it is unethical and dishonest for journalists in the U.S. and elsewhere to falsify bylines," she said. "If we want our sources to be transparent, then we should be, too."