Parodying and Partying No More p.

By: Stephen Keating

Parodying and Partying No More p.
Ethical concerns are forcing journalists to shun political roasts
POLITICAL ROASTS RANGING from the Gridiron Club event in Washington, D.C., to the Special Edition Dinner in Madison, Wis., are usually a night of parody and partying for reporters, government officials and lobbyists.
However, two such events have recently been skewered by ethical concerns, forcing journalists to reflect on what they so often write about: the appearance of conflict of interest.
In the nation's capital, the Washington Post decided not to participate in the May 1 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner after a flap over proposed rules that equate newspapers with lobbyists in giving dinner tickets to executive branch officials.
In New Jersey, the editors of two dailies raised similar concerns, starting a snowball that quickly buried the 60-year-old Legislative Correspondents Club Dinner.
"Over the years, the club's dinner has become less a lighthearted gathering of journalists than just another stop on the special interests' dinner circuit," read part of a March 22 letter to the club from Glenn Ritt, editor of The Record of Hackensack, and Jim Flachsenhaar, editor of the News Tribune in Woodbridge. Both newspapers are owned by Malcolm Borg's Macromedia.
The letter from the editors of the jointly owned newspapers, which combined to buy 47 of 850 dinner tickets at $80 apiece the year before, also raised concerns about the event being off-the-record and questioned, "How can we as journalists criticize lobbyists who finance the activities of elected officials when we accept virtually the same kind of support? How can we criticize politicians for taking such gifts, but then pay for their tickets to the event?"
This "sudden burst of ethics," as one Statehouse reporter termed it, elicited fraternal doubts from editors of several other newspapers, placing the roast's traditional conviviality in a darker light. After a heated discussion, the 25 members of the Correspondents Club ? including reporters from the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer ? decided to cancel the May 12 event and lose a $2,500 hotel deposit, leaving open the possibility of a scaled-down, on-the-record roast later in the year.
Club president Donna Leusner, a Statehouse reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, said the club had done nothing to compromise its ethics in the past or present and that the roast, which provided $10,000 worth of journalism scholarships last year, was an evening of "fun and charity."
Conflict-of-interest concerns have arisen with roasts in other parts of the country, but none has apparently led to a cancellation.
"The subject has always been brought up, that these lobbyists are paying reporters for tickets, but no one has pulled out," said Terry O'Brien, a Statehouse reporter for The Record of Troy, New York, referring to the May 15 $150-a-ticket Legislative Correspondents' Association Dinner.
In Wisconsin, such questions are mitigated since the Special Event Dinner is managed by a diversified group of journalists, lobbyists and public officials in Madison. The $25 ticket price is nominal and, in any event, Wisconsin ethics rules prohibit state legislators from accepting gifts, whether from lobbyists or newspaper publishers.
Alan Rosenthal, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and author of several books on the political process and lobbying, said withdrawing from such events to avoid a perceived conflict of interest may be taking it all a bit too seriously.
"These roasts bring the political community together to laugh at themselves. That should be encouraged, not discouraged," said Rosenthal, who has attended several of the New Jersey dinners as a guest of Rutgers. "It escapes me that this is a moral issue."
However, with tighter rules for lobbying disclosure and governmental ethics, high-priced, reporter sponsored roasts are under greater scrutiny.
In Washington, the white-tie Gridiron Club event took place without incident March 27, but only after the club centralized its distribution of $180-per-person tickets. The change was in response to a proposed federal rule that would limit gifts to executive branch employees, said Penny Dixon, executive secretary of the non-profit Gridiron Club.
"Basically, the interpretation of government lawyers in the office of ethics was that reporters were the same as lobbyists," said Dixon.
The new rules, proposed under the Bush administration to be effective in February, but since delayed by the Clinton administration, would prohibit executive branch employees from accepting anything of value over $20 per occasion, up to a maximum of $50 per year.
"The exception was for widely attended gatherings if it comes from a sponsoring organization," said Dixon. Hence the centralized ticket distribution for the event, which President Clinton, members of Congress, and other government officials attended as guests of the club
The questions raised, however, provoked the Washington Post not to buy tickets for the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Post managing editor Robert G. Kaiser said the decision not to participate was in response to journalists lobbying the Clinton administration to suspend the new ethics rules for a time, which was done.
"Ann DeVroy [a Post columnist] was quite properly appalled at the petitioning of the White House for exceptions for the purpose of having a dinner," said Kaiser.
"We think the rules are really stupid," he added "They've applied the same rules to journalists as lobbyists, but they are the rules."
Kaiser said Post employees did attend the Gridiron Club event because "No exceptions were requested and tickets were issued in the name of the club."
The Post's decision to bypass the White House Correspondents' Dinner nonetheless created its own dilemma because two people at the newspaper won the Raymond Clapper Award, a journalism prize given out at the dinner.