OK, here's the scenario, which happened in Alabama last week: a public relations person for a major Alabama state agency gets a request from a reporter for an interview with the agency's head. She puts together a list of controversial parts of the story the reporter is working on and sends it with the reporter's original e-mail to some folks in the agency. But by accident, she clicks on the wrong "To" list and sends it to every media person on her very large list. Realizing her mistake within minutes, the PR person sends a second e-mail, asking folks to ignore the earlier one.
A few ethical questions here: was I wrong to open the attachment anyway? If I opened it in the time between email #1 and email #2?
I read the original e-mail from The Anniston Star reporter Graham Milldrum and glanced at the lengthy list of issues in the story he was doing...nothing especially secretive there, though in a competitive news market, knowing what story someone else is working on, and when they'll publish it, can be beneficial. In my new role as blogger-only, I called Milldrum and talked with him about the incident. Turns out, till my call, he wasn't even aware that his private e-mail had been blasted across the state. He remembered an Eastern Illinois University journalism professor's ethics lecture asking if it was OK to use information you obtained by reading a document upside down on a desk. The professor's answer was no, because you were not intended to have the information. If that rule were strictly interpreted, I'm not sure how some stories would ever get published. I asked Milldrum if the PR person had at least apologized for sharing his private communication, and he said no, suggesting that she may have considered the second mass-mailing enough of a mea culpa. Would you have opened the attachment? And just how careful do we all need to be when hitting the "Send" button?
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