If a personal injury lawyer breached industry standard they'd be marched in front of the bar the same way a corporate partner would for making the same ethical breach. If a toy manufacturer cut corners on the assembly line, they'd get crap canned the same way an airplane manufacturer would.
I really think both these examples weigh against your point.
There is a very different perception of prestige and expectation of behavior between different types of attorneys. The fact that you still have to be licensed to practice as an attorney at all and are subject to enforceable rules of ethics just illustrates how different journalists are as a profession.
The toy example is even funnier. There is literally never an acceptable time for airplanes to break. Everyone expects toys to break in like less than six weeks. We had a toy RC truck that a wheel fell off and when we replaced it with a new one THE SAME wheel fell off!
I'm going to sound like a dick here, but you don't actually get the point at all. You're talking about perceived prestige of these jobs and I'm telling you it doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks about the prestige of the job, he violated the very well defined industry standards. People who don't know what the eff they are talking about are arguing whether or not it's a big deal or if it matters, no actual journalist is even thinking twice about this, there's no doubt.
Your and almost everyone's understanding of media ethics is way off. When this dude sat in all of those UMich J School classes, almost all of them are about adherence to ethics and standards. Feel free to keep debating whether or not he violated the tenets of industry, he did. Also feel free to mock the fact that sports journalists have professional standards, won't change the fact they exist in sports journalism and literally every other industry in the world. Even drug dealers have industry standards.
I get it. We just completely disagree on the frame of reference here.
You tried comparing journalists to attorneys. It’s a bad example because attorneys have codified rules of ethics and a clear disciplinary process for violating those rules.
Then you compared journalism to…I guess the entire manufacturing industry? Which, come on.
Sure, there are unofficial rules of journalists that any professional in the industry should be aware of. Whether a journalist chooses to follow those rules purely comes down to reputational integrity.
So go ahead and rake them over the unwritten coals all you want, but at the end of the day each journalist is generally going to take actions calculated to further the particular type of career they’re pursuing. Most people reading Schefter aren’t going to GAF about him running stories by a GM about their draft strategy or whatever. And even among those people, if they’re looking for trustworthy in depth reporting about something like the Gruden thing, they’ll probably look elsewhere.
Journalists calling for any more than that definitely belongs ITT.
