Published: June 25, 1998
Last Updated: July 01, 1998
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RESTON, Va. - The president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors has urged the World Association of Press Councils to abandon efforts to establish an "international code of ethics for media."

In a letter to Oktay Eksi, chairman of the Press Council of Turkey and an organizer of an international conference to be held in Istanbul in September, ASNE President Edward L. Seaton said ASNE would not participate in the conference and cited dangers to a free press that efforts to write and establish a code entail.

The ASNE president's letter states:

The American Society of Newspaper Editors respectfully declines your invitation to participate in writing an International Code of Ethics for Media and developing a mechanism to oversee trans-frontier complaints. We urge you to abandon these plans.

While ASNE believes all media should operate with high standards, it has learned from experience that agreements on standards and their enforcement, even voluntary ones, are dangerous for press freedom. Our history in the United States with the National News Council and various press-bar agreements has been that these entities soon are subverted into quasi-extensions of our legal system. Judges and lawyers have used ethical guidelines, council statements and various agreements as evidence and the basis for court decisions against the press. What is intended as voluntary becomes coercive.

We believe, as former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in a famous press decision, 'A responsible press is an undoubtedly desirable goal, but press responsibility is not mandated by the Constitution and, like many other virtues, cannot be legislated.'

We have profound reservations about any kind of an agreement at the international level. Not only would it be used against our press in our courts, it could become mandatory under international law. It would be an open invitation to authorities in other countries to inhibit our press.

Our society has discussed these issues virtually annually since its founding in 1922, and long ago it resolved that codes of ethics and their enforcement seriously threaten freedom of the press.