PressEthic

I'm not saying that Jodi Wilgoren made up a quote in her recent article in the New York Times. I'm not saying that it's hard enough to report on kids being loud in coffeeshops as if it's a breaking national trend. I'm not saying that it's the most emailed story from the Times today because every person who lives in Park Slope who doesn't have kids probably sent it to everyone they know.

But I am saying that it's an article that makes less sense each time that you read it. And, ethically speaking, it raises the question: when does reporting on an alternative business cross the line and become a free plug?

The gist of the article is that in a neighborhood in Chicago that was "once an outpost of avant-garde artists and hip gay couples" is now a magnet for "young professional families shunning the suburbs" (insert the word "brownstone" and you're in Park Slope, Brooklyn.) Apparently a coffee shop owner got tired of children screaming while their parents read the newspaper, and brazenly put a sign asking patrons to use their "inside voices." After setting such a scene, Wilgoren gets fancy with alliteration and writes:

"And so simmers another skirmish between the childless and the child-centered, a culture clash increasingly common in restaurants and other public spaces as a new generation of busy, older, well-off parents ferry little ones with them."

So far, so good (hey, not everything in the Times can be about the price of gold or the Paris riots.) Wilgoren interviews two shop owners and several upset patrons, though curiously gives very few details about her interview subjects. She writes:

" Menus at Zumbro Cafe in Minneapolis say: "We love children, especially when they're tucked into chairs and behaving," which Barbara Daenzer said she read as an invitation to cease her weekly breakfast visits after her son was born."

If you're wondering who Barbara Daenzer is, how old she is, or where she lives, then you've got company: this is the only mention of Daenzer in the piece.

The article moves into an ethical gray area, however, when the tone turns to coffeeshop alternatives for caffeine addicted parents with tots in tow. Wilogren writes:

Why suffer such scorn, the mothers said, when clerks at the Swedish Bakery, a neighborhood institution, offer children - calm or crying - free cookies? Why confront such criticism when the recently opened Sweet Occasions, a five-minute walk down Clark Street, designed the restroom aisle to accommodate double strollers and offers a child-size ice cream cone for $1.50? (At A Taste of Heaven, the smallest is $3.75.)

The Swedish Baker and Sweet Occasions on Clark Street probably already have this article mounted, framed and displayed prominently in their stores. Not only is it an endorsement, it's in the news section - treatment usually reserved only for Bloomberg.

There are no ethical quandaries about reporting on the policies of other coffeeshops, but this article crosses the line from context to commercial. By adopting the point of view of "the mothers" in the second sentence, Wilogren abandons her reporter's objectivity, effectively putting words in her subjects mouth's and setting the article in opposition to business owners who do not want unruly children in their stores. Several stories are presented from the point of view of parents; there are no mentions of business owners sued for negligence when a child was injured in a store (this is a nation that sues over really hot coffee, there must have been at least one relevant case in Lexis-Nexis to bring up), nor are there any interviews with people who might like to not share a café with a crying child.

Even if the subject matter isn't an issue of national security, the article nevertheless did run in the National section. If Wilogren is going to cover this new "national trend," then she should at least write a fully reported article.