Disclosure and conflict of interest in opinion columns: Public Editor

Writing recently about the unfairness of tax havens for the rich, freelance Op-Ed columnist Linda McQuaig cited an estimated $8-billion annual revenue loss to Canadians from tax havensLinda McQuaig cited an estimated $8-billion annual revenue loss to Canadians from tax havens.

McQuaig told you the number came from Canadians for Tax Fairness. What she didn’t tell you is that she is a member of that group’s advisory board.

Is that information that should be disclosed to readers? Is this a conflict of interest, as a reader who brought this to my attention suggested?

I don’t see a conflict issue here. McQuaig is a monthly opinion columnist for the Star, not a reporter. As such, she has wide latitude to express views informed by her own extensive expertise, interests and involvements.

Unlike news reporters who, according to the Star’s policy manual, must be seen to be “fair-minded fact-finders” and should not be “both actors and critics” on public issues, columnists — especially freelancers — have more leeway for involvement in public issues.

Still, there is a need for columnists and other Op-Ed writers to be transparent and make clear to readers any personal involvement in issues they write about.

Certainly McQuaig’s longtime interest in economic justice is no secret. A prolific author, she’s written nine books on politics and economics, including six national bestsellers. As her column credit note states, her most recent book, co-authored with Neil Brooks, is called The Trouble with Billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World and How We Can Take It Back.

Nor, I am assured, was the writer attempting to hide her role with the tax fairness group. She simply overlooked mentioning her connection to the group that she is loosely affiliated with and in which she has no financial interest. And online the article linked to the organization’s website where McQuaig is listed as a member of the national advisory council.

Still, Editorial Page Editor Andrew Phillips decided the column should include some acknowledgement of McQuaig’s involvement with the group. To that end, the credit note at the end of the column has been amended to make that fact clear.

“Full disclosure is always best,” said Phillips, who like me does not regard this as a conflict issue. “If anything, adding a note here is an excess of caution.”

I think that was the right call. As was a similar call Phillips made this week for fuller disclosure on an online Op-Ed article exploring the Toronto casino debate written by Clyde W. Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Barrow’s piece was critical of a University of Toronto, Martin Prosperity Institute study of the economic impact of a downtown casino in Toronto. Following a reader complaint that the article did not make clear Barrow’s past involvement with the casino industry, and upon further questioning of the author to determine the extent of any such involvement, the credit line on the article was amended to tell you: “He has conducted market feasibility studies for companies considering building casinos in New England.”

Op-Ed writers are not meant to be unbiased bystanders. They write to express informed views rooted in their own expertise and experience. They express their own views, not those of the news organization.

It is up to you to assess the positions put forth in Op-Ed pieces. But to do so, you must be given any relevant information that might help you gauge the credentials and biases of those given space to provide their perspectives on newsworthy public issues. The Star can’t know all the affiliations of all Op-Ed writers and expects them to disclose any interests they have in a subject.

“Op-ed writers aren’t supposed to be objective or to have no stake in the subjects they’re writing about,” Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor, said last fall in an interview with Media Matters, a media monitoring website.“When a writer does have a particular relationship to his subject that is not immediately apparent to the reader, it is important to disclose that so that the reader can evaluate the argument intelligently.”

Media Matters interviewed Goldberg and other U.S. editorial page editors after reporting that the Wall Street Journal had failed to disclose that 10 Op-Eds it published during the U.S. election campaign were written by advisers to presidential candidate Mitt Romney without any disclosure of that vital information.

A former New York Times editor called such an egregious failure to disclose “shameless.” Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, said: “Not disclosing is inexcusable.

“We are pretty careful here to disclose any affiliation,” he added.

Clearly, in this digital age of radical transparency, great care must be taken to assure the fullest disclosure possible.