Most reporters would love to make $75,000. In a year.
So it set my eyes to blinking when I read that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman got paid that much for a single speech, sponsored last week by the San Francisco Bay Area's clean air district.
I called the Times several times in the last couple of days to ask Friedman a bunch of questions, like how it felt to be such a giant cheese, whether he would disclose who else paid him big bucks and whether he felt queasy taking so much money from a public agency that presumably could spend the money on other things.
Friedman didn't return my calls, and New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis seemed pretty cool to my questions. I got the feeling, from her long silences, that she thought my questions were a little silly.
Then late Tuesday afternoon, Mathis called to say Friedman would return the $75,000. She said there had been "a misunderstanding."
Times ethics guidelines allow staffers to take speaking fees only from "educational and other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and political activity are not a major focus." The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which coughed up Friedman's standard fee, hardly fits that bill.
So here's a tip of the reportorial green eye shade to Phil Matier and Andy Ross, the San Francisco Chronicle columnists who broke the story about the big payment. And here's a suggestion that the time has come for influential journalists like Friedman to disclose their substantial sources of outside income.
I don't have any reason to doubt Friedman's reputation as an earnest and dogged reporter. I read him enough to believe that his opinions, even ones I disagree with, flow from his heart and mind, not his wallet.
Still, it seems only right that journalists -- who spend a lot of time pressing public officials to disclose their income sources -- start revealing potential conflicts of interest. Some form of transparency will become even more important as a thousand new and unproven news sources bloom online.
Without the Chronicle's dynamic reporting duo, the Bay Area air district would not be getting back its $75,000, money that could help cities expand bike paths or plant more trees.
That's proof enough for me that we can start the disclosure on these speaking engagements right here and now.
