There's a motto beneath our nameplate on the front page: "To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor."
Adolph Ochs, who purchased The Chattanooga Times and became its teenage publisher at a time when he wasn't even allowed to vote, put it there in the 1800s.
Ochs came from independent-minded parents: His mother, Bertha, moved to Knoxville in 1861 and joined sides with the Confederacy. Father Julius enlisted in the Union Army. "Thus Adolph's parents modeled early in his life the importance of sticking to principles, regardless of the discomfort they might cause others," according to jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
The young publisher thrived and 18 years later bought The New York Times. It was the era of "yellow journalism," and publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were printing lurid and scandalous news accounts in a quest for readers.
Ochs took another tack: He separated opinion from the news pages and charted a course toward objective, responsible and independent journalism. He adopted the motto in New York of "All the News That's Fit to Print." He also dropped the price from 3 cents a copy to 1, gambling that New Yorkers and the country would embrace his focus on ethical news-gathering.
By the 1920s, the circulation of The New York Times had soared from 9,000 in the late 1800s to 780,000.
According to jewishvirtuallibrary.org, "Ochs always put editorial independence ahead of profits. He would not accept dubious advertising or contracts with governments, which might be construed as compromising his political independence. The New York Times under Ochs' leadership became the first national 'newspaper of record' and proved that a publisher could reconcile mass circulation, profitability and journalistic responsibility."
Ochs' Chattanooga motto, "To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor," is more than just boilerplate language to affix to our newspaper's flag. It is our renewed charge, our mantra.
Good old-fashioned, shoe-leather, investigative reporting is a threat only to the corrupt; for the rest of us, it's often the last line of defense between malfeasance and justice. This newspaper pledges to be tenacious in spotlighting public officials and institutions that harm their constituents by engaging in wrongdoing.
At the same time, however, we believe in the Ochs model: There's no reason why a newspaper can't be aggressive while adhering to a strict ethics policy.
Every journalist in this newsroom has received our new four-page ethics code, which outlines acceptable and inappropriate behavior. Since we reporters hold public officials and institutions accountable and urge transparency from them, we feel obligated to do the same.
That's why we are sharing our ethics policy with you online. You will find it at timesfreepress.com, under "Contact Us" at the top middle of our home page. There will be a form attached for your questions, or for your concerns should you believe that we have fallen short.
We will demand from us the same accountability to which we will hold others.
J. Todd Foster is executive editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press and can be reached at jtfoster@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6472.