By Jerry Ceppos

One of America’s best reporters was on stage recently explaining how she and a colleague broke a great story, a sure Pulitzer candidate next spring. Each of the reporters worked four months on the story, she said–and then gave the federal government four or five days to respond, with the publication date right after that. Someone joked to the effect that “that’s better than the one day we usually give them.” The audience knowingly chuckled.

Journalists don’t often think of response time as one of the elements of fairness, but we should. If the story took eight months of reporting time, is four or five days of response time enough? We, of course, expect the federal government to drop everything when we break a big story, but is that expectation fair? Furthermore, if the rushed response is coming on the eve of publication, isn’t it tough for journalists to recast their conclusions in the unlikely event that the government, or another adversary, has an important response?

Some colleagues who heard the discussion disagree with me, saying that the reporters offered enough time. But those colleagues probably never had an experience like mine: Years ago, a newspaper prepared a story critical of reporting that my own paper had done. The critical story clearly had taken weeks of work. But, as far as I could tell, I was called after the story was written so that my quote simply could be plugged in, thus meeting journalistic standards of fairness. As it happened, I was called so late in the process that my quote didn’t even make the bulldog edition of the Sunday paper; it was inserted for later editions.

In both cases, “the other side” was asked for comment, as journalism ethics require. But does the offer of a rushed comment, solicited after a major story was framed and perhaps even written, meet even the minimal standards of fairness? That answer doesn’t require even four or five days. The answer is no.