AS THE PROJO TURNS The Guild prods Belo on ethics BY IAN DONNIS

When is an ethics violation not an ethics violation?

This is the question being posed by the Providence Newspaper Guild, which this week asked the Belo Corporation, the Dallas-based owner of the Providence Journal, to discipline the ProJo’s top two executive for seeming violations of Belo’s ethics policy.

To hear the Guild tell it, the matter is clear-cut. Belo’s guidelines include a prohibition on violating the law, and a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge, in two decisions dating to September 2002, has found the ProJo guilty of 27 violations of federal labor law (the paper has appealed the decisions). Pointing out the ostensible ethical breach in a letter to Belo general counsel Guy H. Kerr, the Guild asked Belo to sanction publisher Howard G. Sutton and Mark T. Ryan, the ProJo’s executive vice president and general manager.

"The way we look at it, the Journal has been found guilty by an administrative law judge of more than two dozen violations," says Guild president John Hill, bureau manager of the Lincoln office. "One of the standards of the policy is that you won’t violate the law. It seems self-evident that there’s been a violation."

It also seems unlikely that Belo will show up its two top executives in Providence by hewing to the union’s request. At any rate, the Texas-based media giant showed its hand when Guild executive committee member Kerry Kohring pointed out the apparent violation during a previous trip to a shareholders’ meeting in Dallas. "The response was that they consider this a negotiation issue, and not an ethical issue," says Hill. "I read the words and I assume the words mean what they mean."

Belo spokesman Scott Baradell didn’t return a calling seeking comment. Sutton, who doesn’t speak with the Phoenix as a routine matter, was away from his office and couldn’t be reached for comment.

In some ways, the Guild’s tweaking of Belo is meant to hasten the return of ProJo managers to the negotiating table. In June, in the first vote on a new contract since 2000, union members rejected a proposed pact, and management subsequently refused to resume talks (see "The Guild strikes back after ‘impasse,’ This Just In, July 11). Since then, the Guild has been trying to turn up the heat by renewing preparations for a long-threatened boycott; staging more frequent pickets outside the Journal’s Fountain Street headquarters; and focusing attention on a new policy in which the paper is charging for announcements — births, retirements, engagements, wedding anniversaries, and business promotions — that had been published as free news items for decades.

Hill believes it would be "irresponsible" for the Guild to not take Belo at its word when it comes to the ethics policy. But if such tactics serve "another purpose of increasing awareness of what’s going on and creates an environment where they think, ‘Why not go back to the table,’ that’s good, too." As he notes, the Journal has typically taken its time in renewing contracts talks after past disagreements with the Guild. "We kind of want to compress that timeline," Hill says, "and we think doing these things might help."