The editor-in-chief of Nosten Trud newspaper in Bulgaria, Dimitar Shumnaliev, tells a story in November of 2001 about a complaint he received from a reader who shops with one of his major advertisers:
"There's a firm that has paid its ads – a store. Yesterday, a woman called and said that she bought spoiled meat from the same store. The store has paid a lot of money for the ads. We have to be loyal to both the firm and the reader. Often ethical values are in competition. I didn't publish any information about the spoiled meat, because we needed the money. But I also called the director of the store and told him about the spoiled meat. An hour later, no spoiled meat was on sale. I was loyal to the reader as well because I did something as an editor-in-chief."
Some questions to consider:
Was Shumnaliev right not to publish the story, but to alert the store?
– Prof Marco Mulcahy, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo
