It's one of the cardinal rules of journalism: don't get personally involved in the story.
But that's exactly what Boston Globe reporter and columnist Kevin Cullen did while covering the story of a terminally ill woman who travelled to Vermont to die by medically assisted suicide. The woman, Lynda Bluestein, needed two people to sign a form attesting that she was in a clear state of mind, and Cullen agreed to be one of them.
In an editor's note: the Globe said that was a violation of their standards but also that it "did not meaningfully impact the outcome of this story." Does that assessment hold up?
Adam Reilly is joined by Kelly McBride, the senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at The Poynter Institute and the public editor for NPR, and journalist Susie Banikarim, host of the podcast: "In Retrospect."
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