Vermont is one of five states without a statutory code of ethics. A bill in the Senate seeks to change that; Vermont Public Radio (VPR), March 8, 2022

Peter Hirschfeld, Vermont Public Radio (VPR); Vermont is one of five states without a statutory code of ethics. A bill in the Senate seeks to change that

"Last month, a federal judge unsealed documents that showed former Gov. Peter Shumlin had accepted gifts and favors from the man who perpetrated the massive EB-5 fraud in the Northeast Kingdom.

Those documents, first covered by VTDigger, reveal that Shumlin’s aides flagged the favors — including free stays in a luxury New York City condominium — as a potential “problem.”

Shumlin’s general counsel, however, advised they needn’t be concerned from a legal perspective at least, because, according to an FBI summary of those conversations, “the state of Vermont does not have a statute regarding gifts, or a requirement for such disclosures.”

Vermont is one of only five states in the country without a statutory code of ethics."

Forget Bridgegate. New Jersey’s actually the most ethical state; Washington Post, 5/1/15

Nicholas Kusnetz, Washington Post; Forget Bridgegate. New Jersey’s actually the most ethical state:

"Until Bridgegate, the past decade had seen few corruption charges against state-level officials in New Jersey, and that may be no coincidence: The shame of the McGreevey scandals led the state to pass some of the nation’s strongest ethics and transparency laws in 2005. Those reforms even helped New Jersey earn the top rank, with a grade of B+, in the 2012 State Integrity Investigation, a national ranking of state government transparency and accountability by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International. That’s not to say the Garden State is squeaky clean, but by our most recent measure, it’s better than any other state in the nation."

Why I Left 60 Minutes: The big networks say they care about uncovering the truth. That’s not what I saw; Politico, 6/29/14

Charles Lewis, Politico; Why I Left 60 Minutes: The big networks say they care about uncovering the truth. That’s not what I saw:

"Many people, then and since, have asked me what exactly I was thinking—after all, I was walking away from a successful career full of future promise. Certainly, quitting 60 Minutes was the most impetuous thing I have ever done. But looking back, I realize how I’d changed. Beneath my polite, mild-mannered exterior, I’d developed a bullheaded determination not to be denied, misled or manipulated. And more than at any previous time, I had had a jarring epiphany that the obstacles on the way to publishing the unvarnished truth had become more formidable internally than externally. I joked to friends that it had become far easier to investigate the bastards—whoever they are—than to suffer through the reticence, bureaucratic hand-wringing and internal censorship of my employer.

In a highly collaborative medium, I had found myself working with overseers I felt I could no longer trust journalistically or professionally, especially in the face of public criticism or controversy—a common occupational hazard for an investigative reporter. My job was to produce compelling investigative journalism for an audience of 30 million to 40 million Americans. But if my stories generated the slightest heat, it was obvious to me who would be expendable. My sense of isolation and vulnerability was palpable.

The best news about this crossroads moment was that after 11 years in the intense, cutthroat world of network television news, I still had some kind of inner compass. I was still unwilling to succumb completely to the lures of career ambition, financial security, peer pressure or conventional wisdom.

Just weeks after I quit, I decided to begin a nonprofit investigation reporting organization—a place dedicated to digging deep beneath the smarminess of Washington’s daily-access journalism into the documents few reporters seemed to be reading, which I knew from experience would reveal broad patterns of cronyism, favoritism, personal enrichment and outrageous (though mostly legal) corruption. My dream was a journalistic utopia—an investigative milieu in which no one would tell me who or what not to investigate. And so I recruited two trusted journalist friends and founded the Center for Public Integrity. The Center’s first report, “America’s Frontline Trade Officials,” was an expanded version of the 60 Minutes “Foreign Agent” story. Not long after this report was published, President George H.W. Bush signed an executive order banning former trade officials from becoming lobbyists for foreign governments or corporations."