“It’s not always feasible and ethical to have a mass discussion” while the decision is being made, Foster said. “But once the dust has cleared, I think it’s appropriate to really kind of lay out what our decision-making process was and open it up for Monday-morning quarterbacking.

“The thing there is to let people know how important it is and that it is really a process of noodling through the right thing to do. Nobody has a patent on the right thing to do.”

Foster said it is crucial that at least one top newsroom editor have a passion for ethics.

“You either care about it or it’s a nuisance,” he said. “If you don’t care about it, you better find someone fairly high up that does. You have got to have a passion to be aware of all these potholes and be as vigorous in your efforts to act ethically as you are in uncovering dirt.”

The newsroom’s best decision still may go against the public grain, Foster said. It helps to explain the decision and have a tradition of fairness upon which to draw.

“It’s not ‘Let’s just abandon all sense of journalism for the sake of not offending everybody,’” he said.

Foster said it also is instructive to consult with victims on a sensitive story.

He recalled a case in which the newspaper reported accusations of rape against three youths. The victim later recanted, and the question for the newspaper was whether to rerun photos of the youths with the follow-up report exonerating them.

“We called the parents up to see what they thought,” Foster said. They were “pretty vehement in saying ‘Don’t run the pictures.’

“I probably would have erred on the side of not running them. But if they had really wanted those pictures in there, I probably would have run them.”

Foster said his staff does not ask permission to publish and says that at the outset.

“We’re very clear on that: ‘I’m looking for input. We won’t necessarily do what you say, but we want to know what you think,’” he said. “I wouldn’t consider that slope very slippery.”