NEWSWATCH: Worried and Without Friends at Court

Newspaper editors have a fear that they aren't admired enough. John Hughes, who retired this month as editor of the Christian Science Monitor and last month completed a term as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, warned his colleagues in a farewell address that "our profession . . . isn't currently in high repute. The polls indicate that our credibility with the public is lower than that of many other professions." There are three things wrong with that statement. Newspaper editing isn't a profession, its public standing is about as high as it ever is, and polls on such nebulous questions chiefly reflect the current soggy miasma of public mistrust about all American institutions.

But the editors' self-consciousness about their status is considerable and is having some curious effects. One is the way the Chicago Sun-Times lost a Pulitzer Prize that the nominating jury had recommended it for.

For five months, reporters for the paper had clandestinely operated a Chicago bar called the Mirage tavern, gathering notes on building and fire inspectors as they asked for illegal side payments. Street-wise in a machine-dominated city, Editor James Hoge had lawyers meticulously instruct his reporters in how to avoid committing entrapment. In the past, such Front Page-style enterprise has consistently won Pulitzers. As deception, it is not all that different from the confrontation theater that often gives CBS's 60 Minutes its liveliest episodes.

But one of the Pulitzer judges, Eugene Patterson of the St. Petersburg Times, was worried about changing moral standards. Newspapers become censorious when Government agents misrepresent themselves, he noted, and are generally more sensitive to invasions of privacy. (Patterson conceded that he has at times authorized his own reporters to disguise themselves, and reserves the right to do so again.) As Patterson and his fellow judges groped their way through these ethical thickets, James ("Scotty") Reston of the New York Times was worried that they might be getting too moralistic. So he volunteered a distinction between pretense and deceit. Reporters often pretend to know more than they do, he said, to get a source to tell the full story; that's O.K. Deceit is the more elaborate subterfuge the Sun-Times practiced. Having ingested this bit of Talmudic Calvinism, the judges gave the Pulitzer to someone else.