Otterblog

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Conflicts of interest are unavoidable in many aspects of life. Eventually, many of us run up against them. There seems to be two camps in deciding what to do about them. The first camp says “when there’s a conflict, walk away.” The second path is to disclose and then go about your business. This happened the other day at CBS, with an interview of the Lynne Cheney done by a correspondent whose husband represented Ms. Cheney in a publishing deal. CBS disclosed the relationship, then did the story.

A similar thing is going on here in Forsyth County, with a deal involving Pat Swann, the chairman of the City-County Utility Commission. We wrote about it this Sunday. Swann disclosed that he is the broker on a real-estate deal that got started in his capacity as a member of the utility commission. He disclosed the relationship to board members , the mayor and the chairman of the county commissioners. Disclosure is honorable at some level, but it doesn’t resolve the conflict. It just acknowledges it and asks somebody else to do something about it.

It’s true that viewers of the CBS broadcast can judge for themselves whether the correspondent was too easy on the vice president’s wife. And the public can decide whether Mr. Swann cut himself a sweet deal. And disclosure is better than hiding the relationships. But I don’t think they are the best routes. It forces decisions by the public after the fact, and those decisions are often quite different than those made on the cusp of a deal.

PHOTO of the WEEK: I rarely post photos, but this one’s too good to miss. It’s a shot from Bethabara this weekend of a small snake. You can see something coming out of its mouth besides its tongue. It was another snake. That is a meal that doesn’t go down easy.