ethics

May 15 (UPI) — The House Ethics Committee has launched an investigation into Rep. Chuck Edwards over allegations of creating a hostile work environment and engaging in sexual harassment.

Little information about the probe was made public.

In a brief statement issued Thursday, the committee said it was “reviewing allegations that Representative Chuck Edwards may have created or fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct.”

The committee said that its investigation and public disclosure do not indicate a violation has occurred.

Edwards told The Hill that he welcomes the investigation and plans “to comply fully with the committee.”

“I am confident the investigation will expose the facts, not politically motivated fiction,” he said.

The announcement follows recent reports that the committee was investigating Edwards, with Axios having been the first to report on the development.

Specifics of the allegations were not clear, but Politico earlier this week reported that he allegedly had an improper relationship with a subordinate as well as allegedly engaged in sexually harassment.

The investigation comes on the heels of two high-profile House resignations last month over sexual misconduct allegations.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., stepped down amid accusations of sexual misconduct and abuse, while Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, resigned after admitting he had an affair with a former aide who died by suicide.

Amid growing concern and anger about alleged abuses by members of the lower chamber, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday the creation of a bipartisan partnership between their parties’ women’s caucuses to combat workplace sexual misconduct in Congress.

Reps. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-N.M., and Kat Cammack, R-Fla., were designated to lead the effort as respective chairs of the Democratic and Republican Women’s Caucuses in the House.

“To state the obvious, all women should feel comfortable and safe working in the halls of Congress,” Johnson said in a statement, adding that he is happy Cammack and Leger Fernandez “will lead this bipartisan partnership to find ways we can continue to make Capitol Hill safer for women and all staff.”

In one of the world’s most deprived and volatile regions, HumAngle’s reporting and experience reveal that journalists in Nigeria are not just observing suffering but are pulled into it as they try to report it. Consequently, they say, they find themselves paying out of pocket to feed the people whose stories they are trying to tell.

In theory, the profession is expected to observe some emotional distance from its sources and the stories they tell. However, that model is inoperable in conflict-affected regions of northern Nigeria and the Sahel.

Journalism here is embedded in environments shaped by violence, poverty, and dense social networks. Since these variables affect people at random, the reporter is not an outsider; sometimes, the conflict directly affects them as well. Ethical decisions are then made under pressure, repeatedly, and often without the comfort of certainty.

HumAngle operates in this space. Its work across Lake Chad, Central Africa, Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the North West, the South East, and other conflict zones forces a confrontation with a difficult question: What does ethical journalism look like when the people you report on are not just sources, but individuals whose survival may intersect directly with your presence?

The limits of imported ethics

Global journalism standards discourage payment for information, and while exceptions exist, they do so under strict editorial oversight, a clear public-interest justification, and transparency. Journalism teachers say that, though these frameworks are expected to provide clarity, they don’t in conflict-affected Nigeria, where the assumed context doesn’t apply. The ideal context has clear distinctions between sources and service providers and functioning identity systems. This is hardly obtainable in conflict-affected environments.

Dr Kabiru Danladi, a Mass Communication scholar with the Ahmadu Bello University in northwestern Nigeria, says, “Our curriculum borrows heavily from Euro-American ethical frameworks – objectivity, detachment, neutrality – principles rooted in relatively stable societies. The failure becomes evident when our graduates are deployed to cover issues that weren’t directly taught in class, or they are sent to cover conflicts in places like Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Borno, Yobe or Benue, where journalism is not just a profession but a survival exercise.”

Dr Obiora Chukwumba, a researcher and media expert in Abuja, identifies the same problem in the moral obligation created by field contact. “There is no ethical barrier to a journalist intervening on grounds of goodwill to assist a source who is in a vulnerable position,” he said.

The reality of field reporting

A fixer in Zamfara, where terror groups continue to kill, abduct, and loot, is not simply an access broker but may also translate, assess risk, and act as a negotiator in certain environments. A driver in Borno, North East Nigeria, may carry more situational intelligence than any formal briefing. An intermediary in the southeast may navigate relationships across vigilante groups and separatist networks.

These individuals are essential. Without them, our reporters’ access vanishes. But they are also embedded in the same systems the journalist is trying to understand, which creates layered risks, including legal risks that emerge when payments made for legitimate services are later interpreted as material support. 

Barrister Joseph Danboyi, a senior lawyer in Jos, North Central Nigeria, says, “Payment to a fixer creates liability if the journalist knew his connection with criminals. Ordinary payment for information is insufficient. The journalist will be aiding and abetting when payment is purposefully linked to criminal conduct.”

He goes further to add, “The practical bottom line is that a journalist who unknowingly pays a criminal for information is generally not liable… liability requires knowledge… and intent to help or further it.”

This distinction between knowledge and intent anchors the legal reality that sits beneath field decisions. 

Dr Obiora also treats fixers and access arrangements as part of newsroom operations, not automatically as ethical breaches. “Parts of the routine (investigative) costs tied to the operations of a newsroom include such services as engaging fixers, obtaining access to a reasonably considered newsmaker, and appreciation handouts,” he said. “They are all legitimate operational costs.”

There is no procedural checklist that eliminates these risks. What exists instead is a need for structured awareness and disciplined judgment in newsrooms.

The Knifar women: A case that reshapes the debate

HumAngle’s engagement with the Knifar movement brings these tensions into focus. The Knifar women are part of a grassroots movement shaped by prolonged suffering. Their husbands, sons, and brothers were detained during military operations, often for years, without trial. In many cases, these men were the primary providers, and so their absence triggered cascading consequences for these women, including food insecurity, poverty, and social fragmentation. The women organised into a pressure group to demand accountability for the detention of their male relatives.

HumAngle’s reporting amplified their efforts, influencing outcomes that ultimately led to the release of over a thousand men that the women were advocating for. 

Our work required prolonged engagement with the women, whose daily reality was defined by deprivation. In some instances, our journalists provided stipends. In other cases, some of these women became part of the reporting process as fixers and contributors with fixed incomes in our newsroom. We have even given some of them ‘additional reporting’ credit for their work. Since they are both sources and resource persons for our newsroom, we are often clear about what we are paying them for – their work, not their information. We have spoken publicly about the dynamics of our relationship with these women, including in a Pulitzer Centre-supported documentary.

Kunle Adebajo, a renowned award-winning investigative journalist, reflects on his own experience in being moved to provide money to vulnerable sources: “I’ve often had to pay vulnerable sources. This is because the majority of them live from hand to mouth and rely on wages from daily labour to get their sustenance, and so such interviews could be very disruptive and uncomfortable for them. Oftentimes, they also have to transport themselves to meet at the interview location. The sums given were trifling, and there was never an understanding that the interview itself was transactional. 

Dr Obiora agrees that the understanding must always be clear. “If the source or interviewee presents the personal need to overshadow the reason for the meeting with the journalist, then that could be a red flag,” he said, “pointing to potential compromised narrative or ‘adjusted facts’ from the source or interviewee.”

When observation is not enough

Journalists are trained not to pay sources because it could risk distortion and affect credibility, but what happens when the people you are interviewing live in destitute conditions?

“I met residents, elderly men and women who could not feed themselves, who could not afford basic healthcare. I met a father who lost his wife to a particular ailment, and whose two kids are still suffering from the same ailment. Yet, he could not help.”

The award-winning journalist said he felt compelled to help. “I offered to buy meals for some of them through my fixer. Yes, I offered them some cash to buy what they needed. When I got back to my hotel room that evening, I actually cried. I felt the depth of these people’s suffering.”

He is not unaware of the ethical grey spots in giving money to sources. “Ethically, I did not really care at that point whether offering them some cash would be seen as an inducement. I told myself that I had to act as a human being at the moment and drop the toga of ‘a journalist’ at that point.” 

Dr Danladi understands this and says that “Students must be taught that they are a journalist, yes – but they are also human beings. Refusing to help in the name of ‘objectivity’ can itself be an ethical failure.” He says that liability only becomes possible “where the journalist knows or is willfully blind to criminal activity… or where the payment itself is tied to illegal conduct.”

Another journalist from southwestern Nigeria, who declined to be named, described facing similar situations in which his sources were suffering. 

“They had had to eat rotten food sourced from the nearby markets, and sometimes they went days without eating anything because their husbands, who provided for them, had been killed. I saw that most of their children were malnourished and looked so skinny. It was such a touching situation, and I couldn’t help but give them some money that I had with me so that they could buy food and cook.”

The practice of support

Payment for content implies a transaction because it links money to information, but support that exists independently of reporting is different. It protects the integrity of the story while still acknowledging the reality of the environment.

Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu, an award-winning journalist and newsroom manager, said that though in her early days as a journalist, she could not resist the urge to help vulnerable sources, she has now learned to favour long-term external support. “Now, I connect them [the vulnerable subjects of her story] with NGOs… or make it possible for society to donate directly to them or through an independent third party like a fixer.”

In cases where reporters have to provide any form of support, journalism scholars like Obiora say documentation matters. Record decisions and rationale for such actions while in the field. According to Obiora, “one of the most important structures for documenting and reviewing ethical footprints in the newsroom is within the internal editorial space.” He proposed an Editorial Board of Line Editors, chaired by the title editor, and another layer through an Editorial Advisory Board, where “it would be necessary to bring the platform’s legal advisor as a member.”

“These steps will not protect you from state action if authorities choose to act,” a senior security official said. What they only do is to protect the integrity of your journalism, he implied. They help you draw a line between necessary support and inducement, between humanitarian assistance and conduct that could be interpreted as enabling someone directly or indirectly tied to the crime you are investigating.

The unresolved tension

Speaking more to the legal position of a source, unknown to the journalist, being tied to criminal activity, Danboyi reiterates that a journalist who unknowingly pays a criminal is generally not liable, as exposure begins when there is knowledge, or when you consciously ignore signals that should raise concern.

Consider the fixer a journalist has worked with closely. Not a transactional contact, but someone embedded in the reporting process, with days, sometimes weeks, spent together. The journalist has covered his meals, made stops at his home during fieldwork, supported him beyond the assignment, helped with school fees, and contributed when his child was ill. Then, months or years later, the fixer is named in a crime. The record of the journalist’s relation with him exists: Transfers, messages, shared locations. A traceable history of proximity that can be turned into proof of complicity.

A different kind of responsibility

The Knifar women’s story forces a reconsideration of responsibility and demands a different approach to how journalism ethics is taught and judged. “We graduate students who know the code, but cannot survive in the field,” says Dr Danladi.

Dr Obiora returns the question to dignity. “A journalist whose interaction with a source contributes to lifting the source’s dignity has discharged his or her obligation professionally.”

In environments where silence sustains suffering, the act of telling a story, and the way that story is told, carries consequences beyond journalism.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is resigning from Congress rather than be formally disciplined by the House as part of an ethics investigation into her use of campaign funds.

Explaining her decision in an extended social media statement on Tuesday, the Florida Democrat decried the internal investigation process as unfair. She said the House Committee denied her and her new attorney adequate time to prepare a defense.

“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away,” she wrote.

Members of the House Ethics Committee on Tuesday had been set to weigh what punishment to recommend after they found she committed 25 violations of House rules and ethical standards, including breaking campaign finance laws.

Republicans had already called for the expulsion of Cherfilus-McCormick, who was in her third term and was running for reelection in a southeastern Florida district. She is also facing federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in coronavirus disaster relief funds and using the money to buy items such as a 3-carat yellow diamond ring.

Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and says she is not guilty of ethics violations, either.

The allegations against the congresswoman center on how she received millions of dollars from her family’s healthcare business after Florida mistakenly overpaid the business by roughly $5 million with COVID-19 disaster relief funds. She is accused of using that money to fund her 2022 congressional campaign through a network of businesses and family members.

Cherfilus-McCormick declined to testify during a previous Ethics Committee hearing, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her attorney, William Barzee, sparred with some of the lawmakers and argued that they should have allowed a thorough ethics trial, at which he could present witnesses and evidence to counter the conclusions of House investigators.

A group of supporters in Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional district had weighed in on her behalf with the lawmakers who lead the Ethics Committee, urging committee leaders to proceed with caution.

“Our communities deserve stability. Our voices deserve to be heard. And our right to representation must be protected,” said one of the letters sent to the committee signed by about a dozen local faith leaders, union officials and others.

In all, the panel’s two-year investigation led to the issuance of 59 subpoenas, 28 witness interviews and a review of more than 33,000 pages of documents.

Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, had said he would move to expel Cherfilus-McCormick once the Ethics Committee made a determination on what punishment it would recommend.

That move could in turn prompt Democrats to seek the expulsion of Rep. Cory Mills, a Florida Republican who is the subject of a wide-ranging investigation by the Ethics Committee that includes whether he violated campaign finance laws, misused congressional resources and engaged in sexual misconduct or dating violence. That investigation is ongoing. Mills has denied any wrongdoing.

The focus on lawmaker wrongdoing comes just one week after two lawmakers resigned during ethics investigations into alleged sexual misconduct. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas headed off possible expulsion votes with their resignations.

House Democratic leaders had declined to condemn Cherfilus-McCormick, saying they wanted to see the ethics process play out. Potential punishments included a reprimand or a censure, which serve as forms of public rebuke. The committee could also have recommended a fine. The most severe form of punishment was expulsion, but the House has historically been reluctant to serve as the final arbiter of a lawmaker’s career, preferring to give that final say to the voters.

Only six members of the House have been expelled. The first three fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and were expelled for disloyalty. The next two had been convicted of crimes. The final one was George Santos, the scandal-plagued freshman who was the subject of a blistering ethics report on his conduct as well as federal indictment. Santos, a New York Republican, served time in prison for ripping off his campaign donors before President Trump granted him clemency, and he has apologized to his former constituents.

Under the Constitution, at least two-thirds of the House has to vote for expulsion for it to occur, a high threshold that requires enormous bipartisan support.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters last week he believes the House will move to expel Cherfilus-McCormick.

“The facts are indisputable at this point, and so I believe it’ll be the consensus of this body that she should be expelled,” Johnson said.

Freking and Groves write for the Associated Press.