Daily employees are routinely accused of various levels of impropriety — one time, somebody even called me a Hawkeye fan.

Concerned messages that reach the office often concern errors, and those messages are simple enough to deal with, usually with the “Corrections” you occasionally see printed in the bottom right of the paper’s front page.

Other times, the messages raise questions about more nebulous issues — fairness in coverage, bias in articles, breaches of privacy, for example.

Setting the record straight on those issues takes a bit more space, which is why I’m writing today.

A reader recently questioned whether the Daily failed to disclose a conflict of interest before writing the Dec. 3 editorial “Magill: wrong, Majority: right.” Whenever there’s even a perception of such a conflict of interest, our credibility suffers, so I felt it was important for me to explain the situation fully.

The editorial board — myself, Ayrel Clark, Scott Rank, Anna Holland and Drew Miller — on that Friday strongly supported Iowa Student Public Interest Research Group and strongly skewered Government of the Student Body President Sophia Magill for her veto of a bill that would have made ISPIRG a student-funded office.

What we didn’t tell you is that Miller has had a lot of involvement with ISPIRG in the past — and in fact, he is one of a select few allowed to edit the group’s Web site (Daily reporter Matt Campbell is another).

The concern, unlikely as it might be, is then that Drew could have self-serving reasons for supporting ISPIRG in a Daily editorial — maybe he would get some extra recognition or power or money if the organization proves viable on campus. In that case, he might not be arguing his opinion honestly, with the best interests of the Daily’s readers at heart.

Conflicts of interest (or possible conflicts of interest) are routine for the Daily newsroom staff. Among the five members of the editorial board, there are deep connections (past and present) with the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, the ISU Democrats, the Democratic Party, the New Voters Project, the Government of the Student Body, the Veishea task force, the honors program, The Salt Company, the Memorial Union, University Impact and the ISU marching band. For starters.

In general, we police ourselves well, steering clear of coverage and editorial discussion of topics involving organizations with which we’re connected. The point is to decrease the likelihood of even one person having cause to think we have bias in our news reporting or that we’re intentionally leaving facts out of our opinions. Drew has not had involvement with ISPIRG for some time; his ability to work with the group’s Web site is a relic of his work at the start of the year with the New Voters Project. His contributions didn’t sway the editorial board on this topic. And most importantly, he gave us his own opinion, not the opinion of a ISPIRG representative.

In short, though the editorial board knew of Drew’s history with ISPIRG, we didn’t think it was a big deal worth mentioning. Miller, a computer science major in his first semester with the Daily whose history of civic involvement is pretty well known in the ISU community, was added to the board to provide much-needed perspective outside of the journalism department — we asked for and got his opinions.

Looking back, we should have explained the situation more fully up front and thus avoided any perception of a conflict of interest. We apologize.

Have a great Finals Week, and keep keeping us honest.