Rob Logan knew there might be conflict-of-interest questions when, in the summer of 1988, he took part in discussions with General Foods about a grant for the Science Journalism Center he directs at the University of Missouri, in Columbia. The journalism faculty at the school voted in November 1990 to accept the money, but not without some debate: Should a science journalism center take money from a food company? And from a food company owned by Philip Morris, the cigarette giant?

The grant was to be made under the name of Kraft General Foods (Philip Morris acquired Kraft in late 1988 and merged it with General Foods into a single operating company). But early this year the parent company -- to preempt charges of "subterfuge," Logan says -- requested that the money be awarded under its corporate name, Philip Morris Companies, Inc. The name change complicated things. Because of the new stipulation the faculty would have to vote again on whether to approve it.

The $ 150,000 grant would not onlybolster the science center, which has had some funding disappointments recently; it would also launch a midcareer program for science journalists who want to increase their understanding of statistics and risk assessment. Logan's idea was to bring in top science writers for talks on environmental and health reporting and to distribute the videotaped discussions to interested press organizations.

For Logan, turning to a cigarette company to help fund a health-science project is not the stretch it might seem to some. He discounts the idea that Philip Morris was trying to buy a piece of the school's reputation. "From the very beginning they said they wanted this to be very low-profile, very high-minded," he says. "They believe that if journalists understood social statistics and epidemiology better their industries would do much better in the long run."

Sheila Banks McKenzie, director of media affairs for Philip Morris USA, the companys' domestic tobacco subsidiary, also dismisses the idea that the company was trying to buy good p.r. "We want more research on issues that have to do with our industry," she says. "We're simply offering resources to help train young people to do their jobs and be good journalists."

Some of the journalism school's faculty members welcomed the offer, as long as no strings were attached. But others argued that making money from any potential newsmaker would compromise the credibility of the science center and of the entire journalism school. Another group contended that making money from a cigarette maker was particularly wrongheaded.

Daryl Moen, who runs the journalism school's programs for working professionals, conceded that he was a little uncomfortable about taking money from a cigarette company; still, he was among those who wanted to accept the grant. "Every time a donor gives money, there's a reason," he says. "They want to be associated with something positive. the question to me is: Can we preserve our integrity? And is it going to benefit journalism? If the science center can take the money and control the program and gather journalists together and they come out better reporters for that, it seems to me we've advanced the profession."

Other faculty members viewed the Philip Morris offer in a different light. Ed Lambeth, former associate dean of the Missouri graduate program, argued that "we should keep a good distance from having financial support for journalists from corporations they write about and that are in the news."

Logan concedes that in the end his own position was shaped by pragmatic rather than ethical considerations. In February, he says, while attending the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., he spoke with nearly two dozen of the country's top science writers, including some of the center's own board members. All of them urged him to reject the money because of the harm it could inflict upon the center's credibility.

So in March, although he had spent more than two years negotiating for the money, Logan recommended against holding a scheduled faculty vote to accept or reject the offer. "Our job is to serve senior science writers and the science writing community in the United States," he says. "I know very well that if we were to lose those people, it wasn't worth doing it."

Still, Logan does not rule out approaching Philip Morris again. (According to a Philip Morris spokesman, the grant is "in limbo.") If the science center cannot attract funding, he says, it faces an uncertain future. One of its three full-time staff positions was eliminated this spring.

Although the journalism school is a state-supported institution, it depends heavily on corporate donations and will continue to do so in the wake of one of the tightest state budgets in memory. A list of the school's corporate donors, including IBM, Gannett, and Eastman Kodak, would field a Fortune 500 allstar team. Indeed, a big grant from Down Chemical USA -- a grant that also stirred faculty debate -- helped launch the science journalism center in 1986.

The University of Missouri's journalism school is not the only one at which the idea of Philip Morris money has raised eyebrows. Last year, after alumni association officials suggested that Philip Morris was interested in funding projects related to the First Amendment, Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism explored the possibility of such a grant. But Dean Joan Konner says that although she wrote the company a letter, she dropped the idea after other alumni association members "alerted me to the sensitivity" of a Philip Morris grant and after faculty members she consulted advised her not to seek one.

Meanwhile, at Baruch College, a branch of the City University of New York, Philip Morris provided matching funds from 1985 to 1989 for Dollars and $ense, a student-produced magazine that covers business and social policy issues. Publisher Roslyn Bernstein, a Baruch journalism professor, was happy with Philip Morris as a funding source. "We ran any story we felt like running. There was no editorial intrusion," she says.

After the CUNY board of trustees voted to divest itself of its tobacco stocks in the late spring of 1990, Philip Morris did not renew its support for Dollars and $ ense (the magazine continues to publish with outside grants from the Reuters Fund and RJR Nabisco Inc.). "All I know is that in June 1990 the funds didn't arrive," Bernstein says. "We never received any notification from Philip Morris about why."

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