Chapter 16: Deception, a Controversial Reporting Tool

Chapter 16: Deception, a Controversial Reporting Tool

Defining Deception

Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 13, 120.

Undercover Reporting

Don Barlett’s memorandum recalling his undercover investigation for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, May 20, 2008. [See separate file in this folder.]

Louis W. Hodges, “Undercover, masquerading, surreptitious taping,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Fall 1988, 26-36. Explores the moral dimensions of undercover investigations. Includes a case study in which a reporter investigating an abortion clinic pretended to be pregnant. (Academic databases)

Susan Paterno, “The lying game,” American Journalism Review, May 1997. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=598.

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 83.

Jay Black, Bob Steele and Ralph Barney, Doing Ethics in Journalism: A Handbook With Case Studies, 3rd Ed. (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon, 1999), 163.

Stephen Klaidman and Tom L. Beauchamp, The Virtuous Journalist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 195.

Public Broadcasting System, “Nellie’s madhouse memoir,” a description of the exploits of reporter Nellie Bly. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/world/sfeature/memoir.html

Brooke Kroeger, Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2012. Kroeger, a New York University professor, contends that even though undercover reporting has often been maligned, it has repeatedly produced valuable journalism exposing wrongdoing.

· A companion “Undercover Reporting database” is an outstanding resource for the study of deception in journalism, detailing cases over nearly 200 years. You can find it at: http://dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/

The database is described in this news release: http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2012/08/06/nyu-launches-history-of-undercover-reporting-database.html

Reid MacCluggage, “Should we ever deceive?”, APME News, Winter 1997-98. The editor from New London, Conn., writes: “There are times when we need to bend the news to break an important story. But those times should be rare, the stories must be profound, and editors need to proceed with great caution. They also need to come clean with readers.” (Academic databases)

Bob Steele, “High standards for hidden cameras,” Aug. 1, 1999. This article was originally published in Hidden Cameras/Hidden Microphones: At the Crossroads of Journalism, Ethics and Law, a 1998 publication of the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation. http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=5543

Kathy English, “The basics of going undercover,” Toronto Star, Oct. 9, 2010. The newspaper’s public editor discusses a reporter’s decision to go undercover to report on treatment of residents of a retirement home. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/publiceditor/article/872464--english-the-ethics-of-going-undercover

The Food Lion case:

Louis W. Hodges, “Food Lion and ABC,” undated, an unpublished case study. [See separate file in this folder.]

Bob Steele, “ABC and Food Lion: The ethics questions,” poynteronline, April 1, 1997. This article originally appeared in the April 1997 issue of RTNDA Communicator. http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=5585

Walter Goodman, “Beyond ABC v. Food Lion,” The New York Times, March 9, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/arts/beyond-abc-v-food-lion.html

Bluffing by Reporters

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (New York: Touchstone, 1974), 60.

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 363.

Reporters Who Did Not Identify Themselves

Tom Goldstein, The News at Any Cost: How Journalists Compromise Their Ethics to Shape the News (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 143-144.

Jack Fuller, News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 51-52.

Ron F. Smith, Ethics in Journalism, 6th Ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 195. Includes Gene Roberts’ account of walking into the emergency room wearing a stethoscope in order to get an interview with a criminal suspect who was being treated.

Jay Rosen, “The uncharted: From Off the Bus to Meet the Press,” April 14, 2008. The Obama quote. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/the-uncharted-from-off-th_b_96575.html?view=

Deceiving the Audience

Seow Ting Lee, “The ethics of journalistic deception,” in Lee Wilkins and Renita Coleman, The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics (Mahwah, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 98-100. The data confirm that journalists overwhelmingly oppose any deception of the audience. (Academic Databases)

Publishing a phony news story:

Aly Colon, “Faking the news: Weighing the options when the stakes are high and important principles are at stake,” April 22, 2003. http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=30941.

Sara Jean Green and Ian Ith, “Ethics of paper’s fake arson story debated,” Seattle Times, April 18, 2003. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030418&slug=sherer18e

Related to the topic: Journalists were asked by police to publish a phony story. Stephen Klaidman and Tom L. Beauchamp, The Virtuous Journalist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 154-157.

Case Study No. 18: Rumsfeld’s Q&A With the Troops

CNN.com, “Reporter planted GI’s question for Rumsfeld,” Dec. 9, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/09/rumsfeld.reporter/index.html

USA Today, “Publisher: Reporter needed to tell of Rumsfeld Q&A role,” Dec. 10, 2004.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-09-rumsfeld-reporter_x.htm

Tim Rutten, “Free to shoot from the hip,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 11, 2004. http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/11/entertainment/et-rutten11

Clarence Page, “Just answer the question, Mr. Rumsfeld,” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 12, 2004. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-12-12/news/0412120228_1_mr-rumsfeld-humvees-defense-secretary-donald-rumsfeld

Related to the topic: John Cruickshank, “We have to stand apart,” Canadian Broadcasting Company News, Jan. 23, 2008. The publisher disagrees with a CBC reporter who gave members of Parliament written questions to pose to former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/editorsblog/2008/01/we_have_to_stand_apart.html

Case Study No. 19: Spying on the Mayor in a Chat Room

Bill Morlin, “West tied to sex abuse in the ’70s, using office to lure young men,” The Spokesman-Review, May 5, 2008. The newspaper’s investigative report.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2005/may/05/west-tied-to-sex-abuse-in-70s-using-office-to/

Joe Strupp, “Truth our mission? “Spokesman-Review deserves credit for its undercover work,” Editor & Publisher, June 2005. (Academic databases)

Video available online: “A hidden life,” Frontline’s documentary on the case of the Spokane mayor, broadcast Nov. 14, 2006, on PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02s4e3q80&continuous=1

“The outing of Mayor Jim West: A case study in ethics in journalism,” with critiques by David Zeeck of the Tacoma News Tribune, Dan Richman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and John Temple of the Rocky Mountain News, Denver. http://restoringthetrust.org/casestudy/critiques.html

Stephanie Weaver, “Making the transition: Steve Smith, once a high-octane newspaper editor, is enjoying life as a professor at the University of Idaho,” American Journalism Review, Dec. 7, 2011. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=5210

Additional Case Studies

Gaining access to archives: In 2001, reporter Jim Dyer of the San Jose Mercury wrote a series of articles about an experiment at the University of Iowa in 1939 “when a young woman working on her master's thesis went to an orphanage to see if she could turn normal children into stutterers.” Dyer apparently obtained information from state archives by identifying himself as a graduate student, not as a reporter. Dyer’s editor rebuked him publicly for the deception, and Dyer resigned.

· Don Fost, “Mercury News case stirs debate over ethics of deception,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 8, 2001. http://articles.sfgate.com/2001-08-08/business/17611342_1_food-lion-profound-harm-bob-steele-director

· Kenneth Starck, “Is journalistic deception ever justified?”, Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, Aug. 26, 2001. http://www.newsombudsmen.org/cgi-bin/ono_article.pl?mode=view&article_id=999874431

· Judy Keen, USA Today, “Legal battle ends over stuttering experiment,” Aug. 27, 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-26-stuttering_N.htm

How lobbyists work: Mark Lisheron, “Lying to get the truth,” American Journalism Review, October/November 2007. The article describes how Harper’s magazine went undercover to report on lobbying techniques in Washington. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4403

Attending a meeting unannounced: Margaret Sullivan, “When a reporter is an uninvited guest,” The New York Times, April 26, 2013. The Times’ public editor discusses how, in an effort to get inside the world of lobbyists, a Times reporter attended a private meeting without announcing his identity. http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/when-a-reporter-is-an-uninvited-guest/