Not every story is Watergate. Sometimes all you have to do is give a few drinks to a bad person and let them talk. I don’t care what the politics of the person pretending to be the bar tender is. I care what crimes the drunk person admitted to committing and I want to know about it because I want them jailed for those crimes.
Here’s a timely reminder of what we’re talking about.
“The folks at Fox & Friends, a well-known Trump Administration propaganda tool, selectively edited, and then intentionally presented the falsified video as proof the US Senator was “confused” over immigration law.”
IMO, these guys should be charged with criminal intent to smear, slander, libel, etc. Accusations get printed on the front page. Retractions are printed on page 9 under the obits.
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More important we need to examine methods employed. Ethical methods follow ethical motives.
Peer review of journalistic practices would seem like a good way to distinguish the Bob Woodwards from the James O’Keefes
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OK, if your lawyer successfully argues that your arrest was due to the legal definition of “entrapment,” then the judge will throw the case out of court and you’re a free man/woman.
However, the police regularly conduct undercover and sting operations and successfully prosecute them, which means there are some sort of established protocols to avoid legal entrapment while gathering evidence in these cases.
So, the obvious question to me is, why has the Fourth Estate not established protocols of their own for these same situations?
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If anyone is interested, the complete series (And ho-boy, make sure you get comfy before diving in!) is available online for free at http://dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-zay-n-smith-chicago-sun-times .
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Did you notice that one of the people involved in this (who later backed off) was Ben Bradlee, the EiC of the Washington Post, who also was Woodward and Bernstein’s boss?
All the President’s Men was on cable over the weekend. What would it take to get that caliber of believable journalism again, because hoo boy, we could use it!
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I didn’t, but thanks for pointing it out.
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Here is what looks to me like a great summation for self-conduct of the free press…
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That would violate the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement are required to obtain a warrant before surveilling citizens, and they’re nominally supposed to supported by probable cause (though judges frequently have a laughably low bar for what constitutes probable cause). Moreover, they have to be specific to the person, place and time, so blanket or open-ended warrants are prohibited. This is why, for example, the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping or police use of stingrays are unconstitutional. Let’s say you’re okay with that and want it done anyway; any evidence so obtained will be inadmissible in a court of law and a government employee fired or de-licensed over it anyway might be able to successfully sue to get their job, license and/or damages for wrongful termination if there’s no successful prosecution of the alleged crime(s).
Now, journalists obviously aren’t beholden to the Fourth Amendment, but an argument could be made that systematically reporting like this would constitute an end-run around the Fourth, with the journalists’ fishing expeditions producing probable cause that then would support a warrant for cops to go get the evidence. It may no be illegal, but if it happened regularly people might protest the atmosphere of suspicion.
After all, consider the motive of the journalists who built and ran the Mirage, and indeed your own: the atmosphere of corruption in Chicago and Washington DC, or everywhere. That’s essentially saying that there’s so much crime going on that everyone should be spied on, and culturally that historically hasn’t ended well for anyone involved. The KGB was infamous for perfecting it, and it’s basically how the modern Chinese government operates.
Yes, journalists are not police, but that doesn’t mean they cannot become unofficial auxiliaries to state security.
Then there’s the consideration of privacy. Some states have laws that restrict journalists’ ability to legally snoop or spy on people to circumstances where there’s a demonstrable public interest. Living in a city (or country) known for corruption probably doesn’t meet the standard in most jurisdictions where such laws exist.
I imagine something very like that line of reasoning occurred forty years ago at Pulitzer.
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Recent stories involving air marshals and the NSA would seem to suggest otherwise but I see your point.
Is it? Do we not differentiate information gathered by observations made in public with information gathered by observations of private activity? Do we protest CCTV cameras on the streets capturing videos of people breaking the law in public? Have we not accepted that when you do in to a store and rob it, video of that will be sent to the police? Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy when in public?
It seems to me that things said to people at a public gathering place such as a bar aren’t in any way protected by the 4th amendment. My reading of the protections provided by the fourth are that they are limited to persons, houses, papers, and effects and do not include words or actions in a public setting.
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It’s lower, but not nonexistent. If I put a recording device under your table in a restaurant, I’ve crossed that line.
I’m skeptical of that, but IANAL.
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It’s a tricky question. What we are talking about is publishing an article and not presenting evidence in a court. If the publishing of an article leads to investigation by police and the results of that investigation are what is used to bring charges rather than the content of the expose, I don’t really see a problem.
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Legally, then no, it wouldn’t violate the Fourth. But if places like the Mirage were a frequent occurrence, that’s iffier. However, it’s worth noting that the reporters in this case only photographed and journaled the people taking bribes. That said, if the police had done the same thing, it would be entrapment. So if journalists made a habitual practice of using businesses as fronts to lure and catch crooks red-handed and law enforcement used the information reported to obtain warrants, then the journalists would in effect be doing something police aren’t themselves allowed to, which is what I mean by it being an end-run.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the Sun-Times did this experiment because, in addition to being a fascinating story, it’s a necessary conversation. But honestly I’m glad they didn’t get the Pulitzer because, although they probably deserved it, I think it would have encouraged more of this sort of thing.
To your broader point about privacy in public, I’m not entirely on-board with our emerging panopticon. It’s happening, but I don’t think we’re being wise about it as a society. Among other costs, I think it’s contributing to the alienation of people from their communities.
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Perhaps. My understanding of entrapment would be when the police induce someone to commit a crime they would not have otherwise committed. I’m not so sure that applies here. In fact, I have no problem with the idea of the police reading the paper to learn about who is committing crimes this week and I have no problem with the press tricking politicians in to letting their guard down when they commit their crimes so they can be exposed for what they are.
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Indeed, but it wouldn’t stop there. If businesses were regularly used as fronts for reporters, more than politicians and city inspectors would get stung. It all has an air of presumption of guilt that I wouldn’t be comfortable with and is a large part of why the Fourth Amendment exists. Journalists aren’t bound by it, but it seems like a bad idea to indiscriminately investigate bar patrons, and while the Mirage did try to be a little more specific in who they focused on, I think that’s where this would lead if it became a common tactic.
Nor do I, as long as those news outlets are following certain ethical guidelines that this arguably stepped over.
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Oh I don’t think that’s going to happen simply because once the word is out, the gig would be up. You might make one or two good stings before everyone wises up and starts being more discrete. You’d likely only really want to do this once every decade or so instead of making it a regular thing.
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It probably wouldn’t be sustainable. But it could move the line on what’s ethical to do in pursuit of a story, and I think that’s the Pandora’s box the Pulitzer board was concerned about, a concern I share.
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See, I think we are in total agreement about the process. It was an ingenious idea, and I applaud them. I think it’s when you appeared (at least to me) to support the intent of a right-wing agenda, that you lost me. It appeared to me you supported misrepresentation in the name of fair and unbiased reporting.
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I only have a problem with anyone discounting information or reporting out of hand due to the source without examining the information contained therein. I’ve seen both sides of the isle dismiss out of hand perfectly sound and factual reporting based on the source. I further object to anyone who wants to suggest journalists can be real or fake (distorter) or that they must adhere to a code of conduct not chosen by themselves. No one can say is a journalist and who is not. Once we go down that road, only those who participate in the university system of journalism will be granted the freedom of the press and that must never happen.
Often one may quickly read a post by someone and decide they are pushing a partisan agenda and then quickly dismiss them or argue their point based on that perception rather than reading it for what it is and making a judgement call based on the content rather than their perception of the writer. This is why we don’t argue source but content.
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So what’s your point? Drunk or sober, Mike Royko could and did out-investigate and out-write every other columnist in the country for decades. Plus he cooked and ate a lost kitty (not really, but look up his columns on that subject)
