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. [LINK TO WORD DOCUMENT]
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)
Reid MacCluggage, “Should we ever deceive?”, APME News, Winter 1997–8. 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)
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.
Chicago Sun-Times, http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/history/798307,CST-NWS-high17.stng
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
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
Susan Paterno, “The lying game,” American Journalism Review, May 1997.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=598.
The Food Lion case:
Gene Foreman, “Food Lion summary,” 2009, an unpublished paper. [may be found under
Case Studies, Chapter 16]
Louis W. Hodges, “Food Lion and ABC,” undated, an unpublished paper. [may be found
under Case Studies, Chapter 16]
.
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
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.
Tom Goldstein, The News at Any Cost: How Journalists Compromise Their Ethics to Shape the
News (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 143–4.
Jack Fuller, News Values: Ideas for an Information Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 51–2.
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, NJ: 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), 154–7.
Case Study No. 18: Rumsfeld’s Q&A With the Troops
“Chattanooga reporter’s e-mail to colleagues,” Romenesko’s news media site, Dec. 9, 2004,
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=8447
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. (News
databases)
Clarence Page, “Just answer the question, Mr. Rumsfeld,” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 12,
2004. (News databases)
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 SpokesmanReview, May 5, 2008. The newspaper’s investigative report.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/jimwest/story.asp?ID=050505_westmain
Video: “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&conti
nuous=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 PostIntelligencer, and John Temple of the Rocky Mountain News, Denver.
http://restoringthetrust.org/casestudy/critiques.html
Joe Strupp, “Truth our mission? “Spokesman-Review deserves credit for its undercover
work,” Editor & Publisher, June 2005. (Academic databases)
Additional Case Studies
Accessing state archives: After being rebuked by his executive editor, reporter Jim Dyer
resigned from the San Jose Mercury in 2001 after writing 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.
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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
Kenneth Starck, “Is journalistic deception ever justified?”, Cedar Rapids (Iowa)
Gazette, Aug. 26, 2001. http://www.newsombudsmen.org/cgibin/ono_article.pl?mode=view&article_id=999874431
Don Fost, “Mercury News case stirs debate over ethics of deception,” San
Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 8, 2001. (News databases)
How lobbyists work: Mark Lisheron, “Lying to get the truth,” American Journalism
Review, October/November 2007. Describes how Harper’s magazine went undercover to
report on lobbying techniques in Washington. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4403