Undercover Reporting, Hidden Cameras and the Ethical Decision-Making Process: A
Refinement
The 1992 hidden camera exposi of the Food Lion food store chain by ABC's
"Prime/Time Live" and the resulting lawsuit re-opened the news industry's
ethical wound over surreptitious reporting methods and underscored the
industry's lack of agreement about the morality of going undercover and secretly
taping news sources (Gunther, 1997).1 Although there has been an honored
tradition of surreptitious reporting in American journalism and considerable
debate over its morality, the most that has been accomplished is that individual
journalists have agreed to disagree.2 Media ethicists have developed a
step-by-step decision-making methodology based in part on the work of moral
philosopher Sissela Bok (1989) to help journalists decide when undercover
reporting techniques are justified, but it retains enough ambiguity that
individual news organizations and journalists often disagree with specific
decisions that result (Black, Steele and Barney, 1993, 108; Christians, Fackler
and Rotzoll, 1995, 51-58; Lambeth, 1992, 147; Goldstein, 1985, 127-151; for a
case in point, refer to ABC's reporting of the Food Lion story cited in note
1).3
Bok argues that the fundamental glue holding the fabric of society together is
trust, which is seriously eroded whenever deception occurs (1989, 18-19). She
acknowledges, though, that some circumstances justify the use of deception,
specifically when the deception will do more good than the harm it causes, when
its use has been rationally chosen and there are no other means of gathering
important information, and when the deceiver is willing to publicly explain his
decision-making process (Bok, 1989, 90-103; Bok, 1983, 263-264). When applied
to the issue of undercover reporting and hidden cameras, this Bokian approach
has led media ethicists to a decision-making framework that allows journalists
to use such surreptitious techniques only when the public welfare is at stake,
all non-deceptive reporting means have been exhausted, and the "good reasons"
for using hidden cameras or undercover reporting are revealed to the public when
the news report is disseminated (Black, et al., 1993, 108; Lambeth, 1992, 147).
Purpose
The controversy surrounding ABC's Food Lion report and other uses of hidden
cameras by television, however, reveals three sticking points in the way in
which this Bokian decision-making methodology has been conceived. One is the
disagreement among journalists and the public about what constitutes a
significant enough public issue to justify deceptive practices. Some have
argued that tainted and doctored meat sold at the Food Lion stores was not
significant enough to deserve the use of hidden cameras and undercover reporting
techniques, while ABC and others have insisted it did.4 Unfortunately, it may
be philosophically and practically impossible to resolve this controversy, for
it is extremely difficult to quantify to everyone's satisfaction every condition
that must exist for an issue to be of serious public concern, or, if acceptable
quantification could be agreed to, to reach agreement on whether an individual
situation qualifies. It is doubtful, though, that this remaining ambiguity
should invalidate the methodology, although other research may result in a
clarification of the issue.
Two genuine flaws in the decision-making process, however, can be and should be
corrected and become the subject of this paper. Because of their nature, the
resolution of one will make the other flaw moot. The first of these is whether
ABC News could have used other, non-deceptive techniques to gather the
information about Food Lion in lieu of the hidden cameras and undercover
reporting, or, more generically, what constitutes exhaustion of other means.5
And the second controversy, which is the question that continues to split the
news profession, is whether it was justified for ABC to use hidden cameras and
undercover reporting even if the selling of tainted meat met all the
requirements of the justification model proposed by Black, et al., (1993) and
Lambeth (1992).
This paper proposes that the justification model offered by Black, et al., and
Lambeth and accepted by many in the news business is fundamentally at error in
its conception of undercover reporting and hidden cameras as primarily an
information-gathering technique, rather than predominantly a story-telling
technique.6 Granted, this is a conceptual error shared by almost all
journalists and journalism scholars and rooted in history.7 However, a
reconceptualization, which this paper will show is warranted, will clarify
whether undercover reporting and hidden cameras are justified and under what
conditions, and could help the news industry resolve this controversy. Once
this reconceptualization is defended, the Principle of Generic Consistency, as
espoused by moral philosopher Alan Gewirth (1981), will be applied to the
question of whether and under what conditions deceptive practices by reporters
are justified.
A Reconceptualization
It is not the intent of this paper to argue that undercover techniques,
including hidden cameras, are not relied upon to collect information for news
reports. However, because of the undercover methods' inherent deficiencies as
information-gathering techniques, it is argued here that they should not be used
substantially for that purpose. Rather, they should be seen as methods - in
some cases uniquely powerful methods - for telling the story.
The characteristics that disqualify undercover techniques from being acceptable
information-gathering tools lie in the nature of the deceptive act. Reporters
who disguise their identities and employ hidden microphones or hidden cameras,
or who surreptitiously observe and take notes compromise their ability to
objectively collect and evaluate information collected during the undercover
work. Given their resolve to go undercover and the expensive resources
committed to the undercover operation, reporters who work undercover are
predisposed to find evidence that wrong-doing is occurring. In essence, the
reporters have a personal and financial investment in the story that can be paid
back only if evidence is found that verifies the hypotheses they took into the
operation. A recurring concern in research theory is how to be certain that the
data collected have not been contaminated by bias or by researcher interference,
particularly during field observations (Wimmer and Dominick, 1987; Anderson,
1987; and Jorgensen, 1989). As Wimmer and Dominick note,
Since field observation relies heavily on a researcher's perceptions and
judgments as well as on preconceived notions about the material under study,
experimenter bias may unavoidably favor specific preconceptions of results,
while observations to the contrary are ignored or distorted. . . . Like field
experiments, field observations suffer from the problem of reactivity. The very
process of being observed may influence the behavior under study (1987, 147).
Scientists attempt to control such bias by using several observers and then
comparing their observations for consistency, as well as by using rigorous
standards of data collection (Wimmer and Dominick, 1987, 147; Anderson, 1987,
111). It is unlikely that journalists, who sometimes have no more than passing
familiarity with scientific method, particularly qualitative,
participant-observer methodology, would be immune from such bias.
In addition, even if the bias could be sufficiently controlled, the act of
deception involved in going undercover raises a credibility problem for the
journalist and news organization that can never be entirely overcome. In
reviewing the 1982 case of a New Jersey reporter who posed as a government
official to obtain information, Goldstein (1985) observed: "In the long term,
posing mortgages the credibility of the press. The notion of truthfulness is so
essential to journalism that it should not be trifled with" (129). A Buffalo,
N.Y., reporter who was arrested for shoplifting argued in 1981 that she was
doing an undercover investigation of shoplifting, so she shoplifted. She argued
that she wanted to find out whether what had been written about shoplifting was
true. However, her readers were left with the nagging question: Had she not
been caught, would there have been a story? Readers had no independent means of
verifying her truthfulness (Goldstein, 1985, 145). A permanent suspicion such
as this taints the credibility of the press, unless there is no doubt in the
reader's mind that the information presented to them accurately reflects the
facts of the situation, which can only be accomplished by above-the-board
reporting.
There also is a technological reason for not using hidden cameras and other
surreptitious methods for collecting information for a news story. This is that
the presentation of film exposed using a hidden camera, or even writing an
account (first-person or third-person) of what one observed or experienced while
working undercover carries the latent message of guilt to the audience. In
other words, hidden cameras, hidden microphones, and the reporting of
information obtained while undercover are not neutral conveyors of information.
Production values of media messages contribute to the meaning of the message
(Silverblatt, 1995). With film, lighting, camera angle, the digital time
read-out in the corner of the film to verify time of taping, and other
production factors are codes that audience members have learned to interpret as
meaning that wrong-doing is being exposed (Berger, 1991, 23-27; Burton, 1990;
Stam, 1983, 31-35; Fiske, 1982, 64-82). Berger (1991) explains the various
latent meanings found in film production codes, including that a close-up shot
signifies intimacy and a downward pan of the camera signifies power and
authority (26-27). The fact that such production techniques affects the meaning
of non-fiction news has been shown by Campbell (1991) in his study of CBS's
newsmagazine, "60 Minutes." In the same way that a close-up shot signifies
intimacy and an upward pan signifies power and authority, a hidden camera shot
(which is clearly distinguishable from a non-hidden camera shot because of
lighting and other production factors) signifies guilt or wrong-doing. Over
time, readers and viewers have learned to associate hidden cameras and the
printed statements "I went undercover" or "[the subjects of the investigation]
were observed by reporters working undercover" with the exposure of wrong-doing.
Even innocent people filmed or described from undercover observations will be
tainted by the suspicion that they are doing something wrong, because that is
the meaning the audience will contribute to the news story. "In the end it is
always the collection of signs which add up to the complete meaning in a
message," Burton observes (1990, 26-27). And this holds true for news as it
does for fiction (Hartley, 1982). This bias of production can never be wholly
removed and therefore the information will always carry less credibility than
information collected by overt methods.
That is not to say that hidden cameras, hidden microphones, or descriptions of
events observed by undercover reporters are not important to investigative
reporting. Messages, and parts of messages, fulfill different functions
(Silverblatt, 20-24). As a way to tell a story about wrong-doing, rather than
to provide evidence, surreptitious techniques are profoundly effective, in part
because of the codes inherent in them. Film from a hidden camera showing an
illicit drug deal on a street corner is powerful, dramatic, and provides the
verisimilitude that adds credibility. A reporter's description of his
experiences while posing as a Ku Klux Klan member or a prison inmate provides
the standard of vividness expected of the best investigative reporting
(Christianson, 1972; Aucoin, 1993, 155-158). In this view, use of surreptitious
techniques to add drama and vividness, rather than information and evidence,
does not diminish the need for such techniques. "Major projects are massive and
intricate, but they are of little use if the reader can't understand and digest
them," investigative reporter Christianson argued. "The writer must know how to
build and keep the reader's interest" (1972, 15). This also applies, perhaps
even more-so for the visual-dependent television reporter, to TV documentaries
and investigative stories. In fact, this story-telling need was a key argument
by ABC in its defense against criticisms that it had deceptively edited hidden
camera footage of the Food Lion employees to eliminate information that
mitigated its charges against the food store chain (Gunther, 1997, 21).
In Defense of Deceptive Reporting Practices
Not only is it more reasonable to classify hidden cameras and undercover
reporting as primary techniques of presentation, and not superior means of
information collection, but it is essential to do so if their use is to be
rationally justified. Given their inherent deficiencies as information
collection techniques, they cannot be justified as essential means of collecting
and presenting evidence. And yet, history has proven that surreptitious
reporting is warranted and desirable.
In the late 1800s, Nelly Bly (Elizabeth Cochran) pretended to be mentally ill in
order to describe the unsanitary conditions to which patients at Blackwell's
Island Insane Asylum were exposed, inspiring much-needed reforms (Goldstein,
1985, 133). In 1972, the Chicago Tribune surreptitiously placed 17 staff
members and eight independent investigators as poll watchers on election day,
and another Tribune reporter conducted undercover surveillance on a polling
place from an apartment across the street, and exposed widespread, systemic
voter fraud, contributing to necessary changes in Illinois law (Dygert, 1976,
126-128). Moreover, when the Chicago Sun-Times created the Mirage Bar to ferret
out corruption among city officials in 1977, mounds of evidence provided
substance for numerous criminal investigations and indictments (Bok, 1983, 259;
Smith and Zekman, 1979). And most of the jurors who ruled against ABC in the
1997 Food Lion court case and a majority of commentators on the case
acknowledged that some undercover reporting, including the ABC story about Food
Lion food stores, benefits society (ABC, 1997, , Lissit, 1995).
But unless hidden cameras and other undercover reporting techniques are seen as
story-telling techniques, their inherent deceptive qualities cannot be justified
if we are to adopt the higher standard of justification suggested by the moral
philosophy of Gewirth (1981).
The Principle of Generic Consistency
The higher standard for undercover reporting offered by Gewirth's Principle of
Generic Consistency could temper the legitimate criticisms that use of hidden
cameras and undercover reporting techniques is unnecessary for collecting
evidence of wrong-doing in most cases and that undercover reporting,
particularly by television reporters, is often used to trap people, rather than
to collect evidence on verified wrong-doing. As Goldstein has persuasively
argued, "in fact, most stories where impersonation has been used and the 'last
resort' justification [of the Bok model] has been cited could, with some
ingenuity and hard work, have been done without posing" (1985, 139). And
critics of ABC's reporting on the Food Lion story tarnish the network's
credibility by pointing out that much of what was recorded by the hidden camera
contradicted the producers' hypothesis that unsafe meat was being sold by the
food stores, but the producers edited out those portions in order to create a
more dramatic, less ambiguous story, to which ABC news executives agree
(Gunther, 1997, 21).
Gewirth develops his Principle of Generic Consistency, which he calls the
"supreme principle of morality," through a logical derivation from the nature of
human action (1981, x and 145). According to Gewirth, natural law gives each
individual the fundamental rights of freedom and well-being. He assumes that
humans are rational and morality occurs only in action. Each individual, being
free, necessarily and fundamentally pursues his own well-being through purposive
action, which can occur only if he has freedom of choice and access to
information necessary for making rational choices. In this pursuit, though, the
actor is limited by his obligation to respect the same natural rights of freedom
and well-being that are generic to all humans. An individual acts in an ethical
manner, then, when he acts so as to maximize his own natural rights of freedom
and well-being and at the same time fosters those identical rights held by his
fellow humans. To act otherwise would be inconsistent with natural law and,
hence, immoral (187). Following the demands of the PGC, then, journalists are
ethical when they act in such a way that freedom is protected and the ability to
pursue one's own well-being is nurtured in themselves and in each other
individual. "In the agent's statement, 'I have rights to freedom and
well-being,' the subject of the rights is the agent himself" (65). However,
through the necessity of consistency, the agent must allow the other to have and
pursue identical rights, so that in this sense, there is no distinction between
the actor and the acted-upon. Derived from the PCG, then, are ethical
obligations not to cause harm to or coerce others (276).
Gewirth acknowledges, though, that in some circumstances, individuals must harm
or coerce others in order to protect the freedom and well-being of not only
themselves but of others in a community. This is justified, Gewirth argues, if
the social rules allowing the harm and coercion in contradiction to the PGC are
themselves based on natural law and the PGC (279). In other words, harm and
coercion is sometimes necessary to protect the natural rights of all members of
the society, and hence these actions in these situations are themselves moral
acts. "The social rules are also concerned with transactions of agents toward
their recipients, but the agents now act in their corporate or social roles, not
in their individual capacities" (277). Social rules of states or nations, even
though they might allow imprisonment or even the death penalty, are not
contradictory to the PGC's requirement that all individuals be allowed freedom
and well-being if the constitution of the state or nation gives each individual
the opportunity to participate in the making of the rules and that they be
"determined by the method of consent" (283).
Deception, such as the use of hidden cameras and undercover reporting, harms
the person it is directed against for it restricts this person's ability to make
rational choices. It keeps relevant information from the receiver or gives him
false information that can mislead him (Bok, 1989, 18-22). It also harms the
social relationships that existed prior to the use of deception by damaging
trust, the basis of all social interaction (Bok, 1989, 18-19). However, such
deception by journalists is justifiable when such deception is, in the words of
Gewirth, instrumental "toward the well-being that underlies the purposiveness of
action" (1981, 282). The First Amendment freedom of the press is a social rule
established in the U.S. Constitution and remains in the Constitution by the free
consent of the American people. This amendment creates a social role for the
American press which obligates it to serve as a watchdog on government and,
further, to protect and nurture the natural rights of freedom and well-being for
all Americans (Christians, et al., 1995, 93-111; Lambeth, 1992, 23-34). In this
sense, then, the American press acts ethically even when it causes harm if the
harm is necessary to protect and nurture freedom and the well-being of the
public. This is the Gewirthean equivalent of the traditional obligation of the
press to protect the public welfare.
But there is an additional Gewirthean requirement before harm, such as
deception through use of hidden cameras and undercover reporting, is morally
justified in a social context and it is this requirement which, if added to the
justification model, can raise the standards of excellence of investigative
journalism. Like Bok (1989), Gewirth asserts that acts such as truth-telling
and keeping promises that usually promote the recipient's freedom and welfare,
do not require justification because they are inherently moral. On the other
hand, acts such as deceptive news practices require justification because in
most cases they do not promote freedom and welfare. Gewirth further notes that
to justify the breaking of the fundamental moral rules in violation of the PGC,
one must make reference to the social rule allowing the violation of the rule as
well as to prior immoral acts of the receiver (276). In other words, not only
must journalists be certain that the proposed deception will protect the public
welfare (the social rule that requires journalists to protect and nurture
freedom and the well-being of others), but they also must be certain that the
person who is to be deceived has himself already violated ethical rules. In the
same sense that a judge cannot condemn a person to prison unless it is proven
the person has broken a law; a journalist cannot employ deception against
someone unless it is proven that the person has violated a moral obligation,
including the obligations to obey the law and not harm others.
Because the person's prior unethical acts must be certain before deception is
justified, the current standard of exhausting all other, non-deceptive reporting
techniques before using the hidden cameras or undercover reporting is not
sufficient in Gewirth's eyes. Gewirth's standard of justification is that there
must be certainty that the target of the investigation is guilty of wrong-doing.
That, then, requires that reporters have enough evidence to prove their case
against their target before they go undercover or use hidden cameras. Meeting
such a standard, of course, eliminates any justification for the use of
surreptitious techniques as a primary information-gathering tool.
This is not an impossible standard to meet except in rare cases. As Goldstein
points out, "Some stories will surely be harder to get if a reporter does not
pose [as a non-reporter]. Others will be impossible to get. But not so many as
one might expect" (1985, 129). A case in point is the 1972 Chicago Tribune
investigation of voter fraud in that city. Before the newspaper placed
undercover reporters as poll workers and observers, its reporters had collected
conclusive evidence that voter fraud was occurring. Prior to beginning their
undercover work, the reporters had mailed registered letters to a sampling of
5,495 voters in precincts where voter fraud was suspected and thereby were able
to prove that about 13 percent of the registered voters were dead or never
existed (Dygert, 1976, 126). ABC producers and reporters, in contrast,
acknowledged that they went undercover with hidden cameras in Food Lion stores
before they had proven their case, which they could have done by purchasing
samples of meat from the stores and having it laboratory tested as well as
examining USDA inspection records and interviewing food inspectors and Food Lion
workers (Gunther, 1997, 20-21). The evidence they had prior to going undercover
was collected through interviews with arguably biased former workers and people
who had ties to a labor union at odds with the Food Lion chain (Gunther, 1997,
20-21). They were relying on the hidden cameras to provide the documentary
evidence to back up their hypotheses.
An added benefit from the higher, Gewirth-inspired standard is that poorly
prepared undercover projects that damage journalists' credibility and heap
ridicule on the profession would easily and clearly be ruled out. If KMOV-TV
producers and reporters in St. Louis would have held themselves to the higher
standard in March 1993, they would never had installed hidden cameras in a
downtown hotel in an attempt to catch a local priest talking about sexual
activities of his fellow clergymen, a clearly unethical event that led to KMOV's
being investigated for promoting prostitution (Lissit, 1995, 19). ABC also
would have been spared credibility-damaging embarrassment and perhaps litigation
had it used this standard when it investigated reports that a Florida eye clinic
was unnecessarily performing cataract operations on unsuspecting patients. By
going undercover with hidden cameras before having documented proof, the ABC
reporters and producers appeared to be fishing for evidence when their
undercover operation was exposed by the clinic (News Media and the Law, winter
1995, 23-25; Meier and Carter, 1996). This standard was met, however, by
Newsday editors in 1989 when they refused to let reporters go undercover to
investigate unproven allegations that real estate firms were steering renters
and home buyers into racially segregated neighborhoods. The paper went on to
report the story, but without undercover reporting (Dufresne, 1991).
Conclusion
A refined ethical decision-making model with a higher standard and informed by
Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency would require that reporters and
editors meet the following criteria to justify use of surreptitious reporting
techniques:
1. The issue must be one of significant importance that concerns the well-being
of members of the public or the freedom of individuals within society.
2. Evidence collected prior to the launching of an undercover operation must
prove that the target of the investigation is engaged in illegal or immoral acts
that threatens the welfare or the freedom of the public.8
3. There must be a probability that the undercover work will provide material
that will enhance the vividness of the report, to make the report more engaging,
more understandable, more comprehensible, more persuasive, and more dramatic in
ways that cannot be accomplished without going undercover.
4. The news organization must be willing to inform the public that its
reporters went undercover, to reveal the decision-making process that led to
approval of the undercover operation, and to explain why it was necessary to go
undercover.
5. Reporters and editors must be motivated solely by a desire to protect and
nurture the well-being or the freedom of members of the public.
If this higher standard is met, investigative journalism would benefit from a
more logical conception of the function of undercover reporting and hidden
cameras. In addition, the profession would not get caught in the embarrassing
contradiction of trying to defend presentation techniques as being essential and
credible information-gathering techniques. And it is possible that by meeting
the higher standard, journalists would be able to deflect criticism of
undercover techniques and lessen public distaste for such practices, for the
Principle of Generic Consistency clearly justifies, and perhaps even demands,
the use of deceptive news practices when the freedom and/or well-being of the
public is in danger.
Under the presently accepted (though admittedly controversial) standard as
delineated by Black, et al. (1993) and Lambeth (1992), the ambiguity of the
ethical nature of undercover reporting fuels industry disagreement and public
wariness (The Gallup Report, 1982). This ambiguity results largely from the
fact that the standards used - in particular the tenets of public importance and
exhausting non-deceptive reporting techniques - are philosophically ungrounded
in a rationale that clearly approves the use of such deceptive reporting
techniques. Irrespective of how important the issue might be, going undercover
using the current standards of ethical decision-making leaves the decision-maker
in the unsettling predicament of defending the use of an unethical technique
(deception) without a clear, moral justification. Gewirth's Principle of
Generic Consistency provides a logical defense and goes even further to argue
that when deception is carried out for social betterment by a constitutionally
recognized social agency operating under an accepted social rule, then it is not
unethical, Bok (1989) notwithstanding. Bok leaves the decision-maker to argue
that the unethical practice is justified, which reasonably fails to satisfy
those who do not sanction the use of unethical means under any circumstances.
Gewirth, to the contrary, argues that when the specific conditions are met -
specifically the protection of freedom and/or public well-being when the
deceiver is acting pursuant to accepted social rule and when those being
deceived are clearly in violation of a moral rule - deception is ethical.
Unfortunately, this discussion has not resolved the remaining weakness in the
justification model, which is the ambiguity about what constitutes a matter of
significant public concern. However, Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency
does in fact clarify this issue through its requirement that measurement of an
issue's impact should focus on the ability of individuals to rationally pursue
their natural rights of well-being and freedom. Perhaps further research,
either involving the application of Gewirth's insights or those of others, will
provide more concrete guidelines without unduly limiting the freedom of
journalists to pursue important investigations.
Notes
1Food Lion v. Capital Cities/ABC. The Food Lion grocery chain did not dispute
the truthfulness of the ABC report by suing for libel. Instead, the company
sued ABC charging fraud in that ABC producers lied on their employment
applications to gain jobs in Food Lion stores and charging trespass when
producers entered the stores under false pretenses. See Jane Kirtley, "Getting
Mauled in Food Lion's Den," American Journalism Review (March 1997) 48; and Russ
Baker, "Damning Undercover Tactics as 'Fraud'," Columbia Journalism Review
(March/April 1997) 28-34.
2For a history of undercover reporting, see Goldstein (1985, 127-151); John
Hohenberg, "Public Service: A 1964 Honor Roll," Columbia Journalism Review
(Summer 1964) 9-12; "How Voting Frauds Were Uncovered by Chi Tribune," Editor
and Publisher (May 26, 1973) 55; Joanmarie Kalter, "TV's Undercover Reporters:
The Danger of Going Too Far," TV Guide (Oct. 17, 1987) 2-6; Eugene L. Meyer and
Charles Doe, "Infiltration Reporting," Columbia Journalism Review (Fall 1966)
47-49; Dave O'Brian, "Spotlighting the Globe's Investigative Team," The Boston
Phoenix (Jan. 14, 1975) 18 and 22; Charles and Bonnie Remsberg, "Investigative
Reporter: Ray Brennan," Writer's Digest (February 1970) 20, 22 and 51).
However, despite its practice by reporters throughout American history,
undercover reporting is controversial. See, for example, Nancy Doyle Palmer,
"Going After The Truth - In Disguise: The Ethics of Deception," Washington
Journalism Review (November 1987) 20-22; and Goldstein (1985, 127-151).
3Some journalism ethicists have rejected the Bok-based decision-making
methodology and take other approaches to decision-making about deceptive news
practices. See Louis A. Day, Ethics in Media Communications: Cases and
Controversies (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1997) 128-129; Louis W. Hodges,
"Undercover, Masquerading, Surreptitious Taping," Journal of Mass Media Ethics,
3:2 (Fall 1988) 34; Conrad C. Fink, Media Ethics (Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1995) 77-80; and Ted Glasser, "On the Morality of Secretly Taped Interviews,"
Nieman Reports, 39 (Spring 1982) 17-20. Others, however, suggest the issue
doesn't require a distinct decision-making process. See Val E. Limburg,
Electronic Media Ethics (Boston: Focal Press, 1994); Marilyn J. Matelski, TV
News Ethics (Boston: Focal Press, 1991); John L. Hulteng, The Messenger's
Motives: Ethical Problems of the News Media (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1976); Ralph L. Lowenstein and John C. Merrill, Macromedia:
Mission, Message and Morality (New York: Longman, 1990).
4In February 1997, subscribers of the e-mail discussion list sponsored by
Investigative Reporters and Editors, a national service organization for
investigative journalists, exchanged opinions about the Food Lion case that
ranged from arguing that the exposure of tainted meat was not important enough
to justify use of hidden cameras to the other extreme, that it was clearly
important enough of a topic to justify their use.
5Ibid.
6Jay Black, Bob Steele and Ralph Barney, Doing Ethics in Journalism: A Handbook
With Case Studies, was commissioned by and published by Sigma Delta Chi
Foundation and The Society of Professional Journalists in 1993. In addition,
the model used in the SPJ handbook is the model often taught at the Poynter
Institute for Media Studies during its workshops on media ethics and
investigative reporting. In addition, the model's characteristics were clearly
in evidence in the justification argument presented by ABC during its public
discussion of the Food Lion case.
7The author of this paper has been unable to find any reference by media
ethicists, journalism historians, or working journalists to undercover reporting
or hidden cameras as being story-telling techniques rather than
information-gathering techniques. In addition, the assumption behind the
Bokian-based decision-making model offered by Black, et al. (1993) and Lambeth
(1992) is that such techniques are ways to collect information.
8Felsenthal (1994) argues reasonably that investigative reporters should be
required to meet a burden of proof before publishing allegations. The burden of
proof he proposes is based on the criminal law standards of "preponderance of
the evidence" when public figures are involved and "clear and convincing
evidence" when private individuals are involved.
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Undercover Reporting, Hidden Cameras and the Ethical Decision-Making Process: A
Refinement
James L. Aucoin
Assistant Professor
Communications Dept.
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL
Submitted to the Qualitative Studies Division, AEJMC, 1997 annual meeting,
Chicago, Ill.
Abstract
Undercover Reporting, Hidden Cameras and the Ethical Decision-Making Process: A
Refinement
The controversy over the ABC-Food Lion undercover reporting case among media
practitioners and the public emphasizes that the issue of whether such reporting
is ethical remains unresolved. This paper argues that the ethical
decision-making model suggested by many media ethicists and used by many
journalists is flawed in that it is based on the assumption that undercover
reporting and hidden cameras are primarily information-gathering tools, when in
fact they are better positioned as story-telling techniques. Once undercover
reporting is repositioned in this way, the Principle of Generic Consistency as
outlined by moral philosopher Alan Gewirth is adapted to offer a higher standard
for deciding when to use hidden cameras and other deceptive reporting
techniques. Gewirth's principle offers a rational justification for arguing
that in certain instances - when public freedom and/or well-being is in danger -
deceptive reporting techniques are not unethical if reporters have gathered
enough evidence that the target of the investigation has indeed violated a moral
law.
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