Blog Reaction #3 (All about Ethics)

Hi--

Below you will find four ethical dilemmas dealing with media. Each one is a "true story" that has taken place within the past five years or so.

Your task is to read each case and then decide what you would do and why, paying specific attention to 1) the ethical theory (teleological, deontological, relativistic) you've adopted for what you've decided; and 2) how you pay attention to the four principles of ethics (autonomy or self-determination, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice).

Provide a paragraph for each of the cases for your third blog reaction and post them as comments here.

I think you'll enjoy reading about the cases and thinking about what's the "right thing to do." (You'll also see that we will often come to different conclusions).

Peace,

Jack


1. Cooperating with the Government

WHAT: Describe the situation. Assemble all relevant facts, list all the angles. In other words, do the reporting. Put the ethical dilemma in the form of a question. Write it down to be sure it makes sense.

It began on Jan. 18, and ended two weeks later after the longest prison standoff in recent U.S. history. Two inmates at the Arizona prison complex near Buckeye armed themselves with homemade weapons and took over a prison guard tower. They held two correctional officers hostage, releasing one of them, a male, a week into the standoff and the second, a female, before surrendering two weeks later, on Feb. 1.

The governor’s office telephoned news executives around the state and urged them not to reveal certain basic information. The governor explained that the state feared for the safety of the two prison guards and didn’t want further trouble at the prison. The state would not release the names of the hostages or the names, criminal histories or disciplinary records of their captors until after the siege ended.

As the standoff and blackout continued, authorities said they were worried that publicity would reach the inmates and foil negotiations.

The question: Should your media outlet go along with the state’s request not to release the information?


2. Offensive Images

WHAT: The situation. Caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad didn’t cause much of a stir when they were first published in September 2005. But when they were republished in early 2006, after Muslim leaders called attention to the 12 images, it set off rioting throughout the Islamic world. Embassies were burned; people were killed.

The cartoons originated with a conservative Danish daily newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. After learning that the author of a children’s book on Muhammad couldn’t find an illustrator who wasn’t afraid of retribution, the newspaper sponsored a contest soliciting depictions of the prophet.

It was time to stop being cowed by Islamist fundamentalists, the Danes said; time to confront European media’s timid self-censorship. If we don’t, as the saying goes, the terrorists will have won.

After the rioting and killing started, it was difficult to ignore the cartoons. Some media elected merely to describe the cartoons, not to print them. Yet every time a major protest broke out, the more likely it was that the cartoons would be published. The violent reaction made it difficult for news media in the Western world not to show their audiences what all the fuss was about. Predictably, perhaps, each publication set off a new wave of protests.

Question: Do we publish the cartoons or not?

(Here's a link to the cartoons that caused the problem: Cartoons)



3. The Sting

WHAT: Perverted-Justice.com is a Web site that can be very convenient for a reporter looking for a good story. But the tactic raises some ethical questions. The Web site scans Internet chat rooms looking for men who can be lured into sexually explicit conversations with invented underage correspondents. Perverted-Justice posts the men’s pictures on its Web site.

Recently the tactic has spread to the mainstream media. Perhaps the most visible use of the resource has been on the NBC network’s Dateline news show. Many local television stations have used it as well. A Wichita, Kansas, station, KCTV-Channel 5, may have been the first to show faces and name names. Its six-night report aired during February sweeps, in 2004, taking advantage of information and volunteers provided by Perverted-Justice.com. It helped the station get good ratings.

In December 2003, investigative reporter Steve Chamraz and volunteers from the Web site rented a house in Independence to wait for men who had responded to messages from volunteers who had pretended to be underage boys and girls. Several local men engaged in chat-room conversations with the supposed youngsters.

Eventually, 16 of them showed up at the rented house. Each time, Chamraz and a Channel 5 camera crew were waiting to record the encounter. But one man targeted by the reporting filed a federal lawsuit against Channel 5’s parent company, Meredith Broadcasting; the Web site; and the CBS network. The plaintiff claimed he was misrepresented as a pedophile and it cost him a $50,000-a-year job.

He claimed he never propositioned the “young girl” he chatted with.
The lawsuit challenged only one of several apparent instances of what Chamraz and Channel 5 characterized as “Internet predators” who wanted to “have sex with underage teens.”

But there are broader questions involved here. Here are the questions you might want to ask: Is it ethically defensible to employ such a sting tactic? Should you buy into the agenda of an advocacy group — even if it’s an agenda as worthy as this one?

WHO: Put yourself in the position of a news director or station manager who must decide whether to use the services of Perverted-Justice.com.

4. A Media-Savvy Killer

WHAT: It started three decades ago. “It has always been part of the paper’s lore,” Rick Thames, former editor of The Wichita Eagle told Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp. Since his first murder in 1974, the “BTK” killer — his own acronym, for “bind, torture, kill” — has sent the Eagle four letters and one poem.

The Eagle’s Website was subpoenaed in 2004 when investigators thought BTK might be posting items on a discussion board. And in the spring of 2005, the killer sent the paper a letter after 16 years of silence, apparently sparked by a story about the 30th anniversary of the first killing.

BTK killed eight people. The first was Jan. 15, 1974, the last 12 years later, in 1986. The killer’s first communication with the newspaper was 10 months after the first killing. A reader found a letter inside a book at a local library and called the newspaper. The last letter arrived in March 2004 and included photos from the 1986 crime scene, as well as a copy of that victim’s driver’s license. The killer also has sent letters and made phone calls to a local television station, but his main media connection has been the Eagle.

The newspaper has involved itself in the in other ways. In 1974, when it was still the Eagle-Beacon, it offered a $5,000 award for information leading to an arrest. And a 1978 poem from BTK was mistakenly included in romantic messages the paper runs on Valentine’s Day.

Eagle Reporter Hurst Laviana, who followed the case for more than 20 years, was one of three reporters who were asked to give DNA samples last summer, in a desperate attempt to find the mysterious killer. “It seemed like a logical thing for them to do,” Laviana told E&P, adding that police told him they’d received five tips from people urging that he be tested. Apparently he was cleared; he never heard back from investigators.

In April 2005, the Sedgwick County District Attorney subpoenaed the identities of six people who had posted items to a BTK bulletin board on the Eagle’s Web site. The Eagle cooperated without a fight but was criticized by the DA for running a story about the subpoenas.

All of this puts the newspaper in an awkward position. The killer seems almost to be using it as an agent of communication. It is both a provider of evidence and chronicler of the news. Some employees worried that BTK might target them as attention increases.

Two questions: How should a newspaper, or other media outlet, handle communications from someone who says he’s guilty of multiple sensational crimes? And how much should it cooperate with law enforcement authorities?

(Epilogue: Dennis Rader, who admitted to being the BTK Killer, was arrested Feb. 25, 2005, by Wichita Police. On June 28, 2005, he pleaded guilty to 10 counts of murder.)


5. A Congressman’s Past

WHAT: You’ve learned that a Democratic member of the U.S. Congress, up for re-election to his fourth term, had been accused by an ex-girlfriend of a sexual assault some 28 years previously. But criminal charges never were filed, and neither the congressman, David Wu, nor his accuser wanted to discuss the case now, only weeks before the 2004 election.

The (Portland) Oregonian spent months trying to discover the truth about this persistent rumor. On Oct. 12, 2004, it published an article more than 3,000 words long explaining what if found out. On that same day, Congressman Wu held a news conference to say he did something regrettable in his youth, but he didn’t think it was relevant now. Other media picked up the story, of course, and his Republican opponent used it in her campaign.

Here’s a summary: Wu and his ex-girlfriend were science majors at Stanford University. She broke up with him in the spring of 1976. That summer, Wu was questioned by Stanford campus police after his ex-girlfriend said he tried to force her to have sex with him. Wu told police it was consensual. He was not arrested. The woman declined criminal prosecution and didn’t file a formal disciplinary complaint.

Wu refused to be interviewed or to answer written questions about the incident when The Oregonian asked him about it 28 years later. Wu’s ex-girlfriend also declined to comment, either in person or through a representative. Stanford officials wouldn’t discuss it either, citing university policy and student confidentiality laws.

So how did The Oregonian get its story? Here are some quotes from its article:
“Reporters contacted scores of former Stanford students, current and retired university officials and professors, law associates, and former campaign staffers and friends of Wu to determine what occurred. ...
“The account that follows is based on recollections of the Stanford patrol commander, the woman's counselor, two professors who supervised dormitories at the time and several classmates who were on campus that year.”

Question: Should The Oregonian publish this story?