Via the indispensable James Taranto and his “Best of the Web” column, I learned of this piece by Ira Stoll, which raises some important questions about the “sting” that took out not one but two Schillers at NPR:
As fascinating as it is to see what NPR executives are saying privately about Tea Party members, Zionists, and Jewish owners of newspapers, though, it seems to me that the techniques used to obtain the video are also troubling. The self-described “citizen journalists” lied. They intentionally falsified their own identities. They claimed to be representatives of a Muslim organization wanting to give $5 million to NPR, when in fact they had made up the organization and had no intention of giving $5 million to NPR. For a group called “Project Veritas” to go around lying about who it is for the purpose of catching people saying silly things or getting reaction shots of the people sitting there laughing or eating while the Project Veritas members said silly things obscures the purpose of the organization, whose name, after all, means “truth.” What is Project Veritas about, anyway? Lying? Or truth-telling?
When I was managing editor of The New York Sun, we had a policy about this sort of thing, and we took it seriously. The policy was very simple: reporters couldn’t lie to get information. They didn’t always have to identify themselves as reporters, but they couldn’t identify themselves as something or someone they were not.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I tend to agree with Ira, with whom I worked briefly at the Sun. There ought to be a sharp line between ethical professional journalism and activist citizen-journalism, because the professionals generally have the technical experience to extract answers to questions without resorting to subterfuge. Which is why they get paid.
This is not to gainsay the truth of what the Project Veritas folks uncovered: a blatant hostility toward conservatives on the part of senior management that we all knew was there, if only from the dripping tones of condescension and derision from some of the on-air talent. Two Schillers defenestrated from three different jobs in one day is quite a remarkable achievement. And it couldn’t come at a worse time for NPR, which accounts for the timing.
Nor is it to deny the usefulness of citizen journalism; having edited Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism website for a year, I relied entirely on volunteers, many of whom were excellent writers and connected to their communities in a way that the transient professionals in their towns often were not.
Finally, there is a place for undercover journalism and always has been. Nellie Bly faked insanity in order to expose conditions at the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island (later Welfare Island and now Roosevelt Island) for the New York World. The Chicago Sun-Times had its famous Mirage Bar sting — for which it was pointedly denied a Pulitzer. And where would 60 Minutes be without its hidden cameras?
Still . . .
Perhaps if the "ethical professional journalism" were actually making even the slightest attempt to do any investigating there wouldn't be such a huge opportunity for someone like O'Keefe.
Remember, the New York Times had the Acorn story from Anita Moncrief and deliberately killed the story. O'Keefe blew the whole thing wide open with a half dozen amateurish hidden camera videos.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStoll writes about their policy at the Sun (RIP): "reporters couldn’t lie to get information".
That's nice that we get his opinion of himself and his former operations, but how does this relate to O'Keefe and his friends? If Stoll considers them to be reporters, what newspaper or news service do they contribute to?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Still . . ."
you have an unquenchable urge to wring your hands?
How else is this type of investigation supposed to take place? Interviews?
Reporter: "Mr. Schiller, are you an elitist who things Tea Party members are uniformed, xenophobic racist gun nuts?"
NPR: "No"
Reporter: "Are you eager to take millions of dollars for your organization from a Muslim Brotherhood front group?"
NPR: "No"
Reporter: "Well that's a relief!"
Which is basically the way these institutions have been treated by the media for decades. Nothing will be revealed. The only way to expose the truth is to get these people to behave the way they behave when they think they're with kindred spirits and no one is looking. That is what O'Keefe and Lila Rose manage to do.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI mostly agree, and I think the goal should be to minimize the deception necessary to gain the story. 100% candor is probably not achievable in investigatory journalism (or investigation at all). Some exposes may be worth a certain degree of deception, but proportionality needs to always be considered.
O'Keefe in particular seems to like the outlandish cover story for its own sake, even when it's completely unnecessary and counterproductive.
OTOH, can we at least agree that pretending to be a fictitious person is a lot less bad than pretending to be an actual person, such as David Koch?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>"There ought to be a sharp line between ethical professional journalism and activist citizen-journalism"
Maybe there ought to be, but there is not. And the reason there is not is that the "professional" journalists are, with very few exceptions, also activists.
The "citizen" part is redundant. I assume most of the professional journalists are citizens.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMr. Walsh, you're not old fashioned, you're naive.
Lefty journalists and documentary makers lie, skew and even falsify data, slant the message, hide contrary information and arguments, edit in the gaffes and edit out the substance, and they give each other major awards for doing it.
A right investigative reporter misrepresents his background, and catches a lefty sleaze in his own words, unedited.
Well, if your standard is so high that you blush at what the conservatives did to get NPR, then you surely must say that main-stream media folks have been similarly lying on a daily basis for decades.
They utterly misrepresent themselves when they claim to be 'reporters', and their shows when they claim that it is the nightly 'news'.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou want to talk subterfuge? The left-wing activists masquerading as "journalists" and "reporters" for the MSM are engaging in it with every story they write.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"There ought to be a sharp line between ethical professional journalism and activist citizen-journalism, because the professionals generally have the technical experience to extract answers to questions without resorting to subterfuge."
Yep, you're old fashioned. Name one reporter today who fits this description. I sure can't think of one. Today they have - for the most part - become mouthpieces of various agendas, breathlessly reporting some leaked information that was handed to them in the hall at the dinner party last night.
And when people lie about who they are, I don't have any qualms about using a little trickery to expose them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIsn't this basically what happened when the activist "journalist" acted like he was one of the Koch brothers on the call to Governor Walker?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find it funny that the Left is up in arms about this when, just a couple of weeks ago, they took a prank phone call (also acquired through subterfuge) as the smoking gun to prove the Koch-Brothers-Rule-The-World conspiracy. We on the Right should be careful on this one. A line has to be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable (and of course we will follow it while the Left crosses it repeatedly). I personally think this is unacceptable, but that's just me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrom a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor some decades ago, which I have taken as a personal motto:
"Your character and your virtue are judged by how you behave when you think no one is looking. Peekaboo."
As Taranto also said in his Best of the Web Today:
"You can't fool an honest man."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow many "journalists" in the past have gone undercover to obtain a story? I believe FDR called them "muckrakers"?
I wonder if Ira Stoll had problems when one of the alphabet channels went "under cover" at a NASCAR race to see if they could get fans do debase Muslims? Nah.
If the so-called establishment media is not going to do its job, and it darn sure did not do its job during the 2008 campaign season, then it is going to be left up to those like O'Keefe and others to ferret out the hypocracy of the left.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAhh yes, let's pine for the halcyon days that never existed.
This kid is a little bit of a loose cannon but it's not my life. On balance he's certainly done more in the last two years to dismantle liberal sacred cows than the editors of this magazine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...because the professionals generally have the technical experience to extract answers to questions without resorting to subterfuge. Which is why they get paid."
By all means, Mr. Walsh, show us how it is to be done by 'professionals."
And in the meantime, color me skeptical.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh, but applicants for public jobs ought not to lie about their race/gender/ethnicity/whatever on a "diversity" form, in order to get quota-system jobs.
Ever asked a college to disclose what box a particular applicant check on his application? I have. It was met with long references to "privacy," as if "diversity" was somehow private.
I responded to the official denial by reciting the applicant's known background (for generations!), which had been voluntarily disclosed by his family when his brother was married. I also noted that the particular applicant had made a change on his application after being told that recruitment had been extended to get more "diverse" applicants.
Nevertheless, my request for information that I already knew was denied. That is, I knew what the applicant ought to have checked; I did not know what the applicant actually did check.
Thus, I completely disregard leftist whines about fraud and honesty.
Believe it or not, it seems that there is no law (state or federal) requiring that applicants tell the truth when checking quota-system boxes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a lament about it raining on your day off. In a perfect world, it would appear to be better if journalists did not engage in sting operations. In a perfect world, however, there would be no need for sting operations.
There are always trade-offs. I think it is fair to draw a distinction between professional reporting and these independent sting operations. There's a different set of trade-offs involved with each.
The trouble for professional journalists when they start down the road of moral preening is they have a dicey past of their own to defend. We could spend all day listing the cases of plagiarism, fraud and so forth from traditional journalism.
James Taranto would be on more solid ground if he focused on the trade-offs and avoided the moral distinctions, real or imagined.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is only the beginning of a battle over video taping all kinds of transactions.
Various states have "wiretap" laws that deny citizens the right to videotape public encounters with police (despite the fact that police have unlimited ability to do the same). They also prohibit individuals from virtually any taping without prior consent.
Why shouldn't I have, as a business person, the ability to videotape any business meeting I have with someone, surreptitiously? Suppose a gangster or a public inspector comes in and tries to shake me down? Suppose I'm a child, a spouse or employee who is being abused and knows only a full tape will provide the clear-cut evidence needed for protection or prosecution?
The technology to film almost any encounter is increasingly available at ever lower costs. Where is the balance to be found between my right to SELF DEFENSE and the protection of other people's rights simply not to be filmed doing something illicit or embarrassing?
There are obvious cases where taping would be abusive (such as consensual sexual encounters) but even some of these could be considered prior "self defense" if one was wealthy and possible target for a rape charge (if you're Koby Bryant or Tiger Woods would you NOT tape your consensual sexual encounters?).
If you prohibit taping you give police, government, illicit businessmen and criminals free reign to perform corrupt and criminal activity. Allowing unlimited taping has costs but the approach should be to exclude the public exposure of tapes that do not serve a personal purpose of self defense or a legitimate, public, interest. Violations should be treated like cases of libel.
The debate will be coming very soon as the technology to tape anywhere, anytime, anything, by virtually anybody becomes cheaper, simpler and ever higher quality.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem is the vast majority of professional journalists have no ethics. What you are longing for doesn't exist.
The LA Times was handed a video of Obama giving a speech at a banquet for Rashid Khalidi a month or so prior to the election. They chose to bury the story because it would be a "game changer". This is the opposite of reporting. To this day they have not released the video.
What makes this worse is that they've taken almost no heat from other "journalists" for killing this story. Deliberately burying a story that would have let Americans see and hear for themselves what the man stood for PRIOR to the election. Unconscionable.
The MSM function as Propagandists for Socialist Tyranny while pretending to be objective journalists. Editors and reporters simply choose not to investigate any story that doesn't advance their agenda. Worse, they actively bury stories that inconveniently present themselves.
Does anyone seriously think there are any reporters in this country incapable of destroying Planned Parenthood if they actually took the trouble to honestly report on them? Of course not. They choose to look the other way. They choose to publish glowing puff pieces while burying inconvenient facts.
The major organs of the legacy media have zero credibility.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne question we all have to ask ourselves: do we really want to live in a world in which everyone is taping everyone else? Where does it end?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Mike Walsh - "One question we all have to ask ourselves: do we really want to live in a world in which everyone is taping everyone else? Where does it end?"
For the better part of three decades, this is EXACTLY how Mike Wallace earned his living, exactly. And yet, I don't remember any weepy calls about the end of private conversation when Mikey had the "insert name of favorite evil capitalist here" in his hidden camera sights.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse