COMM 317: Blogging the ethics of a 'hidden camera' sting operation

Editor's note. Chris Britt's cartoon in Monday's State Journal-Register sums up a common attitude in most of the professional news media - all but Fox News - but look at some of the comments. Rank-and-file conservatives are upset by the ACORN story.

By all appearances, the "hidden camera" TV investigation by two right-winger activists of the community organizing group ACORN amounted to a tempest in a teapot, with nearly all the coverage coming from right-wing bloggers and the Fox cable news network. Here, according to an Associated Press wrapup that moved today (Sunday), is where it stands at the moment:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says there should be an investigation into the hidden-camera video involving employees at the activist group ACORN and a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp.

The two ACORN workers are seen apparently advising the couple to lie about her profession and launder her earnings to get housing aid.

The video is only the latest problem for the group, which had nearly $1 million embezzled by its founder's brother and has been accused of voter registration fraud. The House and Senate voted last week to deny federal funds to ACORN.

Obama told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday that what he saw on the video "was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated." But the president did not say who should investigate. And he said it is not a major national issue he pays much attention to.

"Frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely," Obama said. ...

But before we leave the story to its rightful place as a very small footnote to history, let's discuss it. We started Friday, but I wasn't able to lay the groundwork for class discussion. So let's try again.

And let's give you some practice blogging some media analysis while we're at it.

Here's your assignment: Write a thoughtful, analytical blog piece on the ethical implications you believe most important in the hidden camera ACORN investigation. Consider what Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and the Utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill might say about it. (They'd be all over the map, and it's OK if you guys are all over the map, too. I like discussing this case precisely because it isn't clear-cut.) You can try my idea of imagining Kant and Aristotle talking over a bottle of peppermint vodka, if you like, or you can write it another way completely. My only requirements are that it be: (1) thoughtful; (2) well reasoned; (3) readable; and (4) well written. Shoot for 500-750 words minimum, and no more than 1,500 max. Due as soon as you post it.

I'll lay out some of the main ethical questions here, and point you to he sources linked to the blog post below:

• It is illegal in many states (including Illinois) to record people without their knowledge, and it the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics says to "Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public." You will find other ethical canons that may apply at http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp Bookmark that website. We'll return to it often.
  
• Yet the SPJ code allows undercover operations, and two college kids posing as a pimp and a prostitute would qualify as undercover, when "traditional open methods" won't work. And it is common to several systems of ethics that you can violate your code if it brings a greater good, for example if you jaywalk to rescue a child from a busy street. The ACORN expose kids say their video is bringing down a corrupt organization.
  
• When one of the ACORN kids, Hannah Giles, 20, was interviewed on the Sean Hannity show, she acknowledged she published the video showing an ACORN employee who said she murdered her husband without checking the truthfulness of that statement. (It later turned out to be a joke.) What are the ethics of accusing someone of "murder" without checking police reports to verify the accusation? Would it be different if the ACORN employee hadn't been filmed as she was saying it? Does it matter that she didn't know she was being taped? What are the professional ethics? What are the personal ethics?
  
• Giles and her partner in the investigation, James O'Keefe, 25, claim to be independent free-lance journalists who make no bones of their right-wing political beliefs and their desire to bring ACORN down. What would Aristotle say to them? Would he approve or disapprove?
  
• Immanuel Kant would take an entirely different tack, no doubt. What would he say to Giles and O'Keefe? What would he base his reasoning on? What would happen if surreptitous videotaping were raised to the level of a general principle? What if everybody did it? How about telling lies? How many people in this story are telling lies? What would Kant think about that? Or would he say "I told you so?"
  
• According to the Utilitarians, the ethical thing to do is sometimes the thing that does the most good for the greatest number of people? How would Giles and O'Keefe use this to justify their undercover operation? Or would they bother? When does the end justify the means? When doesn't it? Do you think that's the case with this story?

Here's a link to a blog that Nikkie Prosperini wrote a couple of years ago titled "WWAD (What Would Aristotle Do)" ... if you're wondering who I stole the phrase from, it was Nikkie. She was writing about the U.S. Supreme Court case about a kid of got kicked out of school for displaying a banner that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during a public event and claimed his First Amendment rights were violated. It, too, had both ethical and legal implications.