Hey everybody,
I can post now! Yay!
From my presentation last Wednesday on Privacy vs. the Public's Right to Know and the case of Jim West.
In class we talked about what information is considered public and pondered when does the media's digging into personal lives go too deep. And if the story at hand calls for digging, what methods are ethical?
James Elton "Jim" West, former mayor of Spokane, became the subject of a gay sex scandal after the city daily newspaper, the Spokesman Review, set up an online sting operation.
West was a Republican who had supported several anti-gay bills during his political career. On the flip side, he was cruising online chat rooms such as gay.com regularly and offering young homosexual men internships at the mayor's office.
There is clearly information here that the public should be privy to, but what is the ethical manner of obtaining and exposing this information? The Spokesman hired a computer professional to create a fake profile on gay.com and talk West into meeting somewhere. It worked and West was exposed.
I feel the public definitely needed to know about West's actions concerning his unethical system of finding interns and since West supported a political platform against homosexuals, then people should also have some idea of his hypocrisy. But I don't think a sting operation is necessarily the way to go, and should only have been used as the very, very last resort. I think the Spokesman still had other avenues at its disposal.
What are your thoughts?
Here's one article from a Seattle Newspaper that reports the case in more detail http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Gay-sex-scandal-rocks-Spokane-1172730.php
I am a big fan of the fact that James West was exposed, but not the way in which he was exposed. That the newspaper called the man behind the fake account a source is what really bothers me. He was gathering information for the reporters and following their lead. He was essentially an appendage of the newsroom and they hid behind him as a source. This is a dangerous loophole that they have created. In my eyes that is questionable journalism, and it raises a question about the trustworthiness of the publication. Do we do this every time it is hard to find a reliable source? This story belongs more on twitter or social media, but not in the newsroom. If you can't find a story with reliable sources or by being honest with your subjects, then maybe you don't have a story.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that West should have been uncovered because of his anti-gay bills and his hypocrisy, but I believe the newspaper did not exhaust other ways of discovering the information. They targeted West and went after him using someone unaffiliated with the paper.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brianna. Because of his stance on gays, he definitely needed to be uncovered. Especially considering the way he was getting interns. But I don't feel the way the did it was justified unless they had looked into all the other ways it would be possible to find out that information.
ReplyDelete