Ethics of entrapment and deception techniques

Referring to a comment I made in an interview with IL-ĠENSIllum (June 6) where I expressed my strong reservations about entrapment techniques employed by media practitioners, especially those belonging to what people consider as the "Church media", a journalist friend of mine suggested that maybe I should expound on the reasons behind my views on such practice.

Ethics in journalism is a complex topic. I believe journalists best learn ethics on the job. It remains an ongoing subject for discussion.

So maybe a few reflections on entrapment and deception in journalism, according to my experience, could be useful.

Entrapment is normally associated with trying to obtain proof that someone will commit an unethical and/or illegal act. So the question is: Should a journalist cut corners and scheme (directly or indirectly) to lure a person into such a compromising statement or act?

Here are some considerations:

• Every communication must comply with certain essential requirements and these are sincerity, honesty and truthfulness.

• Journalists should be morally accountable to their audience, to the profession and to their sources.

• Journalists must protect the rights of their subjects even as they work to serve the public interest.

• The temptation to look at people as means to an end is unethical.

• When it comes to reporting, there are some things journalists should always do and some things they should never do.

• A journalist should always be principled and should not lie. In order to lure the person into a compromising statement or act, the journalist would have to make, or allow another to make, misleading or false statements (say, the journalist or another giving the impression of being involved in drugs, bribery etc. to trap a person). A journalist who lies in gathering facts for a news report destroys his/her credibility. If a journalist lies in the fact-finding process, s/he is likely also to lie in the reporting.

• A journalist should not contribute to the outcome of the story. S/he should be simply an observer, a reporter, not a participant.

• A journalist should not pose as someone else, or go "undercover" in an effort to gather facts (that is, should not pose as a drug dealer or a businessman offering a bribe, to entrap another).

Deception is always a hazard.

Journalists would have acted deceptively if, in the course of an investigation, through intentional action or assertion, attempted to initiate or sustain a false belief or if they allowed another person, with whom they have a special relationship, to initiate or sustain a false belief. The journalist as interrogator has a duty to tell the source: (i) that an interview for publication is taking place; (ii) how the information is being recorded and (iii) if, through some misunderstanding and resultant action on the part of the source, the same source becomes more likely to be harmed than he realises.

As informers, journalists have a duty to disclose information that the news organisation has explicitly or implicitly promised to disclose and that, if withheld, would lead readers to a false conclusion (abstract from a paper by Dini and Culver, presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Portland, OR, July 2-5, 1988).

Conceding that the media's watchdog role may at times require deception with regard to sources, S.T. Lee argues that it, nonetheless, undermines media credibility.

Lee sees deception occurring on two levels: deceiving the audiences by fabrication, tampered quotes or staged events and deceiving sources with hidden camera, misrepresentation, even flattery. When journalists treat these as separate entities, they risk alienating all stakeholders.

Lee concludes that "ethical behaviour may be located within the realm and grasp of the individual but for journalists, caught up in the pragmatic pursuit of the bottom line, ethics can only be an unattainable ideal".

News organisations, then, have a responsibility to promote a deeper awareness about the pragmatic elements that contribute to deception (Predicting Tolerance Of Journalistic Deception. Journal of Mass Media Ethics).

In my opinion, if all of this applies to all journalists it applies all the more to journalists operating with sections of the media funded by the Church and/or seen as representing the Church.

From the age of 18 up to the age of 40, until 1987, I worked for two different Church-related newspapers. I started as a junior reporter and went up the ladder to become the editor of the Church-funded daily newspaper of the time.

My colleagues and I used to also engage ourselves in investigative journalism. This is never an easy task. More so then when it was perhaps a much more difficult undertaking than it is today. Indeed, we faced many delicate challenges. However, during my tenure I never met any colleague in the different news and editorial teams I had the opportunity to work with suggesting the possibility of scheming to deceive and trap somebody in an attempt to induce him or her into stating or doing something ethically and/or legally embarrassing. Our unwritten code of ethics did not admit such perilous overtures.

I strongly believe communicators who debase their skills and their work for money, easy popularity and passing acclaim or hidden agenda are not only failing their public. In the end, they are demeaning their profession.

Mr Buttigieg is a former newspaper editor.