Undercover = underhanded?
The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash., reports serious allegations, including allegations of sexual abuse, against that city's mayor. The newspaper's investigation, three years in the making, involved hiring a computer forensics expert and former U.S. Customs Service agent "who has helped law enforcement agencies identify pedophiles online ... to confirm that [Mayor Jim] West was the man behind several online identities and to confirm the accounts of the real men" with whom West allegedly had communicated, the paper's editor tells readers.
The word "explosive" gets overused when people talk about news stories, but this one qualifies.
This project goes far beyond the kind of undercover work that ABC did years ago in its investigation of Food Lion, a case that resulted in a landmark lawsuit tried here in Greensboro. Even among long-timers I've exchanged e-mail with, you have to go back decades to find anything that comes close: in this case, a bar opened by Chicago Sun-Times journalists to "sting" corrupt city officials there.
Read Spokesman-Review Editor Steven Smith's note on the coverage. Read the coverage itself. And then ask yourself (and answer in the comments): Were the allegations worth checking out? Did the Spokesman-Review prove its allegations? And even if it did, did its methods cross the line of ethics, in your view? Why or why not?
