Monday, November 1, 2010

The Outing of Mayor Jim West

Hey guys!

So my presentation was on the outing of Mayor Jim West in Spokane by the Spokesman-Review. The ethical questions come when you start to talk about sting operations involving newspapers because the Spokesman-Review actually hired a forensic computer analyst to pose as a 17-year-old boy online to get Mayor Jim West to talk to him. After saving all of his chat logs and getting Mayor West to think that they were having online sex, they posted a front page article about it. The EVEN MORE unethical thing is that they said he was tied to sex abuse in the '70s and '80s even though there was barely any proof of it. The proof that was there was almost not even alleged, so the posting of that information by a publication is illegal.

What do you guys think? There's a fantastic documentary on PBS Frontline that you can watch for free online. The documentary is called "A Hidden Life".

What do you think? Was the Spokesman-Review just doing good investigative journalism or were they overstepping the bounds of journalism and going into the realm of private investigation to create and publish a story? I think it was the latter, personally.



7 comments:

  1. I believe the Spokesman Review majorly crossed the line between journalism and police task force with the Mayor Jim West story. As we've discussed in this class before, our job as a journalist is not to be a pundit, a politician, a police officer, a detective, etc. Our job is to be a journalist and the objective of journalism is to report on the news, not stage or craft news that wouldn't otherwise come to light. We're to cover the story, not create the story. And the reporters at the Spokesman Review ostensibly created this story into existence, opposed to reporting or even investigating a story that would naturally be reported on. When a mayor who was as held in such high esteem as Mayor West, who had merely a few months of his term to finish, and who was dying of Colon cancer during the release of the story, I find it hard to believe the reporters thought of the ramifications or ethical issues that would arise out of publishing this story, but rather thought how they could produce a sensational story that would increase readership and elevate one's career status.

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  2. I believe this statement of sensational, unethical journalism is evidenced by the lack of proof of involving Mayor West's "alleged" sex crimes in the '70s and '80s.

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  3. I'm also in disagreement with the actions taken by the Spokesman-Review. It's one thing if all of this information had come to them and they'd reported on it, but it's an entirely unethical other choice to get a hunch about someone and entrap them into a deeper situation (which is what the Spokesman-review did).

    The paper's job is to investigate the facts; what they did was create a sting operation to create the facts that they wanted to run with.

    The part that really gets me is how much of what West did was actually Illegal... nothing. He only instigated sexual conversations with guys over the age of 18. And although I find it horrible to offer internships or jobs based on sexual interests, the paper needed to prove that this was happening based on the facts in order to make a story on it.

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  4. Obviously Mayor West was a hypocrite, but as Shane said, it's not illegal. Is it unethical to offer internships and jobs to your love interests? Yes. But tying West to the sex crimes in the 70s and 80s was completely out of line and the Spokesman-review had absolutely no proof to back up those claims.

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  5. I think that the Spokesman review did a good job in investigative journalism, but their investigations found nothing newsworthy. What a grown man does on his own time within the law isn't news. There was no reason to run this story, that's what their investigation found. So kudos to fact checking, but try and use investigative resources on things that actually matter.

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  6. I'm definitely on the same page as a few classmates...I think the way West was tied to the decades-old sex crimes was out of line. I didn't know much about this incident before the presentation, and I was pretty shocked to see that the publication went that far with its "story."

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  7. I agree with the above comments. Although Mayor West was a hypocrite for trying to make laws to outlaw things that he was doing himself, he was still doing those things within the law. Had he been outed by someone from within his office, that's a different story. If Bill Morlin's tip had gone public with himself so that the Spokesman-Review wouldn't had to have hired a private investigator, it would have been news. This is a prime example of what not to do when news is slow.

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