Perhaps of the most pressing issues that a journalist will face in his or her career is if their news will be beneficial to the public, or if it will only be published because they are proud of the work that they have created. Will it truly be helping any person or group be safer or protected? What purpose does its publication serve?
The Society of Professional Journalists has published many case studies about the ethics of protecting rape victims and the gray area that surrounds protection of the innocent, but this case study will dive even deeper into an ethics-questionable area: secretive journalism in cases of pedophilia.
This case will focus on the website Perverted-Justice.com, a website that practices operations to expose pedophiles. Specifically, the case will take a focus on a specific group of men that were talking to supposedly underage girls on a website in December 2003. A man said that he was “misrepresented as a pedophile” and lost a job (SJP.org). It also dared to show the faces and names of the men who came to see the underage girls the men thought they had been talking to. While the undercover operation might be showing audience members to be cautious with their family’s and their own online use, is it really helpful?
The SPJ begs the questions: is it ethically defensible to employ such a sting tactic? Should you buy into the agenda of an advocacy group? (SJP.org). The SJP concluded that “the community needs to know” and that your audience will thank you”, if you were the website taking action.
The ethical questions posed above are ones that deserve serious consideration before any of the program should have been aired. Personally, I think that the sting operation, while it can be considered risky, is more beneficial than harmful to the community. It is ethically defensible to employ a sting operation to get potential criminals off the streets, where they could legitimately hurt children. I also believe that it’s an important advocacy group to listen to, but with caution. If I was the journalist in charge of exposing the potential pedophiles, I would tread with caution but do so confidently, knowing that I was doing the best thing for my community and their safety. So, to answer the questions I posed for myself and other journalists in the beginning, this would be serving the public interest, and the sting was ethical.
References:
https://www.spj.org/ecs3.asp