Undercover Sex Investigations

Journalists and law enforcement officers should serve the public, obey the law and follow ethical guidelines. But should these two roles with similar duties share the same ethics?

On September 11, 2009, students made recordings while posing as a pimp and prostitute asking representatives of ACORN, a publicly funded social service organization that explains laws and benefits, how to advance their fictitious illegal scheme. Hannah Giles, 20, posed as the ‘prostitute’ in the recordings. The undercover investigation documented advice from ACORN representatives on how to launder the sex-worker earnings and conceal wrong-doing. When exposed, the ACORN workers were fired.

On November 6, 2009, AP reported that Pennsylvania state police used tax money to pay an informant to visit a prostitute. The focus was a massage parlour operated by Sun Cha Chon, later charged with prostitution. The investigation began when the informant approached law enforcement saying he was offended by being offered sex after a massage. The police followed up by budgeting government funds for the informant to go back for further sex. Pennsylvania police provided payment for four additional visits. Later, a Pennsylvania court dismissed the charges based on police misconduct.

The police exercised poor judgment paying for the informant to buy criminal sex, but was the student exposé also wrong? Giles did not identify herself as a journalist. But was this investigative report a biased piece?

Serving the public interest, reporters function as “auxiliary police” according to New York University’s School of Journalism's Code of Ethics. But to what standard, if not to the ethics imposed on police and prosecutors, should these journalistic “auxiliary police” be held? Can they probe dozens of community organizations, and report only the sensational sex-work advice that got the ACORN staff fired? Or are they missing and playing into a larger story about efforts to discredit community service itself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYU9PamIZk&feature=related

http://www.abc40.com/global/story.asp?s=11460148