Undercover work and "citizen journalists"

We all know the story by now. The pimp and the prostitute infiltrate ACORN and expose their shady practices, becoming heroes to the Right in the process. To some, they are doing the Lord's work; to others they are crossing a line and setting dangerous precedent when they call themselves journalists.

(Let it be known, first and foremost, that I think James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have essentially put one over on people. No one in their right mind would ever believe that O'Keefe's fur coat was anything but a costume. My firm belief is that the ACORN employees caught on tape, corrupt as they may be, did not believe the premise for a second. But that's not the point of this post.)

Traditional journalism has long frowned upon undercover work that relies on deception and misrepresentation. It's OK to get into the nitty gritty; it's not OK to lie about it. Even local TV news, hardly a bastion of ethical cleanliness, generally relied on hidden cameras but not outright deception in its "investigative" reports.

What O'Keefe and Giles did was very different. As Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute points out in this Politico article, "It can be very problematic if your first value as a reporter is to tell the truth, and the first thing you do is deceive. It’s very hard for the public to figure out when to trust you.”

O'Keefe, who is 25 and actually thinks he played a convincing pimp, begs to differ. He likens their work to the entrapment party "How to Catch a Predator," and I think that's a reasonable comparison. It's good entertainment. It's arguably important work. But it ain't journalism. Any story you have to lie to get is a story of dubious value.