You overhear a conversation in your Beverage Management class suggesting another class member, with whom you are not acquainted, is taking advantage of his job in the Public Safety office to steal daily parking permits which he then resells for $5.
You are a student in a beginning reporting class, and your professor says that if you write a story that makes the Foghorn, you will get extra credit - and the more significant the story, the more the credit.
You decide to go for it. You ask the student who is supposedly selling the stolen permits if he can "fix you up" with an all-day permit for next Tuesday.
"Sure," he says. "Five dollars, please."
You hand over the five. Next class period he gives you a permit, signed and dated. Now all you have to do is confront him and write the story, right??
Is there an ethical problem in how you have proceeded? Why? If so, how should you have proceeded instead? Why?
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This situation is tricky because although you want the extra credit for your reporting class, there could be some repercussions for going this route. First of all, you are going undercover to get hard evidence which will provide good support for your piece. However, if you go undercover then reveal to the student that you are going to expose him it could create some tension between you and your peers. It is also not your job to bust him for this. Although reporting on the story may create tension regardless, it may be more ethical to report it to the proper department. If you really wanted the story maybe it would be best to anonymously report this to the university and get the first scoop on it since you were already aware of it. That way you would be a journalism student reporting on a story rather than getting too personally involved.
My biggest problem with this situation stems from one of the ethical principles our class had discussed/ agreed on earlier in the semester- about a journalist always making sure their intentions are clear to the "interviewees"/ readers. In this case, not only did the journalist leave out why he needed the pass- he misled the student by making him think he only needed the pass for one thing. I also don't think the story is that important/ newsworthy enough to the students to burn that bridge with that student/ peer. A student is reselling parking passes- so what? I'm sure the students have other things to worry about and reading an expose on their peer isn't one of them. That being said, I don't think it is ethically acceptable for a journalist to mislead a subject on why they are creating a relationship with them. However, if the journalist is exposing the subject/ topic in order to bring awareness to an issue that affects a larger audience in a negative why, I don't have a problem with the journalist going undercover (ex: animal abuse, sex trafficking, etc.)
I agree with what Brianna said about journalists always making their intentions clear. This sounds more like some undercover investigative reporting, and depending on how important you think it is for this story to become exposed, then maybe it is ethical. If you are using utilitarianism, then if it is for the greater good maybe it is okay to burn this person a little. As far as a story for USF, I would imagine that this one is pretty juicy compared to other things that happen around campus. I guess if you wanted to be more ethical about it, you could just straight up confront this person about what they are doing rather than trying to catch them in the act. I also like Sarah's recommendation of anonymously telling the right representative at the university for that kind of issue. Then once it is all out in the open you could do a story after the fact and interview this officer that was selling parking passes as well as some USF representatives.
I find that this "going undercover" decision has several issues. First, it isn't your job to get this student in trouble and expose him. Second, exposing him means you're willing to receive backlash from your peers as well as burn the bridge between you both. Third, what guarantees do you have that he won't use your actions against you? Meaning he could say something that could hurt your reputation as a student journalist. Also, there is a great possibility that after he finds out that you deceived him, he would not want to talk to you or give you any information that you could use in your story - making you attempt at expose him futile. Apart of being a journalist is making your intentions clearly known to your subject and building your trust with them. There are plenty of other way for you to get extra credit in this class without exploiting a fellow classmate.
There are a few ethical problems in this situation but the clearest one I see involves the act of taking part in the scandal because it then incriminates you. If the story was published, you could possibly receive legal repercussions. But prior to that, would the Foghorn even publish a story that involved such questionable practices? If not, then receiving extra credit is compromised. Another ethical issue I see in this scenario deals with values and allegiances. Does breaking the law and school policy fit in your moral conscience? Does exposing the perpetrator as a mean to extra credit fit in your moral conscience? The ethically sound answer is no.
I would handle this situation by asking my professor of the reporting class how to proceed.
I think the biggest issue is that if you don't make your intentions clear, it ruins your credibility as a person and a journalist. If this story gets published, suddenly everyone who has heard about it will question the reason you are interacting with them. I think it would make it really hard to talk to anyone. Plus, if you print this story you are putting another person's reputation and job on the line for extra credit in a class. If you think that this is worth it, you must really be failing that class. It's a good story, but it doesn't seem like a good enough story to ruin your credibility and/or ruin someone else's job. Moreover, there are probably ways to get information without throwing this classmate, a person you will have to interact with for at least the rest of the semester, under the bus.
Yes a big one! You did not establish clearly that you were a reporter from the get-go. One, you misled your friend. Two, you participated in the shady business. I think this no longer makes you an unbiased actor, able to clearly report on the story. This story is huge because its hard to break. By lying to your friend, you're taking the easy way out. Breaking illegal actions to the public is incredibly difficult to do. Its that way because there's the assumption the journalist isn't taking part in the illegal activities to begin with.
As a journalist, transparency is crucial. Going 'undercover' is unethical (although to some journalists, it's OK). Couldn't the employee sue you for tricking him (or something like that)? There would definitely be legal percussions.
During the Trump campaign, the Foghorn ran a story about a liberal student attending a Republican watch party, while undercover as a Republican. As students, we thought going undercover was totally clever and interesting. However, when the article was printed, and our faculty adviser read it, she told us that going undercover was unethical.
Going undercover definitely infringes on your credibility as a journalist. Perhaps it would have been better to ask the person for details, and say that he'd be anonymous in the article. But then how would you go to Public Safety and ask for quotes (because then they'd make you spill the beans on the guy, and they'd fire him)? If you don't get quotes from Public Safety, then your story will not seem rich or complete. Tough call.
I think that this one is a difficult situation for a couple of reasons. For one, misleading a source in general is something I consider unethical, and therefore burning the student reselling parking passes could be considered unethical. However, I think it's important to put the whole story into context-- does it connect to a larger "big picture" that makes it worth the "shady business" as Ali said previously? Additionally, I think there definitely is an issue with being involved in illegal activity. As a journalist, I'm not sure you would be able to report on illegal activities on campus if you partook in said activities in order to break the story. But on the other hand, once the student sells you the parking pass, it adds a "juicy" element to the story because you experienced it firsthand. I guess it's a toss-up, and would depend on your own personal set of ethics.
Going undercover and lying to your friend to get a story is not only unethical, it's lazy. Our texts and the reporters we interviewed were very clear on being as transparent as possible with our sources to create a feeling of trust. By going undercover you have violated one of the only rules of journalism ethics, and have ended a friendship. How are you going to get sources for anything when people don't view you as trustworthy? Additionally, you participated in the scam, which makes you liable for punishment as well. I would, personally find something else to write about for the extra credit because I don't feel comfortable going under cover and causing negative repercussions for other students. If I had to write the story, I would have told my friend that I was writing a story about the parking permits and asked him to give me the names of some students to anonymously reveal that permits are being stolen for sale, off the record, of course. then ask these students where they got their permits from, and use them as anonymous sources. This way you are still able to break the story, people will still deem you as trustworthy and ethical because you didn't lie to anyone, no one's identity was revealed, and no one faced negative repercussions.
Going undercover can be beneficial and purposeful -- but for a situation like this, it just doesn't seem worth it. I would imagine that this would get you labeled in the school as untrustworthy, and you would probably suffer from negative social repercussions because people would not know how to act around you. The story would still be effective by using anonymous sources who have information on the student rather than going undercover to write about your experience acquiring a parking permit.
I think there is a problem, or at least something uncomfortable to me, about taking part in the student's scam in the name of a good story and extra credit. If I was a professional journalist or cop I may not have as much of a problem with going under cover to somewhat elaborately try and catch this student in the act, but as a student myself I don't think it would be worth it to expose the student. It seems a bit unethical to me because I would be encouraging the student's actions under false pretenses, which is not only lying, but I do not feel that I would have the authority to get that student in trouble in that way. While the student is doing something dumb, she/he is not doing something cruel or evil, so who am I as another student to turn her/his actions on her/him? Let P Safe or someone with more authority get them in trouble. I think what I would do is to either tell a friend and maybe even Public Safety (anonymously) what I heard about the student and then leave myself out of it. I'll try and find another extra credit worthy story elsewhere, or maybe report more in depth on the story once Public Safety was made aware of the situation and the student was assumably fired from his position.
I think how this is gone about is done in the wrong way and I think there are unanswered questions about the person stealing money that we don't know. First, I think the journalists decision to buy the parking ticket might have been unethical. If the journalist is planning to exploit someone, it is unfair to participate in the unjust action to prove a point. With already knowing he can get a cheap ticket too, he becomes part of the problem. It would be unethical and hypocritical to write a piece criticizing the person selling these tickets, if the journalist took part in the exchange making it possible for the personal to sell the ticket. We also do not know why the student is selling tickets in order to maker money in the first place. Maybe it is to buy cigarettes, or maybe it is because he has no food and struggles day to day, or maybe he has a friend in need of help. What if the student was doing his best to help a friend? IT might be unethical but it may not be fair to exploit someone for that, especially when the journalist has no relationship to his employer.
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