Ethics
Case Studies

A prominent businessman who has long been associated with charitable causes is discovered to have embezzled $10,000 from one of the charities he heads. There is no question about his guilt, although police have not yet filed charges. No one else knows about the story. When your reporter contacts him for comment, he begs for a chance to make restitution without a story appearing. He says his wife is in critical condition at a local hospital suffering a heart attack and that publicity resulting from such a story would surely kill her. What do you do?

Four children from a local elementary school are killed when a car jumps the curb and runs over them while they wait for the school bus. List the reasons why you should contact the children's parents for an interview. List the reasons why you should not.

While you film a protest demonstration, two police officers suddenly jump a marcher who had been heckling them and start beating him.Should you go to the victim's aid?

You are a television camera operator. You get to the river about the same time as a police car. The two officers are trying to save a child from drowning. They could use your help. Would you: Continue to shoot? Set down your camera and help the officers? Other? Justify your response.

Michael Medved, co-host of the PBS show "Sneak Previews," testified as an expert witness on behalf of Paramount Pictures in a lawsuit by humor columnist Art Buchwald. Buchwald seeks $6.2 million for their contributions to Eddie Murphy's movie, "Coming to American." Medved said Paramount paid him between $8,000 and $10,000 to testify. He occasionally rewrites screenplays and has received money from studios for script writing services. What is the ethical problem here?

A woman jumps from a three-story building and is injured but not killed. Your photographer takes a picture of her being carried away on a stretcher. Is the photograph worthy of publication? Why or why not?

A USA Today reporter set up a front-page picture that showed five angry-looking African-American men with guns for a story about the potential for gang violence in Los Angeles. The men initially showed up without their weapons and the photographer drove one to his mother's house to pick up a rifle so guns could be displayed. What is the problem?

The Milwaukee Journal dispatched a photographer to cover an anti-abortion demonstration. The photographer faced several questions. What are they?

On the day her client was sentenced to life in prison for rape, a woman lawyer ran her car into a river. She tested above the legal limit for intoxication. A photographer took her picture (she was stumbling out of the water with a lighted cigarette) and the editors ran it on the front page of the newspaper. Was this an invasion of privacy or a newsworthy event?

In a cover photograph for Newsweek magazine, the photo editors digitally changed the smile of the Iowa woman who gave birth to quintuplets. Her teeth in reality were in bad condition, visually, but in the cover photo she had perfect teeth. What is the problem?

In 1990, a sheriff convinced a federal judge to ban 2 Live Crew recordings in South Florida. For readers and viewers to understand why, editors faced a quandary: How could they inform the public of these obscenities without using the obscenities themselves. The Florida media did not publish the actual obscenities for fear of offending their audience.Do you agree?What does the FCC have to say?

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Dateline NBC


Notable ethical incident

Probably the most publicized example of fake news in recent times is the case of NBC's faking a crash test in a story about trucks made by General Motors. The story, labeled "Waiting to Explode?," first appeared on "Dateline" which was then cited as the source for the "news" story onNBC and other networks. In explicit video, NBC "proved" that GM trucks with gasoline tanks mounted outside the trucks' underframe are prone to explosion when hit from the side. In the NBC demonstration video, a GM truck burst into flames after being hit from the side. A man identified as Byron Bloch, safety consultant, went on the air and described the fire as a "holocaust." NBC reporter Michele Gillen claimed that the crash had punctured a hole in the gasoline tank. No mention was made of the fact that NBC had attached toy-rocket engines to the truck's fuel tank and then detonated the rockets by remote control at the moment of impact. Nevertheless, even when this fact became known, Michael Gartner, president of NBC at the time, said: "The segment that was broadcast on 'Dateline' NBC was fair and accurate." Harold Pearce, GM's executive vice-president and general counsel, didn't think so. He called the NBC program "outrageous misrepresentation and conscious deception."

The truth about the fake news came about due to the investigative journalism of Pete W. Pesterre, editor of Popular Hot Rodding magazine, and GM itself. For reasons unrelated to the faking of the story, Pesterre had criticized the "Dateline" show in an editorial. A reader called him and told him of a firefighter, fire chief Glen R. Bailey Jr., who was at the scene and thought the test was rigged. GM hired its own investigators who asked NBC to let them look at the trucks used in the tests. NBC refused. The investigators checked 22 junkyards before they found the trucks, but the fuel tanks were missing. Bruce Enz, who calls himself a "news gatherer," was president of the consulting firm hired by NBC to do the crash tests. He had given the tanks to a neighbor. GM got the tanks but Mr. Enz wouldn't answer any questions about the faked test, claiming he had First Amendment protection from interrogation. So, with little or no help from NBC, GM discovered that the fire that was described as a "holocaust" was a small, 15-second flame; that a non-standard gas cap was used and it blew off at impact, releasing gasoline that caught fire; and that X-rays showed no puncture in the gas tank. It cost General Motors nearly $2 million to investigate a piece of faked news. Who knows what it cost NBC to fake the story. But the visuals were captivating!

The question that must be asked is: Was this just a singular lapse of judgment of one TV news network or was it symptomatic of more widespread dishonesty, or at least incompetency, in the media? Needless to say, expert opinions are divided on this issue.

Updated Jan. 9, 2006

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This is a service of the Department of Journalism-Photography at San Antonio College