If reporters are going to use unorthodox and possibly illegal methods to gain information, they should have a very compelling reason to do so, journalism ethics experts said today.
Media experts are now examining the actions of five Intelligencer Journal reporters who repeatedly accessed a restricted law enforcement Web site for information about criminal investigations.
"I believe in rigorous watchdog journalism, in which journalists hold government officials accountable," said Bob Steele, an ethics expert with the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for journalists. "That includes aggressively and ethically seeking information that may not be easily obtainable.
"But if we use methods that take us into secure offices, files, computers, Web sites, the threshold for justification is very high," he said.
For example, if there is evidence of corruption or incompetency or a system failure, that may justify unusual methods of information-gathering, he said.
But reporters and editors need to ask themselves some very careful questions and examine their actions, experts said.
State Attorney General Tom Corbett said Monday that Intelligencer reporters accessed the Web site 57 times. They did it to get a competitive edge over other media outlets, he said.
In an editorial published in today's Intelligencer, the paper said it gained access to the Web site after county coroner Dr. G. Gary Kirchner gave a reporter the password for it. Kirchner said today he does not recall doing so.
Reporters used the Web site as a "routine reportorial tool" to obtain information that Kirchner ordinarily provided, the Intelligencer said.
Five reporters used the Web site, which news editor Jon Ferguson was aware they were doing, according to the reporters' testimony to a grand jury.
Gene Foreman, managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years and a retired Penn State University journalism professor, said, "This practice should have been questioned within the paper's organization very early, and calculated decisions should have been made whether to use the information or not.
"My vote would be no, but I also say if there is evidence police are not giving the public information they are entitled to, we should address that with the proper authority in the right place and the right time."
Reporters and editors should have talked to law enforcement officials about making the information public, he said.
"I have difficulty justifying legally or ethically tapping into their Web site," he said.
Foreman, now a visiting PSU professor, noted a case in which a reporter was given access to the voice-mail system of the Chiquita Banana company and used the information to write a story about alleged wrongdoing within the company.
"The paper had to retract the story under great pressure from the company," he said. "They could not defend what the reporter did."
Foreman and Steele also said they had questions about the paper allegedly trading favors with Kirchner in order to gain a new password to the site.
"That raises significant questions about the motives and methods of the reporter or reporters, and by extension, the editors," Steele said.
Chris Ritchie, a senior lecturer who has taught journalism ethics classes at Penn State University, agreed that reporters need to make careful decisions about stepping outside of the boundaries of their usual information-gathering.
"When you resort to methods that are surreptitious, generally you have to say, number one, is this information of valued public interest, and number two, is there no other way to get it," he said.
An example of that type of reporting occurred when the New York Daily News sent reporters with box cutters and knives through airport screening to see if they would be detected, said Ritchie, a former editor at the Times Leader in Wilkes Barre with 20 years of journalism experience.
"In terms of testing our readiness to screen out potential terrorists, there was a value to it, something you're not going to get by talking to a screener," he said.
Ritchie said that's not the case if reporters were accessing the local Web site simply to get an edge over competing reporters.
"To me, that's the issue," he said. "You went somewhere you weren't supposed to, you knew it and what you gained in terms of serving the public interest didn't seem to meet the standard that would justify the unorthodox and potentially illegal behavior."
The Web site was labeled with warnings, telling reporters not to enter it, he added.
"Unless you are person X, Y and Z, you shouldn't be here," he said. "So to me, that's something that you've crossed the line into unethical behavior."