California hasn’t executed a prisoner in 24 years — but the next time it does, the public may be able to witness the event on television. Public station KQED in San Francisco is suing the state for the right to videotape executions. A trial has been set for March 25, 1991.

California’s policy now prevents journalists from using the tools of their trade in reporting major news events. The state forbids the use not only of cameras or tape recorders, but also of pens, pencils, notebooks or sketchpads.

The death penalty poses difficult moral dilemmas: What is the appropriate punishment for crimes that violate every imaginable standard of decency? Will the imposition of the penalty on one person deter other criminals from killing? Can it be justified as appropriate and fitting the crime? Or does the death penalty violate the state’s own standards of civility?

Television coverage of executions can help answer these questions because the camera can serve as a neutral witness: It can see exactly what any person would see from the witness room — no more or no less. The camera can document the event from beginning to end, capturing it exactly as it happens. This is the purest form of reporting; the camera can present the event without interpretation.

In contrast, print or radio reporters can only tell the story by putting it into their own words — an act which requires them to interpret what they have seen and opens the door to incomplete or inaccurate reporting.

But is it right to show the execution of a condemned person on television? I believe it is. A broadcast journalist’s job is to tell his or her audience what is happening in the world — particularly what our government is doing on our behalf.

When the story is about the ultimate sanction of our criminal justice system, we not only have the right to witness the punishment, but the obligation to do so and to understand it in the context of the crime for which it was imposed. How better to form an opinion about the appropriateness of the death penalty than to see it given a context and enacted according to the provisions of law?

Public reaction to our lawsuit seems about evenly divided for and against it. Most interesting, about half the people who support the lawsuit also favor capital punishment, while the other half oppose the death penalty. People who oppose the lawsuit are similarly divided in their opinions about execution itself.

What about the rights of the condemned person? What if a mass murderer asks that his execution not be witnessed by a television audience?

No prisoner has a legal right to privacy in the moment of execution. In California, as many as 50 people witness the event that deprives a prisoner of the right to life itself. Nonetheless, I believe that basic human decency has a necessary place in any journalistic decisions, and thus would not assert a First Amendment right over a condemned person’s request that his or her execution not be broadcast.

What about the possibility that children might witness an execution? The New York Times recently reprinted Eddie Adams’s famous picture of a South Vietnamese police chief executing a Vietcong officer by shooting a bullet through his brain. I remember watching footage of that event as a teenager, just as I remember watching John F. Kennedy’s hideous murder and Jack Ruby’s assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. I wonder how many children might see today’s images of the dead and maimed from the Gulf war, or, indeed, might witness the nightly orgies of violence on network primetime TV.

There is always a risk that children may be exposed to images of death and violence. Broadcast journalists cannot eliminate that risk but we can take measures to reduce it. For this reason, KQED would not show an execution live. We would delay the broadcast until an hour when children are unlikely to be watching television on their own. We would also begin the program with an explanation of what we were about to do and why so viewers could change the channel, turn off their sets, or tell children to leave the room.

Fine, some critics say. You may act responsibly, but what about other stations that would be tempted to sensationalize the event to boost their own ratings?

My answer to that is simply that every journalist has to be able to live with his or her own acts, and to take responsibility for them. First Amendment rights do not apply only to those who earn or merit them.

The issue in this lawsuit is really a simple one: should government officials decide how a news story is covered, or should journalists? If the court decides in favor of journalists, then it will be up to all of us to exercise the right we have established in a way that brings credit to our profession. Television is not inherently good or bad. The people who practice the craft of broadcast journalism make it the way it is.

Newspapers should expose racial discrimination. No doubt about it. But what if reporters must lie to get the story?

That "does-the-end-justify-the-means" dilemma confronted me this spring when my newspaper, The Hartford Courant, reported on racial bias among some area real estate firms. Reporters, appearing to be almost identical in every financial and personal detail except race, posed as potential home buyers to gather the evidence. In some cases, real estate agents gave the "testers" who were black tougher financial scrutiny. Other times, blacks were "steered" to towns that already have significant minority populations.

The investigation was meticulously prepared, carefully written and clearly presented. Immediately after it appeared, Connecticut’s governor ordered a statewide investigation of real estate discrimination. The perfect story, right?

Not to me, and I said so in my column. The reporters had used altered names and false information to hide their identities. In short, we lied. A news story, however important, can’t be based on deception.

It was not an easy conclusion to reach. There’s a long history of reporters’ disguising themselves to root out corruption. And this investigation struck a strong blow for justice and equality.

But I can’t think of a case in which such deception would be justified – even when the goals are noble, as these certainly were, and even when the results are positive for the community.

The Courant’s policy states, "we do not misrepresent ourselves" in pursuing a story. But that’s quickly followed by the statement that "from time to time, legitimate stories in the public interest might involve a conflict with (this policy)."

The escape clause essentially means we have a policy that permits deception. It flatly prohibits only casual or willy-nilly misrepresentation – but it lets us lie to get a story whenever we think we should. The real estate probe wasn’t even an exception to the rules, since an exception is already built in.

To our credit, the testing procedure and the newspaper’s policy were explained in a sidebar headed "How, why the test was done." At least we didn’t hide the deception.

Saying "journalists shouldn’t lie" opens up a host of questions: What about restaurant reviewers who pretend to be ordinary customers when in fact they intend to report on their dining experience? Aren’t they misrepresenting themselves, too?

Perhaps. But there are many facets to the question of deceiving sources, and I feel each case must be examined closely. I make a distinction, for example, between actively giving a false name and passively letting someone assume a reporter is just an average consumer.

Could we have done the real estate story without telling lies? Maybe, but it would have been an arduous task. Executive Editor Michael E. Waller, who approved the project, thinks it would have been more difficult than that.

"To have an outside group. . .do the testing would still have posed problems," he said. "They would have had to misrepresent themselves — and I see little ethical difference between us misrepresenting ourselves and asking someone else to do it for us.

"Asking real home buyers. . .to be the testers posed, in my mind, insurmountable problems. The first would be finding the people to fit the test criteria and getting them to do it simultaneously and in a timely manner. The second would be keeping any reasonable control of accuracy, and assurance that they faithfully would follow all the testing guidelines."

He’s probably right. So I say, with deep regret, that we couldn’t – and so, we shouldn’t – have done this investigation, despite its social importance.

After my column appeared, a handful of readers called me to support my position – including a caller who identified himself as an investigative reporter at a competing newspaper.

At the Courant , a couple of reporters agreed with me; most didn’t, saying that our deception was benign in comparison to the illegal activity we disclosed.

The open disagreement comes with an ombudsman’s territory. But I’m sorry to say my column generated some less-than-open criticism as well. An obviously altered news release purporting to be from the National Association of Realtors soon appeared on the newsroom bulletin board. It said I had accepted "many gratuities" from the real estate association and quoted me as telling them, "When you decide to sell your soul, always be sure to get top market price."

I guess such sniping comes with the territory too. But it doesn’t change my mind. Credibility is our most important asset. And if we deceive people in order to do our job, we’ve compromised that credibility before a word is written.

I’ve used this column to argue that newsrooms and journalists had no business cheering on the recent war; I’ve used it to show why no political or community cause, including United Way, belongs on a journalist’s list of newsroom or extracurricular activities.

But, there’s one kind of advocacy that I think is different from the rest. When it comes to keeping the public’s business before the public, journalists and journalists’ organizations have an obligation to take up the fight.

But carefully.

It seems like every other Freedom of Information committee, state press association, news organization and reporter is involved in a battle to protect or obtain access to governmental records and meetings. Not surprisingly, everyone is also involved in disagreements about how much political activity is too much.

Last spring the Colorado Press Association helped draft a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would extend the state sunshine laws to include local government. The amendment didn’t get the 52,000 signatures needed to put it on the ballot. Critics say it failed because journalists and news organizations didn’t circulate petitions and otherwise campaign effectively on its behalf.

"A lot of individual reporters were concerned that it was a conflict of interests to be that involved in politics," said Fred Brown. Brown is political editor of The Denver Post, who, after some soul-searching, did circulate petitions. "It was a non-partisan issue, a public access issue," he said.

"But," said Marty Tharp, the former ME of The Littleton (CO) Independent who protested journalistic involvement at the time, "no matter how good the cause is, as soon as we go out circulating petitions, we can’t after that point appear to other people to be fair and impartial."

Halfway across the country and a half a year later, a coalition of news organizations and citizen groups called the Michigan Freedom of Information Committee sent an open letter to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. The letter protested harassment of journalists and the general unwillingness of the administration to permit access to legally-allowed information. It requested a meeting with the mayor and was signed by some metro-area news organizations and individual publishers, as well as the committee. The mayor declined the invitation, calling the letter "self-important and self-serving."

While committee members said that it was good, in any event, to get the issue before the public, others disagreed. Detroit Free Press publisher Neal Shine, who did not sign the letter, said that administrations have been trying to thwart the work of journalists for all his 41 years with the paper. He didn’t think his readers would have been much impressed to see his signature at the bottom of that letter.

"Do you think that they are going to think that Mayor Young is a bad guy? No. What they’re going to think about me is that I’m a crybaby."

"We have a newspaper with all of the power it possesses — the presses, the 640,000 subscribers. If we have something to say to the mayor, that’s how we say it." The Free Press as well as The Detroit News and other area organizations included news stories on the letter and the mayor’s response.

Every journalist plays some part in the fight for access. Whenever reporters demand access to information that a public official declines to give, they are fighting on its behalf — as well they shonld be.

The access issue is different from abortion or other political causes because of its direct connection to the journalist’s work. But, individual reporters, editors and publishers still have to shy away from being publicly identified as advocates. Direct political actions like collecting signatures in the community or lobbying legislators are out of bounds.

No matter how important the issue, it’s disconcerting for sources and consumers to see a reporter change hats from impartial analyst to advocate. It would be like seeing a judge do commercials to promote the death penalty. Such action can’t help but affect credibility.

Because of the direct professional tie-in between access and the ability to gather the news, journalists can work behind the scenes, drafting letters to the mayor or helping to write proposed legislation. These journalists are certainly excluded from covering any story associated with the action or with people involved in the case. And, the signing of the letter, the lobbying for the bill should be left to professional organizations that speak with a collective journalistic voice.

There are a lot of interests to balance as journalists protect access to information, but none needs to be sacrificed. The key to pulling it off is a strong statewide organization that, as it takes on the fight for access, can both represent journalists, and take the heat for any complaints.

It’s never easy to cover stories in which journalists and news organizations have a professional stake. Just ask anyone who’s tried to cover their own JOA. But no one questions the need for the industry to protect its commercial interests and the need for reporters to cover it. No one should question the need for the industry to protect access, this most important of professional interests.

"Got your embalming license, Franklin? You can start this afternoon," the stocky mortician yelled to me while stitching an Army private’s crumbling skull. I was next door, watching a crack mortician team stuff a second mutilated body into a starched uniform.

Posing as a moonlighting mortician, I had entered the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, the sole Desert Storm casually-processing center, during the bloodiest part of the brief ground war. That, I believe, made me the only journalist to see the dead being returned from the Gulf.

As a professional journalist, deception is not a step I take lightly. But when the Pentagon cancelled all press access to Dover to prevent the American public from being demoralized by the sight of body bags and coffins, I found the ordinary rules of reporting unacceptable.

I was convinced that censors and press pools violated the honesty and openness implicit in a democratic relationship between citizens and their government. And the myth of the courageous correspondent was far from the embarrassing truth that, during Desert Storm, most American war correspondents got no closer to combat than the nearest fax machine. And no closer to the truth than swallowing the military’s version of reality.

Even so, sneaking into an Air Force base, whatever the guise, violates nearly every tenet of contemporary U.S. journalism. It wasn’t honest, it wasn’t objective and it wasn’t popular.

But given the military’s history of underestimating war casualties — and the U.S. media’s feeble protection of the right to a free press — I believe deception was defensible and necessary.

I didn’t pose as a mortician for the adventure, as critics have suggested. I did so to counteract the illusion of a bloodless Gulf War and because even a cursory study of history reveals that military organizations have no interest in acknowledging mishaps during wartime. The U.S. press and public have been duped about the number of dead during World War II, Vietnam, Grenada and Panama, when many more American troops died than official counts ever admitted.

My reporting from Panama after the 1989 invasion had uncovered just such a discrepancy in the number of American casualties. Morgue workers in Panama low-ranking Air Force personnel — had told me they’d scrubbed blood off at least 60 dead American soldiers. Yet the official Pentagon figure never rose above 27.

Those morgue workers and other soldiers at Howard AFB in Panama also told me that dozens of American paratroopers had accidentally been killed by so-called friendly fire. This embarrassing and tragic truth was, for the most part, officially written off as "training accidents," a term that, predictably, popped up again during Desert Storm.

Spurred by these revelations, I decided to investigate the number of Gulf War casualties being processed at Dover. But, after a week of fruitless phone calls and requests for interviews, I decided I had to go undercover.

My plan had the support of editors at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and SPIN magazine. Although they made it clear that I was strictly on my own if I wound up in legal trouble, they shared my belief that readers needed a grisly description of the casualties to remind them that war is never glorious — and to counteract the sanitized version of events the military was so skillfully presenting.

My ruse was simple. It seemed logical that Dover would be hiring extra help. So for three weeks I studied Mortuary Management magazine, visited funeral homes and interviewed mortuary science professors. When the bombing began, I phoned Dover and asked for a job. On February 27, at the height of the ground war, I was invited to tour the mortuary as a prospective employee.

At the base security gate, I presented guards with my true name, address and social security number. Although I was offered a job that same day, I was never asked to show a mortician’s license.

It had taken three weeks of studying the mortician’s craft to slip through the triple levels of security at Dover. But after a few hours amidst the gore — I saw probably 20 corpses, some without hands, some without heads — I was ready to leave.

What had I learned? Morticians, hearse drivers and data clerks inside the mortuary all freely told me the truth about the war dead. While the Pentagon was setting the number of casualties at 55, one of my temporary colleagues told me she was computerizing data on about 200 dead soldiers. [Final U.S. toll: 399 dead]

"And whenever possible," a secretary had whispered to me, "combat deaths are classified as ‘training accidents.’"

I wrote — in deliberately gruesome detail — about what I saw and heard. My articles were reprinted in alternative publications around the U.S. Yet not a single mainstream media organization ran the story or contacted me about the claim that combat deaths were being intentionally under-reported.

Why? Was the story not deemed newsworthy? Or was it considered tainted by my deception? Two years earlier, while working for the New York Times, I had learned that editors there emphatically reject all undercover reporting.

Posing as an anti-abortion Operation Rescue activist for a freelance Village Voice article, I had been arrested and jailed. While imprisoned, I obtained intimate details about the planning and philosophy of Operation Rescue activists. But the city editor warned me that even an off-duty Times man was sticking his head in the fire by using undercover reporting techniques.

I suspect, however, that even Times reporters and editors can visualize a government so hostile to open reporting that undercover techniques are both defensible and necessary. Shouldn’t the debate actually be about when such techniques are legitimate?

During Desert Storm, military leaders announced — and journalists reported — that the bombing of Baghdad was an unqualified success. And, according to opinion polls, the U.S. public widely agreed.

But where might public opinion have stood had the nation known that seven of every ten bombs may have missed their targets? Would the public have so enthusiastically supported the ground war if they’d known that U.S. troops were deliberately burying thousands of Iraqi soldiers alive?

It took seven months for the burying alive story to trickle out. Will it take years for the truth of what was done in their name to reach Americans? Or will the full story never emerge?

At the height of the war, few journalists challenged the military stranglehold on facts. I broke with convention because traditional journalistic etiquette was futile while generals stonewalled and censors worked overtime.

I’ve been criticized even by friends for going undercover. But I risked my credibility, and possibly my clean police record, by entering Dover because I believe journalism ought to be a risky business. Media organizations ought to risk contradicting military officials. Individual reporters ought to risk their life and freedom for crucial stories.

If more journalists had openly rejected war censorship and press pools, the American public could have made informed judgments about a war they financed and supported. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a democracy.

And unless more of us openly challenge the military’s obfuscation policy, historians may one day describe Operation Desert Storm as a victory not against the Iraqi army, but against the poorly organized forces who call themselves the free press.

"This was the act of a jerk and a sleazy jerk at that," bellowed one columnist. "I still can’t think of an acceptable journalistic reason to be wandering around that hotel," grumbled another.

The "sleazy jerk" is me, the area I was "wandering around" was a motel where a murder trial jury was deliberating, and the public knuckle-rapping was over the ethics of my being there.

But I think the moral high-grounders were full of hot air and their frets over a possible mistrial, had I glimpsed a juror (or vice versa), are folly.

I was at the motel covering a breaking story and I see no ethical problem with that. But I do think my colleagues have a little ethical soul-searching to do themselves when it comes to checking facts before spouting off.

The story that took me to the motel and, later, to the hot seat was the retrial of Bloomington businessman David Hendricks. Convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the axe murders of his wife and three children, the defendant handled his own appeal and won a new trial.

It was such a sensational story that we planned to break into regular programming when the verdict came in.

Jury deliberations were upstairs in the courthouse, with the media confined to the lobby. The sheriff had promised to keep us apprised of all developments, but we found out he wasn’t doing so.

Then, after several hours of waiting, we learned through sources that the jury had not only had its dinner break, it had actually been moved to an undisclosed location because of air conditioning problems in the jury room.

Now we really started to worry. We already had technical trouble with our live transmission and we had to wonder if the sheriff would give us enough time to tune in our signal when the verdict was returned.

Should we try to find the jury or rely on the sheriff? Since we felt he’d already misled us, we had to look for the jury. Surely there was nothing objectionable in waiting for them in a different place.

I raced to check out a tip that they were at one of four motels. My plan was simply to stake out the parking lot, where we had as much right to be as the next guy.

I found a school bus behind one of the motels. The jury’s bus? A high school band’s? I had to go inside to be sure. But the motel clerk knew nothing about a jury, although he thought there was "a cop on the third floor."

That’s where a fellow reporter and I split on ethics. She said she’d have been reasonably confident this was the right motel and stayed in the parking lot. I would have too — if the clerk had been certain. He wasn’t and neither was I so I went upstairs. Without a camera.

I expected to see a deputy guarding the jury, or at least a sign warning motel patrons to stay away, and I’d immediately retreat to the parking lot. Instead, I found only an unmarked room guarded by a sleeping bailiff, with an oblivious deputy at the far end of the hall.

I decided to tell the deputy about the bailiff before heading out. Somewhat startled, he asked me to leave and I did so.

The next morning, the sheriff went on a tirade, ranting about how his deputy had "caught" me at the motel and threatening to arrest anyone found near the jury.

This was the first "news" since deliberations started, so within minutes the sheriff’s one-sided story was on the wires. Calls came into our newsroom from all over the state. And for a few hours, I became the story.

Later that afternoon, Hendricks was acquitted and I thought the motel incident would become a forgotten sidebar. Instead, it became open season on yours truly in the local media.

I have since debated this with my colleagues. One asked if I was crazy for risking a mistrial. Others said it was embarrassing, it was jury tampering. It was not worth a little time to tune in a live shot.

Blather. I have the greatest respect for the legal system and I do think there is a line that can be wrongly crossed. But as long as jurors are afforded the privacy the law entitles them to, I see no problem.

And I still don’t perceive any ethical misstep. I wasn’t looking for jurors in die flesh, only their whereabouts. I had no intention of speaking to them and I don’t buy the argument that simply being in the same motel could have been grounds for a mistrial. That’s a sheriff talking, not a lawyer.

I put my viewers before a sheriff and I put the legal system before my viewers. As long as I’m not breaking the law, I don’t see anything wrong with walking in an area that anyone else in that motel could have walked in.

But to put a second ethical edge on this sword, let’s go back to those who wrote that of which they knew not.

Neither the columnists nor the radio talk show host bothered to get my side before preaching ethics. They just took the sheriff’s word at face value.

Talk about the ethical pot calling the ethical kettle black!

If there are questions about intentions, it’s only proper to ask the source, not just to wonder aloud. If there is editorializing to be done, it must be based on a foundation of accuracy, not assumption. And if there is ethical finger-wagging to be conducted, it should be directed at those who misrepresented their opinions as facts.

Does this mean I see no problems with my actions?

Just one. I shouldn’t have blabbed to the deputy about the snoozing bailiff. I should have run a story on it.

It was a story of remarkable heroism and intense suffering, a tragedy that touched the hearts and pocketbooks of thousands. Joey Philion, 15, had suffered burns to 90 percent of his body running back into his home to save his younger brother in March 1988. He spent a year undergoing painful skin grafts and was separated from his family for much of that time.

The story of his heroism was reported in both Canada and the United States, and money poured in for a trust fund. His hometown, Orillia, Ontario, raised the money to build a new home for Joey and his family; local tradesmen donated their labor.

Then our newsroom, CBLT-TV in Toronto, discovered that one critical part of the story was wrong. Joey had not been burned while saving his brother Danny’s life; he was not a hero.

The true story came to light when Kelly Crowe, one of our reporters, was covering the construction of the new house. A neighbor mentioned that Joey had not run back into the house as we, and others, had been reporting.

What really happened, she said, was that Danny had come running to her house to tell her that Joey was trapped in the house. When they got back to Joey’s house, he was outside, his clothing on fire.

Crowe confirmed the story by talking to other neighbors and the fire marshal who had investigated the fire.

If this was true, how had the media, including our own newsroom, got the story wrong? We talked to the editor of the daily Orillia Packet & Times. He had never run the "Joey saved his brother" story. As he put it, "It wasn’t until you big-city reporters got onto the story months later that the hero story started."

He was right. We found the first reference to Joey the "hero" in The Toronto Star, perhaps two months after the fire. It was soon picked up by other media in Toronto, including our station, and no one questioned the truth of it.

Although she never quoted Joey’s mother in the article saying Joey had run back to save his brother, the Star reporter told us that’s where she got it. One of our reporters who had covered the story said the mother had never denied the "hero" angle.

Joey was still in the hospital and reporters were not allowed to talk to him.

The media had created a hero, and we had to decide what to do about him.

The sides in our newsroom were drawn.

There were those who thought it was better for truth to become a casualty than to inflict further pain on a boy. Why punish Joey for our mistake?

So what if Joey hadn’t saved his brother’s life? He had still undergone an incredible ordeal and didn’t deserve to be made to look as if he might have been part of a lie. What public good would be served if we set the record straight? Who would be hurt if we didn’t?

Those on the other side of the issue were equally adamant:The public had a right to know the truth because it was being asked to donate to Joey’s trust fund. The proceeds from an upcoming rock concert would go to the fund, and the musicians involved said they we’re doing it because they were so moved by Joey’s heroism.

If we did not report what we knew, we would be invoking our own form of censorship.

Then we learned that Joey was to be given an award for bravery. We could not report that award without also reporting what we knew.

At this point we talked to his mother. We had waited because we wanted to be sure of our facts and sure we wanted to broadcast the story. Joey’s mother confirmed our information, but claimed that she had not started the story. She said she had tried to set the record straight.

As far as she was concerned, her son was a hero just for surviving the fire and the months of surgery.

That night we broadcast the true story of Joey in conjunction with the report on his award for bravery. Interestingly, the bravery citation did not mention the life-saving, only the young boy’s heroism in overcoming the severity of his burns. The award was presented by an Orillia cadet troop, of which Joey was a member.

We received a few phone calls from viewers criticizing our story.

Why did we spend so much time debating whether to broadcast this story? It now seems relatively straightforward; we had no choice but to tell the truth. But that’s too simplistic a view.

The belief that the public’s right to know outweighs the consequences of our reporting is one that should always be open for debate. We made the right decision. The process we went through to reach that decision was a healthy one, and would be for any newsroom.

When 3-year-old Brenda Lee Hart was brutally beaten to death in a poor Bridgeport neighborhood just before Christmas, not many people seemed to care.

The child had been given by her mother to a friend to keep. Police said Brenda Lee had lived in at least three other places before this last home, including an alleged crack house with her mother. Her father, relatives said, had been in prison. Her mother, from time to time, showed upon street corners.

An autopsy report told the horrible story of Brenda Lee’s short life and death. The child was the victim of systematic abuse that may have begun soon after birth. She had injuries over most of her body including internal damage to the brain and old, partially healed bone fractures.

Brenda Lee’s caretaker, Pearlie Alfrod, said she found the girl lying face down in the hallway of Alfrod’s apartrnent. She died a week later. Alfrod told police that the dog had pulled the child over once, causing her to hit her head, and that she had also fallen on concrete stairs.

One day after Christmas, a medical examiner ruled that the child’s death was a homicide. But it was May 4 before police disclosed the cause of death and started an investigation.

For several years, my newspaper, The Bridgeport Post, had been hammering editorially at the police department’s ineffectiveness and its seeming apathy toward crime against minorities. But the inaction on the Hart case, along with another incident, prompted Publisher Dudley Thomas to suggest an unprecedented front-page editorial lambasting the Bridgeport Police Department for its lack of leadership. The idea was unanimously endorsed by Post editors who felt it was a community newspaper’s responsibility to keep a poor child’s murder from being forgotten.

On May 17, our readers opened their newspapers to read, "The beating death of a 3-year-old child is not a routine matter. It’s not like an auto theft or burglary that goes unattended." The editorial said the Hart murder investigation had been "mired in confusion" and suggested that "if Bridgeport can’t run its police department effectively, the state should step in."

Leaders in the African-American community who had been outraged by the lack of action, were pleased with the newspaper’s prodding. "It seems to me the police dropped the ball on this. Where are their priorities? Ticketing cars?" asked State Representative Ernest Newton, whose district includes Brenda Lee’s last home.

And, as a matter of fact, immediately after the editorial, police stepped up their ticket writing on expired parking meters around The Bridgeport Post.

The next step for the Post was to ask the state to offer a reward in the case. But that request hit a dead end.

Weeks passed. "Progress is being made," police kept saying, but still there was no arrest. Thomas asked editors what they thought about the newspaper offering a $5000 reward for information that lead to an arrest and conviction in the case.

As city editor, I endorsed the idea without hesitation. Over the years, I had seen many examples of apathy in the city. But this case was inexcusable. If the reward would prod the police investigation along or help provide new clues, why not?

"Someone had to be an advocate for her and no one in the city seemed to want to. We saw it as our role," said Executive Editor Robert A. Laska. "If she were a child in one of the suburban communities, there would have been a public outcry."

On July 11, the Post announced the reward offer in a front-page story accompanied by a front-page editorial:

"Shame on the city of Bridgeport. It is time for action . . . It is time for public outrage about the inaction in the Brenda Lee Hart case, an inaction which is symbolic of what is wrong with Bridgeport.

" . . . Shame on the city of Bridgeport. More city residents turned out in recent years to protest a proposed Little League complex . . . than have voiced outrage about the rising number of homicides in Bridgeport and the death of this defenseless child."

Five days later, Pearlie Alfred, Brenda Lee’s unofficial custodian, was charged with manslaughter.

Some in the police hierarchy said the reward had nothing to do with the arrest. But Ted Meekins, president of the Bridgeport Guardians, a group representing minority police officers, disagreed. Meekins said the efforts of the newspaper along with those of the minority community, pushed the police department to fully investigate the case. "Had it not been for Bridgeport Post Publisher Dudley Thomas keeping this issue alive, I do not believe this would have been the case."

The Post’s reward offer was reported by other local media, although that wasn’t the paper’s intent. "We didn’t want the newspaper to become the story," Thomas said. "What is important is that the Post didn’t allow this story to slip through the cracks and was able to gather and marshal the indignation of the readership to get to the bottom of Brenda Lee Hart’s death."

Would the Post do the same thing again?

"It’s not something we’d look forward to doing again, but we wouldn’t rule it out," Thomas said.

"I would hope the situation would never arise again."

Sometimes my beat takes me to a surreal land of poverty and sagging rowhouses that anti-drug activists call Vietnam and patrol cops scornfully label Oz, "where the abnormal is normal."

So entrenched is the crack economy that dealers attacked an undercover police surveillance van this year in this struggling North Philadelphia neighborhood. So infamous is the neighborhood that out-of-town journalists frequently stop here for a glimpse of a drug war’s front line.

For these correspondents there is physical peril and ethical danger because the front line is a war without conventional rules.

In June, LIFE magazine published a haunting black-and-white portrait of North Philadelphia with photos of a gun-toting drug enforcer, a street littered with glittering vials, and a sleepy crack addict named Sarah Robinson.

Sarah eventually charged LIFE magazine a $150 "consultant’s" fee for services, a payment that LIFE magazine later defended as necessary protection money. But local ministers and residents seized on the issue, complaining the stark photos were staged and subjects were paid to pose. The journalists involved insisted that wasn’t so.

Late last year, the Detroit Free Press also encountered trouble while gathering information for its front-line project — "Twenty-four Hours: The Drug Menace."

A Pulitzer-prize winning photographer and a veteran reporter were suspended after editors learned that while on special assignment the photographer gave a drug addict money which enabled him to buy more crack.

"It really is tricky, isn’t it?" said Heath J. Meriwether, the Free Press executive editor. "We take our city government sources to lunch . . . These various kinds of things are all part of source development. But at what point with these drug people are we crossing some line? We define it when it facilitates the story — if you facilitate their ability to get drugs."

In the Detroit case, Free Press editors decided $23 was too high a price to pay a crack addict in trade for a sausage sandwich and a Sony Walkman radio.

In the Philadelphia case, LIFE magazine decided $150 was a reasonable price to pay for a crack addict’s street skills.

So who is right?

Most professional news organizations prohibit payment for interviews or photographs because of the theory that the credibility of the news could be tainted by the self-interest of a paid news source.

But at the same time, journalists routinely court news sources over lunch, dinner, or drink. The aim is to build trust and rapport, two goals that are not much different for a street reporter who is trying to earn the confidence of a crack user.

Since it’s not likely that a journalist can penetrate the drug subculture with a steak tartar business lunch, is it wrong to give money to a crack addict who says she needs Pampers for her toddler? Is it wrong to give a few dollars to an addict who pleads for milk for her child? Do you give the money even if you know it will most likely be used for drugs?

In cases such as these the guiding principle is simply honesty, according to Bob Steele, the director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute. "You have to ask good questions of yourself," he said. "Would I be comfortable in telling the public that I paid someone? Could you run a story on your own newspaper telling people what you did to get a story?"

Eventually, the Detroit Free Press did tell the story behind the story of Tim, a 26-year-old crack addict, and his friends "Tex" and "Dave." Meriwether wrote the story, which appeared on page 3 under the headlines: "A Bad Judgment on Drug Coverage Breaks a Bond of Trust."

In LIFE magazine’s case, the publisher said in an introductory note that their journalists had acquired a street guide for their photo essay on the "Children of the Damned."

It was a most formidable assignment, according to that note, which described how on bad days in "Fear City" veteran reporter Ed Barnes and photographer Eugene Richards sported bullet-proof vests. Barnes, the note said, followed a tough guy approach — "If someone pulls a gun on you, use it as an opportunity." So when a woman waved a gun at them one day, they quickly talked her into working for them.

That woman was Sarah Robinson, a crack addict who appears in three of the photos in the LIFE essay. The note does not identify the guide as Sarah or explain how the journalists were so persuasive.

Six months ago Richards and Barnes had encountered Sarah Robinson in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where she sells "skadoodles" — fake marijuana to support her drug habit. "I was running my big mouth off to them," recalled Robinson, who also readily concedes that she waved a gun at them in jest. "They didn’t offer me any money at first. They were asking lots of questions and then I said — ‘Hey, am I getting paid?’"

"We made an agreement," she said, describing how she was paid about $150 to make contacts, introductions, and to help arrange photos.

Richards, the photographer, insisted that Robinson was paid for her street skills and not her photographs. "You don’t buy pictures," he said. "You don’t set up photos."

In fact, he said that he didn’t start to photograph Robinson until after she had stopped working for them and it was clear that her drug problem was deepening.

"The main thing was for Sarah to keep talking to people and let them know we’re reporters, not cops," he said. "That was her function."

"I was up there for six weeks. I saw bodies, I saw overdoses, I saw two people die. I don’t know how many cracked up kids I saw. The problem is there," Richards said.

It’s not unusual journalistic practice to pay for a guide, but it is rare to make the hired guide a photo subject, according to a number of experts on journalistic ethics.

"It’s almost like an illustration. You’re paying somebody to be a consultant and you’re paying someone to be a model. So what else are they not telling? You want to assume they’re not telling people where to stand, where to pose. But are they?" said Paul Lester, author of The Ethics of Photojournalism, a textbook that will be published in the fall.

But isn’t it just common sense to pay someone if a photographer or reporter literally fears a physical threat? The rules of the street are not nice and clean, as photographer Richards pointed out.

"The problem with some stories is that the photographer and reporters really do fear for their lives. They’re giving the money out because they thought they might get beaten up and lose their money anyway," said Lester.

That is the same argument LIFE made in defense of payments to its guide.

"This is not Disneyland; this is a very dangerous place," said LIFE spokesman Robert Pondiscio, who added that the journalists also paid to enter crack houses.

Meriwether, the Free Press editor, said journalists have to rely on common sense in dangerous situations, but they should be willing to tell their editors what happened.

That didn’t happen when his reporters first returned from a long night of trailing a trio of crack users.

As Meriwether describes it, two of the newspaper’s journalists — photographer Manny Crisostomo and reporter Pat Chargot — managed to get close enough to a crack cocaine addict named Tim to observe his frantic quest for drugs.

The problem was they got too close for the paper’s comfort. When the journalist made their first contact with Tim in a bar, Crisostomo paid $3 for a sausage to Tim, who intended to spend the money on drugs.

On the night of the 24-hour watch, Crisostomo and Chargot drove Tim and his friends on their search for drugs. When the drug users exhausted their own resources, they turned in desperation to the journalists and asked them "repeatedly" to buy a Sony Walkman radio for $20.

"The photographer said these guys were as jumpy as heck. It was an odd time on dark streets and he’s got jumpy guys who are smoking crack and who want more," said Meriwether.

Crisotomo later said that safety was the primary reason he bought the radio. But with the instant 24-hour format of the drug story, the journalists were also under tremendous pressure to come up with a crack addict during a fleeting amount of time. The following day shaggy-haired Dave appeared on the front page of the Free Press, delicately smoking crack.

The text even noted their efforts to raise money: "After making at least six runs to three different places to score, Tim has 45 cents. He begs a reporter and photographer for money, which he doesn’t get."

A few weeks later the real facts were revealed to editors by Chargot who was troubled by what happened. Chargot was suspended without pay for two days and Crisotomo for three.

"I still believe that there’s a great truth in what we reported," said Meriwether. "I think we got closer to what’s really going on, but we violated our standard to get there. It’s certainly tainted."

"We don’t pay for news," he said. "Indirectly, you’re paying for news by buying a radio when they want to buy crack. You’re buying the situation."

Not long ago I was assigned a story in a North Philadelphia neighborhood that anti-drug activists consider the city’s most troubled drug territory. I walked through a ragged, Quaker burial ground where junkies rested on marble tombstones and spent syringes marked the simple graves. A burly photographer accompanied me, but there were six men gathered in a camp circle among the headstones.

If my only defense were money, I realize now that I would have given it readily. I value my life too much to die for the front page and the comics.

But I didn’t feel the same fear when I found Sarah Robinson on a hot afternoon. She cheerfully offered to sell me some skadoodles, which were old tobacco leaves packaged in plastic.

Twice she ran away from me after I questioned her about the LIFE photos. The third time we talked, and it was clear she enjoyed the attention, boasting about her role as street guide.

Later I was surprised when a LIFE magazine spokesman asked me about my interview with Robinson. He asked if I had paid her too.

I used to think the answer was obvious.

Mark Goodwin’s memorandum for the Republican National Committee, with its insinuations of sexual along with political deviancy on the part of House Speaker Tom Foley, was a great boon to the news media. It brought innuendo out of the closet. It enabled the press to rise up in indignation over the war of rumors, blurring its own role in the guerrilla warfare that had preceded the memorandum.

The whispers about Foley were said to have started with supporters of Speaker Jim Wright, trying to save his foundering cause. Then they were taken up by Republicans, trying to parlay the Wright controversy into a clean sweep of the House Democratic leadership.

So it was that an unidentified aide to Republican Whip Newt Gingrich was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying, "We hear it’s little boys." So it was that The New Republic, relaying rumors about a "clean sweep," said they were supported by rumors of "sexual misconduct" on the part of Foley and Democratic Whip Tony Coelho. When [on] the weekend before the announcement of the Wright resignation, a TV anchorman asked a Capitol Hill correspondent whether Foley had a "problem," then one knew that a problem had been created for Foley.

In China today truth is called rumor. In America, rumor is elevated to truth.

Suzanne Garment, who is working on a book about scandals in government, wrote in the The New York Times that ethical attacks have become a part of the standard armory of political warfare and that, correspondingly, the corruption story has become a part of the standard repertory of journalists.

That, however, does not mean that the press, in its competitive ardor for the next scandal, must become the tool of the manipulator. The question is not so much one of professional ethics as professional standards. It is true, and perhaps unavoidable, that private lives become public events in the age of Gary Hart and John Tower. We will do, and perhaps overdo, stories involving personal scandal. But one can ask that, at least, they be stories and not simply planted innuendoes, leers and whispers without substance.

It was understandable that, in the wake of the Wright controversy and the sudden resignation of Coelho, the press was in avid search of new names. But red flags should have gone up at CBS News when it was informed that Rep. Bill Gray had been interviewed by FBI agents, said to be "involved" in an investigation of an unspecific subject. It really was not much of a story without knowing what was being investigated and whether Gray was a target. (He wasn’t.)

Rita Braver, CBS’ able and energetic law correspondent, told me that her story was acquired by assiduous effort and was not a simple leak. I have no trouble accepting that. (She also told me, flatteringly, that she was only following my own investigative footsteps.) But I still think that the vague echo of a "preliminary investigation" was not a real story, that the existing situation should have dictated caution and that a more interesting story might be the one a reporter cannot tell – who broke the rules of confidentiality designed to protect citizens’ rights?

The political war of rumor and innuendo is likely to go on, and the press is likely to go on covering and profiting from it. All one can hope is that the press will resist being enlisted as foot soldiers in that slimy war.

It was Monday morning and City Editor Ralph Patrick was already yelling: "You go, and you, and you, and you!"

Word had just hit the newsroom of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Cuban detainees were rioting at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, setting fires and holding hostages.

Eleven days would pass before the 1400 Cubans surrendered, 11 days before each of the hostages would walk out alive from America’s longest prison riot.

My colleagues and I spent most of the 11 days outside the prison fence, waiting for prison officials to tell us next to nothing. But part of the time, we were inside the prison fence with family members of the hostages. Only they didn’t know that we were reporters.

At the prison and back in the newsroom, we loudly debated the ethics of fence jumping. Some of the staff thought what we were doing was an enterprising public service, and some thought that it was dangerous or invasive or deceptive.

When the first reporters began arriving at the prison, we found a noisy confusion of SWAT teams, helicopters and fire trucks. We could see smoke rising from the back of the prison. But from the road outside the fence, we couldn’t see much else. Officials wouldn’t tell us anything.

The maximum-security area of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary (former home of Al Capone) is enclosed by a high fortress wall. Inside that wall, the Cubans — angered by a U.S. plan to send back those who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift — were torching building after building. Outside the wall, on the prison grounds, officials controlled the office buildings, staff housing and a minimum-security camp. Around the grounds is a low fence.

Leaving my colleagues in front, I walked around to get a better view of the burning prison. A driveway led through the fence. A "No Trespassing" sign marked the grounds as U.S. Government property.

Walking down the driveway and behind the staff houses, I saw several prisoners on a hillside in the minimum-security camp. We stood together for half an hour, watching heavily-armed FBI agents escort out 50 captured Cubans.

After the prisoners were called inside, I was quickly spotted by a prison employee. He asked who I was, I told him I was a reporter for The Journal-Constitution, and he gruffly drove me to the driveway gate which was now guarded.

Outside, the growing mass of reporters scrambled for information. We listened to negotiations between the Cubans and the FBI on police radios. We interviewed anguished families on all sides.

As the wait stretched into its second day, prison officials still wouldn’t say how many hostages were held, their names, or the number of dead or injured.

We hoped to gain some of this information from hostage relatives, who were arriving for briefings. We weren’t having much luck flagging down families as they drove through the gate. Another reporter suggested I go back into the prison briefing building. I didn’t call the desk to ask for permission. It was a seat-of-the-pants sort of evening.

At the far corner of the grounds, out of sight of any guards, I climbed over the chest-high fence. From there, I could walk down the driveway to the family building unquestioned; anyone would think I was a family member walking from the staff houses. I was dressed in shirt and tie with no press ID.

No one was guarding the door. Inside the split-level building, I found family members watching television and waiting for news.

On a wall in the hallway was posted a sheet with 99 signatures; the Cubans had passed around a sheet for the hostages to sign to prove they were all alive. I didn’t see how I could take out my notebeok to write down names, so I went into the conference room, where prison officials were giving a briefing. I spoke with no family members or staff.

I saw that each prison employee carried a typewritten list of hostages. One of the employees, the chaplain, went into a side office, and I followed him. We were about to chat — I intended to express my fears about the fate of the hostages — when he was called away, leaving his list. I tucked it into my back pocket and walked upstairs. I locked myself in an office and called the city desk.

The list was a dream. It had the names and also the emergency phone number and contact person for each hostage, which I dictated to a clerk. The only problem the list showed 100 names, not 99.

I needed to compare the list with the signature sheet to see who hadn’t signed. Back downstairs, I studied the sheet, remembered three or four names, strolled to a back office to check them off on the list. I repeated the tedious process dozens of times.

"What are you doing?" A prison official was standing over me in the back office staring at the list.

Nothing better came to mind, so I told him I was checking to see who hadn’t signed, because there were only 99 signatures and I was afraid somebody was dead.

"You’ll have to give me that list," he said.

"No, I can’t give it to you until you satisfy my mind on this: Who didn’t sign?"

I presume that he presumed I was a family member, if an impertinent one, so he tried to be helpful.

"Which hostage member are you interested in?" he asked.

That was almost the right question. If he had asked, "Which hostage member are you related to?" Well, to tell the God’s honest truth, I might have said, "Joe Bailey," which was a name on the list.

But he asked who I was interested in. So I said, "Joe Bailey."

Pleased to be of service, he led me back to the sheet on the wall and together we hunted for the missing signature. He even fetched an updated version of the list. We determined that one hostage hadn’t signed but seemed to be safe.

I thanked him, gave him back the list, and left the house.

The next morning, we published the list. We then used the phone numbers to gather information for a special section containing profiles of most of the hostages. (We were unable to obtain a list of the Cuban detainees; government officials, who had argued that the Cubans had no citizenship rights, denied our request, "to protect the Cubans’ right to privacy.")

Over the next week and a half, several reporters from The Journal-Constitution went back over the fence. The main benefit was access to the hourly family briefings, which gave us somewhat more information than prison officials were spooning out in regular press feedings.

These later visits were approved by senior editors, who set some ground rules: If you’re asked directly who you are, say you are a reporter, but you don’t have to volunteer it. Don’t engage any family members in conversation; we’ll do our interviewing outside the prison.

Even with the precautions, the debate in the newsroom was heated.

So, was this deception justified?

I, for one, believed it was important to make public information public. Finding out the names and conditions of the hostages was part of our obligation, especially as the local newspaper. It’s one thing to tell Atlanta readers that 100 Atlantans are being held hostage, and another to tell them which 100 and whether they are safe.

Or to put it another way: It seemed more ethical, more in line with our duties, to go over the fence, if we did it carefully and with respect for what we found, than to sit across the street eating Salvation Army sandwiches, waiting for the morning briefing.

The supervisor in the drug clinic handed me a small plastic cup and led me to the bathroom with three other men. My mission: fill the cup with urine, so a city lab could test it to determine if I was using drugs.

But unlike the other clients at the clinic, I was not on probation or parole. I was a reporter on assignment. And I had something hidden in my underwear – a small hand lotion tube filled with apple juice. Standing at a toilet, I surreptitiously filled the plastic cup with the juice. The lab tested it as urine and reported that it was drug-free.

That’s one of the methods I used to expose flaws in Washington’s system for detecting drug use among people on probation and parole. I went into the clinic posing as a client and came out with a story that forced changes in how urine samples are collected.

The story also raised questions about ethics because I misrepresented myself to get it. Is it ethical to pretend to be someone other than a reporter in order to get the truth?

Going undercover is indeed an extreme tactic to be used only in exceptional circumstances. But sometimes it’s the best and only way to find the truth. This was the first time for me, and it may be the last.

The clinic I investigated tests 170 probationers and parolees each day, so that judges can see if they are adhering to conditions of their freedom. But last spring a probation officer complained to me that the tests weren’t legitimate. He had heard that workers at the clinic didn’t ask for identification from clients, which allowed the clients to send friends to take the tests for them. He had heard that supervisors didn’t watch carefully when the clients were supposed to urinate into the cups; some men purportedly filled the cups with clean urine or other liquids hidden in their pants.

I talked to probation officers, judges, and people in the city drug agency. They either said the testing system was airtight or had heard rumors about cheating. No one really knew how secure the system was. I set out to interview people on probation, but realized that wouldn’t be good enough. I might get a few tales about how clients allegedly cheat on urine tests, but I could not document the extent of the problem or be sure the tales were true. We needed to find out definitively how easy it was to fool the testing system.

The best way, I decided, was to test the system myself. I took the idea to the metro editor and assistant metro editor of The Washington Times, who agreed that the only way to verify complaints about lax procedures at the clinic was to take the tests. I was not to offer bribes to clinic workers or try talking them into letting me cheat.

They did not expect me to get away with my efforts to fool the system. My metro editor bet me dinner that I could not hand in apple juice as a urine sample.

A source got me several copies of the forms that the courts use to refer people for the tests; these served as tickets into the clinic. Another reporter and I completed the forms with fictitious names and case numbers, then visited the clinic a total of five times in one month this summer.

On each of our first visits, we followed orders and urinated into the cups. No one asked for identification to prove that we were the persons whose names were on the forms. On each of the next three visits, I went in with the hand lotion tube in my pants. Once it was filled with urine from home, once with apple juice, and once with urine I had bought from a man in the bathroom of a nearby McDonald’s. With a clinic supervisor standing a few feet away, I would stand at a toilet or urinal, slip the tube out through my fly and squeeze the liquid into the cup.

Officials at the city drug agency and probation division were shocked when I told them how I had circumvented the tests. One official said my study was unethical because I had falsified government documents (the court forms) and lied to clinic workers by posing as someone on probation.

That, I said, was the only way to get an accurate story. Yes, I could have gathered quotes from clients (who would want to remain anonymous) about how they cheat on the tests, then called officials for quotes about how the system guards against cheats. The resulting story would have left me and the readers with little idea of what the truth was.

Misrepresentation can indeed hurt our credibility. But in this case the undercover work, which was explained in the article, bolstered the story’s credibility. Readers realized that I knew firsthand what I was writing about.

The city public health commissioner thanked me for the story, saying it uncovered problems that otherwise would have gone undetected.

Now clients are asked for ID at the clinic. Procedures were changed so that supervisors actually see clients fill the cups. Mirrors were installed in the bathroom to make cheating more difficult.

So readers got the truth and serious problems in a taxpayer-funded program were corrected. That’s a lot better than doing nothing.

It seems unbelievable. The cops walked into Jeffrey Dahmer’s foul-smelling apartment, returned a bloodied victim to the now-confessed serial killer and left telling homophobic, racist jokes.

But months earlier, far from Milwaukee, an equally fantastic story was unfolding in Atlanta. Gay hustlers said a sadist they called the Handcuff Man was drugging, handcuffing, beating and sometimes burning male prostitutes, or men he thought were prostitutes. They told me dumped victims were turning up in Tampa and Atlanta, unconscious and maimed. And he’d been doing it, they insisted — virtually unhindered by police — for more than 20 years.

The grisly discoveries in Milwaukee forced police to act. In Atlanta, however, gay activists believe police would have continued ignoring the Handcuff Man had the Journal-Constitution not pressured them into acting.

After heated newsroom debate, we decided to profile the Handcuff Man’s alleged activities. And then we broke with tradition by naming the person we suspected in print — before he was even arrested.

Police officers admitted privately later it was our stories identifying a wealthy local attorney named Robert Lee Bennett, Jr. that led to his indictment.

Ironically, my first attempt at doing a story on the Handcuff Man had been rejected. A 21-year-old was found unconscious, burned and beaten after he accepted money from a stranger for drinking vodka apparently laced with drugs. I wrote a story on the attack, but couldn’t yet make a connection between this crime and the two decades of similar assaults.

Eight days later, a call from a source paved the way for me to interview gay hustlers who talked fearfully about a shadowy figure they called the Handcuff Man. A bartender recalled seeing him and hearing about his attacks as far back as 1968. And my informants were convinced this latest crime was his doing.

It seemed preposterous that anything of this enormity could have gone on for so long. But detectives told me during a late-night, mostly off-the-record, conversation that the Handcuff Man was apparently very real and they had no idea why there wasn’t an active investigation.

I still didn’t have enough for a story. But the next day brought a tip about an Atlanta cop who had a run-in with the Handcuff Man while moonlighting as a security guard at a gay bar in 1983. When the officer gave me the man’s name and date of birth, I had my story.

The result: a page-one piece detailing the Handcuff Man’s activities and stating that at least one police officer knew about him and had attempted to gather evidence years earlier.

But the story didn’t run without lengthy, incredulous discussions of what seemed to be an outrageous case of homophobia, of police simply ignoring attacks on gays. We considered actually naming our suspect at that point, but decided not to. In fact, we deleted some personal information, fearing it might identify him.

Why? Because we had no official documents linking Bennett with the Handcuff Man or with the latest attacker. Maybe they weren’t all the same person. Nonetheless, a vital question was beginning to form: When does a newspaper’s responsibility to public safety outweigh a private individual’s right to privacy and the standard practice of withholding the names of suspects who haven’t been charged?

While we agonized about our duty, the police held a news conference defending themselves and promising a full investigation. Meanwhile, I combed court records on Bennett. They were strewn with tantalizing but unsubstantiated references. He’d been arrested for allegedly kidnapping an undercover Atlanta cop in 1974. His wife, her attorney and several gays had accused him of being the Handcuff Man during his 1984 divorce trial.

Again, newsroom staffers debated naming Bennett. Again, we held off. I spent another day searching records in a 1982 murder case in which Bennett was charged but not convicted. This time, I hit the jackpot. State archives contained more than 400 pages of documents providing solid links between Bennett and the sadistic acts of the Handcuff Man.

Now did we have enough to justify naming him? No. Editors wanted a current link. We got it when the most recent victim chose Bennett’s picture from a photo lineup. Now, except for a formal criminal charge, there was nothing to prevent telling the public the name of the likely suspect — nothing except journalistic tradition.

The next day, the Journal-Constitution defied that tradition by prominently playing a story naming and profiling Bennett. He had not yet been charged and no other news media had used his name.

Did we do the right thing? I still wasn’t absolutely sure. The initial identification had come from the streets, not police work. Unlike, say, William Kennedy Smith, Bennett’s name was meaningless to most Atlantans and his right to privacy as great as any other little-known person’s.

Some editors shared my hindsight doubts, asking repeatedly: "Why are we doing this?" One angrily remarked that he hoped he was never an uncharged suspect in Atlanta. But others, including metro editor Pam Fine, saw this as an exception to the rule and a matter of practicalities and responsibilities.

"The court records were the first public documents we saw that linked Bennett to the Handcuff Man," Fine reasoned. "They confirmed that his name had been linked to cases many years before." Also, public safety was at issue, as gay hustlers continued reporting sightings of a car associated with the Handcuff Man.

"If we got his name out," Fine added, we would be telling the police and the public we know who the suspect is. We felt . . . heinous crimes were involved and we decided to name him because we [knew who he was] and we recognized that police had waited two decades to actively pursue the case."

In retrospect, I have no doubts. Considering the information we had by the time we printed Bennett’s name, our natural fears should have been allayed. Our prime concern should have been prodding the police to enhance the safety of the young men who were at risk. (Thankfully, there were no attacks between the time I discovered the story and Bennett’s arrest.)

As it was, within a day, the publicity prompted Tampa police to request information from Atlanta that led to charging Bennett with the attempted murder of a Florida man burned so severely he lost both legs. Atlanta police followed with grand jury indictments two weeks later. The first trial starts next month.

But there are still questions I and many at my paper are asking ourselves: While pointing a finger at police for possible neglect, what about us? How did we miss the story for so long?

Maybe reporters actually knew about the Handcuff Man while his victims piled up, as happened in Milwaukee. But turnover and poor communication at newspapers — just like at police departments — deplete collective knowledge.

The toughest question of all: Were we homophobic ourselves? After all, the editor who first rejected the story had callously quipped, "I guess you have to be careful who you drink with."

The questions linger. But the Handcuff Man’s gruesome story taught me something. Reporters must cultivate all sorts of unofficial sources, not just to get information, but to reinforce the understanding that every person — even if he’s "only" a gay hustler — is still a member of the public we serve.

Infiltrate Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and in the process, expose its security weaknesses. Using an assumed name, I would apply for a job as a plant guard.

The objective seemed a little far-fetched to a rookie reporter for a weekly newspaper. We were sure the bogus information on my employment application would trip all sorts of alarms as soon as it was checked. And there was always my own ineptness to help things along: The first day at the plant, I blew my cover at the front gate.

I forgot to lie.

"Name?" said the guard.

"Robert Kapler."

He scanned the stack of names on his clipboard.

"Hmmm. Doesn’t…seem like it’s here. How do you spell it?"

Pause.

"B-E-Y-E-R. Beyer."

"Beyer? I thought you said, ah…"

"No, Beyer. Robert Beyer."

Before I knew it, the gate was lifting and I was driving down a winding road past yards of rusting equipment and concrete pipe. At last I rounded a stand of trees and the giant cooling towers came into view.

In three weeks I would be in uniform, clicking a tiny camera inside the control room of the Unit 2 reactor.

The idea to pose as a site protection officer grew out of a meeting with two former guards who had been "railroaded" out of their jobs. They described sexual antics on "patrol", civilians wandering around the plant grounds late at night, and a metal-detection system so ineffective it couldn’t detect a big cow bell. Gregg Security, which was under contract with TMI owner Metropolitan Edison, never checked out new hires, they said.

The story was good, but Richard Halverson, my editor at The Guide, said it would read like the rantings of two frustrated nobodies with an ax to grind. And how could they be sure no one was checked out? How could they be privy to that information?

"I was thinking," Halverson said at last, "about you going undercover out there."

From the start, we had our reservations. Lying about my identity would not only be illegal, it would run contrary to the code of our trade. Investigative reporters do not break laws, they expose lawbreakers. And using subterfuge to gain access to a government-regulated facility might land me in jail for trespassing or fraud, or even a trumped-up charge of espionage.

Supposing we did pull it off: what would stop Met-Ed from getting the story quashed in court? The Guide was just an ad rag wrapped in a single page of investigative stories. And though its publisher, Fry Communications, seemed healthy enough, would Henry Fry want to hire legal guns to defend me?

On the other hand, we reasoned, if there were weak links in the plant’s chain of security, a saboteur would do what was necessary to find and break them. Besides, our chance of success was so thin those questions were probably moot.

In the end, the importance of the story outweighed any ethical or legal issues. We decided to give it a try.

And so after blundering into the plant, I spent the next two weeks taking a battery of tests and learning the various security procedures. Before I knew it, I was wearing a badge, helmet, uniform and radiation sensor and monitoring the contract workers coming and going from crippled Unit 2. When I could, I explored the plant.

Our little experiment continued without a hitch. Then something happened that I hadn’t foreseen. In spite of myself, I began to identify with the other guards.

The double life really bothered me. One moment I was joking, laughing and trading gossip with my co-workers, the next I was scribbling notes in a bathroom stall. I decided a line had to be drawn, and I drew it around Three Mile Island. If a guard asked me to go for a beer after work, I declined. If I was invited to a party, I didn’t show.

My reluctance to become intimate with my fellow workers did not sit well with Halverson. Once we had moled in, he wanted to exploit all possibilities.

More and more, we argued over when to terminate the project, "That’s it!" I finally yelled. "I’m sick of lying to people!" Halverson relented, and a month after I first drove onto the island I went to see Met-Ed’s head of security and told him what we had done.

Nearly a decade has passed. Our little experiment has become but a footnote in history. Sometimes I still wonder:

Was it right?

We had suspended a rule of ethics – a reporter must not misrepresent himself – because we thought the issue of nuclear plant safety was crucial enough to make an exception. We also thought we would fail. We did not.

Was it right?

The answer came the day I drove onto Three Mile Island. Using a simple lie, we had proved nuclear plant security – national security – could easily be breached.

Yes, it was right.

There I stood in the desert south of Phoenix staring at a teepee glowing orange from a fire inside, wondering what to do.

Inside, a dozen or so Indians were about to ingest peyote — a hallucinogenic drug as part of a religious ritual. And I, as religion reporter for The Phoenix Gazette, faced an ultimatum by the Indians: Either come inside, partake of the "medicine" and learn about their religious traditions — or leave.

I chose to come inside — but not without some soul-searching on the ethics of what I was doing.

There were both personal and professional reasons for wanting to participate. On a personal level, I wanted to learn more about my own Yaqui Indian roots, which had not been discussed much when I was growing up.

On a professional level, I wanted to understand why Indians were so upset with a U.S. Supreme Court decision a week earlier, on April 17, regarding sacramental peyote. The court ruled 6-3 that two Indian drug-rehabilitation counselors in Oregon fired for using peyote in religious rituals were not entitled to unemployment benefits.

The Indians complained that the justices failed to understand the sacramental nature of peyote. In arguments before the Supreme Court, attorneys for the Indians said peyote carries about the same significance as sacramental wine at a Roman Catholic Mass. Roman Catholics believe in transubstantiation, in which the wine turns into the blood of Christ and bread wafers become his body. The Indians say the peyote becomes a spirit, a grandfatherly figure, that helps them return to a positive road of life. Many use it to overcome drug and alcohol addictions.

"The only way to understand it is to do it," Nelson Fernandez, a "Road Man," a shaman who conducts Indian rituals involving peyote, told me in an interview following the court’s decision.

Even though I had been told that observing a ceremony was forbidden before I drove to the reservation, I thought I might be able to change their minds. It was my intention to watch the ceremony, talk to the Indians about their feelings and document how the peyote affected the Indians physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I had discussed this with an editor, and gotten permission to sit in on a ceremony where peyote was in use. I had not discussed taking part.

When the Indians couldn’t be persuaded, I called my boss, metro editor Dave Wagner, for advice. He said the paper, for a multitude of ethical, legal and technical reasons could not use a story I was a part of.

If I participated, I believed I would not be breaking any laws, since Arizona permits using peyote in Indian services. But I wondered out loud to Wagner whether I’d violate company anti-drug policies. Neither Wagner nor I were sure.

I took a big chance. I participated in the ceremony for personal reasons — without my editor’s consent and without knowing if a story would ever come from it.

Two days after the all-night ceremony, after the powerful emotional effects of peyote had worn off, I began to write a first-person story. I submitted the story at the end of the week not knowing how editors would react.

They reacted cautiously. It took five months of internal discussions but the final decision by managing editor Pam Johnson, made after talking with the publisher and a company attorney, was to publish the story.

Johnson said her main concern was the paper’s credibility. Would my participation in a peyote ceremony become the story, rather than the ceremony itself?

To try to keep that from happening, several steps were taken: The story was held until the next news peg made it relevant to readers. It played below the fold on page one, rather than on the religion page. An editor’s note explained my personal interest in the subject.

Johnson said it is doubtful whether she would approve another participatory story. ". . . Were it not for Ben’s heritage, his recent personal quest to understand it and an overwhelming sincerity and respect exhibited in his article, his account never would have been published. There were rare aspects that came together in this one situation," Johnson said.

Reaction from the journalism community has been predictable. A local debate ensued over the ethics of participatory journalism.

The basic questions: Can a reporter who takes part in a news story remain objective? Is the reporter altering the outcome of the news by becoming a participant? Will readers trust the reporter and will the publication’s credibility suffer? They’re not easy questions to answer.

My credibility among my news sources has not suffered. In fact, mainline religious leaders in the Phoenix area have praised the story, as providing valuable insight into Indian religions.

The office of U.S. Representative Stephen Solarz, D-New York, requested a copy of the story, which was published shortly after Solarz introduced a bill to restore religious freedoms stripped by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

I can say that I believe it is possible to remain objective if the basic reason for getting involved is a sincere desire to learn. In almost every case, I would say it is unethical to participate in a news story. But there are real exceptions. This was one of those. Then and now, I believe that taking part in the peyote ceremony resulted in a valuable story to our readers.

As a matter of principle, I disobeyed the order of a federal District Court judge.

By that act of disobedience I said, in effect, that journalists are different, that we are not bound by the same rules as other people, that we have a higher duty – to our readers and to the U.S. Constitution.

By that act I put at risk my professional reputation and the reputation of the Providence Journal-Bulletin, a 160-year-old newspaper with a law-and-order editorial stance.

Those who practice civil disobedience – even journalists – must be willing to accept the consequences of their acts. Although I had no desire to go to jail to stand up for my beliefs, I was ready to do so.

But as the editor of an establishment newspaper, had I put myself "above the law," as the judge asked me on the witness stand?

The case was a mix of legal and ethical problems. Let me tell you what happened, and how I answered the judge’s question.

In 1962, the FBI, without a warrant, broke into the Providence office of Raymond L.S. Patriarca, godfather of the New England mob, and planted a listening device. For three years, the FBI monitored everything said in that office.

In 1985, after Patriarca’s death, we used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain summaries of the bugged conversations.

Patriarca’s son, known as "Junior," asked the U.S. District Court to restrain us from publishing them, on privacy grounds because of their illegal origin.

Although nothing in the summaries linked Junior with criminal activities, they were full of embarrassing anecdotal material, such as the time his father put pressure on the governor to keep Junior from flunking out of the University of Rhode Island.

Judge Francis J. Boyle of Providence issued a gag order and set a hearing for two days later. Press time was only hours away. We had to decide whether to defy the judge and publish.

We knew we were right, constitutionally, and the judge’s order would be lifted or overturned. So what was the harm in waiting for the hearing two days later?

Timeliness was a crucial issue – not because of the 20-year-old material in the story, but because allowing a court to interfere with time of publication would be abdicating our responsibility. If we did not stand on principle, our failure could come back to haunt us in the future, in a case where timeliness was essential. On the eve of an election, for example.

The publisher was concerned that our civil disobedience would be compared to that of Rhode Island schoolteachers, whom we had castigated editorially for striking in violation of state law. But the teachers had put personal gain ahead of their legal duty; we felt we were being true to our duty to serve our readers and to uphold the Constitution.

Late in the evening, close to deadline, the publisher gave his OK. I went to press with the banned story on Page 1.

Judge Boyle reacted harshly to our disobedience. He found us guilty of contempt, fined the paper $100,000, and sentenced me to 18 months, suspended if I performed 200 hours of community service.

The convictions were reversed by the Court of Appeals. It found the gag order "transparently invalid," and said we were justified in ignoring it. Finally, in 1988, the Supreme Court heard the judge’s appeal, and threw it out on procedural grounds. It had taken us two and a half years to be vindicated.

What had we accomplished?

We were proud that we had stood our ground on principle, and had not been deterred in our duty to publish. And we had made the legal point that judges may not abuse their power to restrain the press. Unfortunately, editors outside the 1st Circuit will have to make their own decisions on whether to risk punishment for principle.

But even in the newspaper industry, we did not receive unanimous approval. Anthony Lewis commented in The New York Times, "If it became the practice to ignore court orders in the belief that they will later be found invalid, the system would not work."

And that may have been what Judge Boyle had in mind when he asked me, as I sat on the witness stand in his court: "When you violated my order, weren’t you putting yourself above the law?"

"No sir," I responded. "I felt that I was obeying the highest law of the land – the U.S. Constitution."

"Blood Sport," Denver TV station KCNC’s special four-part report on illegal pit-bull fighting, seemed tailor-made for the spring ratings sweeps.

A grand jury has determined that it was.

On September 21, former KCNC reporter Wendy Bergen was indicted for allegedly paying to stage an illegal pit-bull fight which was videotaped for her series, and then lying about it to a grand jury. Bergen faces up to 32 years in prison if convicted of all charges, which include two counts of first-degree perjury.

The jury also indicted Channel 4 photographers Jim Stair and Scott Wright for their involvement in the dogfight and attempted cover-up. All three staffers have resigned at the request of the station.

KCNC news director Marv Rockford was issued a reprimand for not adequately supervising his staff. No station managers were indicted; NBC, which owns and operates the station has reopened an internal investigation.

Rockford said he had given the OK for Bergen to begin work on the series after she told him she had a source who could get her in to see a dogfight. According to the indictments, Bergen paid that story source what amounted to $250 to get information and make arrangements for a fight. Later, in exchange for immunity, this same source wore a wireless microphone and secretly recorded a conversation with Bergen for the prosecution.

There are other bizarre twists to the story: When Bergen discovered the tape shot at the dogfight had audio problems, she allegedly had her source repeat comments about fictitious betting that were staged for her story — after coaching him on what words to use and even voice inflection. Bergen and Stair also supposedly used a Channel 4 vehicle to transport a pit-bull to Stair’s home to get video of the animal training on a treadmill.

While Bergen was working on the series which was originally planned for the November sweeps, she apparently learned that even attending a dogfight is a felony in Colorado, punishable by a $100,000 fine and four years in prison.

Bergen had gone to the district attorney and told him she had pictures of a pit-bull fight. He advised her not to air the tape. Because of the legal problems, station management then shelved the series.

In a memo to Rockford, Bergen wrote, "I have every intention of getting ‘fighting pits’ back on track for May . . . One day I am going to get an anonymous 1/2-inch tape in the mail of a fight. As we say in the biz, I believe it will be a ratings success!!"

Sure enough, a tape appeared. Apparently, no red flags were seen by management and the series ran in May.

Immediately, rumors started circulating; an anonymous caller tipped the Rocky Mountain News that the series had been staged by Channel 4.

Rockford, at this time, dismissed the allegations as "absolutely not true." He said the feotage was shot by amateurs and mailed anonymously to the station. According to the indictments, this is the story Bergen and the photographers agreed to tell. They also allegedly copied the tape several times to reduce the quality of the original and doctored it to make it look more amateurish.

The case was turned over to the Jefferson County grand jury at the end of May and Bergen was placed on paid leave of absence. NBC launched an investigation, flying in corporate lawyers from Chicago.

Weeks later, Channel 4 admitted that Bergen and a KCNC camera crew had been present at a pit-bull fight last September. The station did not make clear whether the videotape shot by its staff was the tape aired in the Bergen series.

Throughout the summer, KCNC staffers were called to testify before the grand jury. Bergen, Stair and Wright stuck to their story until September 13, a week before the indictments were returned, when they learned they might be charged with perjury. The court records show that the photographers then changed their testimony and said they had fabricated the story about the tape being mailed anonymously. Bergen, the same day, repeated the original version of how they got the tape. She was indicted for perjury for lying to the grand jury on three different occasions. Stair and Wright were charged with a lesser crime, conspiracy to commit perjury.

After the indictments, Rockford said, "A great deal of trust is inherent in the editorial process. I accepted at face value Wendy’s explanation. Clearly, I shouldn’t have." He said what happened to KCNC could happen to any news organization if the reporter is determined to deceive.

"These are all basically good people," Rockford said. "It’s a tragedy for everybody . . . So many people have lost so much. Why (this happened) is a question I don’t think I’ll ever know."

Should food writers be treated differently than other journalists?

"Oh, please!" some colleagues will say with disgust. "Don’t even call them ‘journalists.’ They’re industry flacks and home ec hacks hired to justify food store ads and restaurant revenues."

Unfortunately, there are some in my profession who deserve that reputation. For them, life is a banquet sans cover charge.

Not that every feature reporter must pursue his or her topic with the blazing social conscience of Charles Dickens. But it would be nice if more food reporters would cover a story where no snack is involved. Plenty of us do. But at times, some of us seem less reporters than beat cops at the grand opening of a donut shop.

Heaven knows, the temptations are many and delectable. If every freebie offered me were laid end-to-end, I’d be endlessly traveling to exotic ports, own a wine cellar to rival a Rothchild’s, possess every culinary gadget that hits the market and dine well (if not fabulously) virtually seven nights a week.

Anyone who knows how to play the angles can get in on one car or another of the gravy train open to those who carry a culinary byline. And believe me, there’s a boxcar of "opportunities."

Among the recent pickings: An all-expenses-paid trip to Antigua courtesy of a New York-based PR firm where the chosen food writers would "judge" the area’s cuisine. Or the International Food Media conference where, for a token fee, the media could dine for 3 days in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the nation’s priciest metropolitan areas, while corporate spokespersons fed them the party line. Or the American Lamb Council’s "editors only" recipe contest where the winner in a very narrow field is awarded a full-ride prize to a grand luxe destination.

If we want other journalists to take us seriously, we have to earn respect. A good place to begin is realizing the high cost of the free lunch. As the ethics code of the Newspaper Food Editors and Writers Association says :"Gifts, favors, free travel or lodging, special treatment or privileges can compromise the integrity and diminish the credibility of food editors and writers, as well as their employers."

To me, deserving to be treated with respect also means:

Readers are no longer exclusively interested in rhapsodic reporting about the cut of a doily or ingenuous use of an herb. Today’s consumer is concerned about ecology, animal rights and just how the body will metabolize fake fat. They want to know how to eat more intelligently. For me, ethics means responsibility. That begins with the subjects I tackle.

Food news is not all cupcakes and confectioners’ sugar. But for food editors and writers to treat it as the serious business it is, news management must do the same.

Many of us are expected to follow The Smart Set, report on trends au courant, have more than fleeting acquaintance with the cutting edge. Just how do you do that on a beer budget? Do you buy wines and spirits on your own? Rent your own tuxedo each time an event demands?

Management revels in the prestige, or at least the reader/viewer draw (not to mention the advertising revenues) such coverage generates. Yet when it comes to budgeting for the next fiscal year, the sports reporters are off to cover the Super Bowl, but are the folks covering diet and cuisine chalked in for legitimate conferences, urged to tackle significant subjects, given an opportunity to see what’s happening in their field outside the immediate community or to take part in professional development programs?

If not, then should you be surprised if "Becky Home ‘Ecy" grabs a seat on the freebie train?

Somebody with a can of spray paint was fuming mad at the tobacco industry. "Smoking Kills," read the graffiti on numerous cigarette billboards around San Diego. "Cancer Ain’t Suave," read others.

I had been searching for the perpetrator for weeks, but no one knew who was behind the vandalism with a message. Not the police, not the billboard companies, not even the anti-smoking groups. Finally, The San Diego Union got a phone call from a man who identified himself to me as the Billboard Bandit.

I arranged to meet him at a fast food restaurant. He was a businessman in his forties, a husband and father who claimed to have never broken the law in his life. He was doing so now, he said, to urge Congress to ban billboard advertising of tobacco products.

He drove me around town, pointing out the cigarette billboards he had defaced. There were 25 of them. I asked him if a photographer and I could be present when he hit his 26th. He agreed, with one condition: I could not reveal his identity.

What I wanted to observe is a crime in California. If ever caught and convicted, the Bandit would face up to one year in prison and up to a $50,000 fine per count. I had no qualms about doing a ride-along with the Bandit. My editor did. He consulted the paper’s attorney.

"I thought we were treading on shaky legal ground witnessing a crime," said Features Editor Peter Rowe. "I wanted to do the story and I wanted to have that scene because it would be critical to the piece. But I didn’t want to do it at the expense of landing a reporter in jail or dragging the newspaper into court."

Our newspaper’s attorney set the following conditions:

1. It had to be clear that neither the paper nor I participated in a crime. I could not coach the Bandit as to the time or place of the billboard defacement. I was to go along only at his invitation.
2. The photographer and I could not drive with the Bandit. We were to arrive at the billboard site in our own car.
3. We could in no way assist the Bandit. We could only observe. Even if the man were in danger of falling, we could not hold his ladder.
4. If the police showed up, we were not to run. We were to behave as journalists and continue covering the story, taking notes and pictures for later use.

The ground rules seemed reasonable, with one exception. If the Bandit slipped and was hanging from the billboard, it’s hard to imagine not trying to help the guy. Fortunately, it never came to that.

The assignment went smoothly. The photographer and I arrived at the designated billboard around midnight. Moments later, the Bandit emerged from the shadows, hefting a 24-foot extension ladder. He flipped a switch in the fuse box and the massive Marlboro Lights cigarette billboard went dark.

The sign was adjacent to a freeway, but nobody saw the Bandit working in the shadows. He sprayed his message clear across the Marlboro Man. "SMOKING KILLS," the billboard read 10 minutes later. "LET’S STOP THESE ADS."

Later, the story prompted more calls from readers than any other I have written. Almost all of the callers applauded the Bandit’s graffiti campaign. One reader offered to hold his ladder. Another to supply him with free spray paint.

There were also a few negative calls. Some readers were outraged that I would witness a crime and not report it to the police. (The police have not asked me the Bandit’s identity. If they do, I will honor my agreement with him and not reveal his name.) One anonymous caller threatened to track the Billboard Bandit down and break his arms.

The story also prompted dozens of letters to the editor. Almost all were critical of the Bandit, the paper and me. One letter read in part: "The Union should be ashamed to have reporters aiding and abetting criminals. Maybe next time a rapist or murderer will invite McIntyre and the photographer on a ride-along." Another read: "To sensationalize someone whom you know the identity of and not expose him marks your paper as guilty as his crime."

The newspaper’s ombudsman, William G. Stothers, blasted the article. "I am troubled by the thought that The Union made a bad bargain, jumping at the chance for a better story in exchange for being badly used," Stothers wrote in his weekly op-ed column. "The Bandit got publicity. The newspaper got its story, and graffiti on its reputation."

Was the paper used? Sure it was. But newspapers are used all the time. The more important issue is whether the Bandit’s story is newsworthy. I think it is.

Experts say graffiti is part of a new trend among anti-tobacco forces, both legal and illegal, to more aggressively fight for a smoke-free society. Further, the Bandit is the first person in San Diego to wage a vandalism campaign against the tobacco industry. That’s news.

As for my witnessing a crime, it’s something journalists do routinely. When a reporter watches a computer hacker at work, he’s witnessing a crime. When a reporter watches an unlicensed radio station broadcast out of a garage, he’s witnessing a crime.

I did not watch the Billboard Bandit shoot a tobacco industry executive. I merely watched him spray some paint on a sign. Some readers may cry murder, but it clearly wasn’t.

Susan Faludi could have named her mind-boggling, myth-shattering new book How the Media Flubbed the Real Story But Good. Or even The Big Lie. Instead, she chose Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for a labor-related story. This year, every journalist who believes that accurate reporting is the highest ethical dictate of all should insist she be given a Debunker Extraordinaire Award with clusters.

Like a row of carnival ducks, and twice as phony, the media-promulgated canards about women are lined up in Faludi’s sights and peppered with buckshots of truth.

Why did American journalists, whose pride in their accuracy is exceeded only by their claims of strict objectivity, get these stories so wrong for so long? Faludi writes that it was not, repeat not, a misogynist conspiracy to preserve the male-dominated status quo. It just sort of worked out that way.

"Taken as a whole," she writes in Backlash, "these . . . cajolings, whispers, threats and myths move overwhelmingly in one direction: they try to push women back into their ‘acceptable’ roles . . ."

So, did the duck/canard feathers fly when the book came out (neatly coinciding with the epiphanous national teach-in provided by the Clarence Thomas hearings)? "Well," Faludi told FineLine in an amused tone, "I am sensing a bit of sheepishness among the newspapers and magazines who seem to have snapped the book up as a way of doing penance for misrepresenting women’s status!

"At Newsweek, for example, which is the publication I probably criticized most often in the book, a group of mostly women went out of their way to see to it that their magazine gave Backlash a lot of attention. And a lot of journalists have told me they’re going to think twice in [the] future before accepting and publishing so-called scientific studies about women.

"Mind you," Faludi adds, "AP, which first circulated the terrorist statistic, just put a story on the wire called ‘Sexy Clothes Attract Rapists, Therapists Say’ which was based on the same sort of [fallacious] study as the ones in my book."

Did Faludi find any dereliction of duty beyond inaccuracy? "There’s too much of the kind of moralizing the press shouldn’t be engaging in. And it force-fed women and men a lot of false information about the punishment in store for women who have the gall to pursue their rights."