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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.