by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
March 22, 2004
Television station WCaU, Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate recently undertook a sting operation. The station rented a house in suburban Philly and then a reporter went into Internet chat rooms and posed as a 14-year-old girl. When at least three men showed up at the house they were met by the reporter and a TV camera.
WCaU was criticized for the way in which it prepared its report entitled "Perverted Justice". Law enforcement officials denounced the station saying they did more harm than good; the entrapment of pedophiles by the station could not lead to arrests and convictions and may have resulted in death or injury had any of the men become violent. The local district attorney’s office is investigating to see if WCaU has broken any laws.
It was not lost on anyone that "Perverted Justice" had been scheduled to air on the last day of the February sweeps. Neighbours of the rented house complained because the station refused to say where it was, ensuring that more pedophiles might come to the area looking for the non-existent young girl.
Right or wrong, it was not good journalism. Tom Bevins, a professor of media ethics at the University of Oregon, pointed out that when reporters get involved in the way the station’s reporter did, they cease to be impartial gatherers of news and become part of the story.
It seems to have become more common in recent years for reporters to put themselves in positions where their objectivity can be questioned because they take actions which make themselves part of the story that they are reporting. a recent example occurred when the Toronto Star published a study on race and crime in late 2002. The Star set the parameters for the gathering of statistics on the race of persons arrested in Toronto and then reported on their own study. Criticism of those who objected to the way the analysis was done were then directed to not a third party but at the Star who then devoted some articles in the race and crime series to defending itself.
But you don’t have any political experience!
The dumbest question of the month has to go to Don Newman, the host of CBC’s Inside Politics. Newman was interviewing Monia Mazigh, the wife of Maher arar, who is the Canadian citizen who was arrested in New York and sent to Jordan and Syria where he was held and allegedly tortured as a terror suspect. Mazigh had just announced that she was seeking the NDP nomination to run in the riding of Ottawa-South in the next federal election. When Mazigh, who has never held elective office before, said that she never took political science in college (she does however have a Ph.D in economics), Newman questioned the fact that she chose to run when she had no political experience as if she had some nerve to throw her hat into the ring.
What makes Newman’s question so funny is that although the CBC did its best to ignore it, when Mazigh was interviewd the country was in the midst of a leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and Belinda Stronach was a credible candidate. although Stronach may have taken political science, she dropped out in her first year at York University, an institution that one pundit described as being known to graduate house plants.. Unlike Stronach, whose political experience has consisted of giving political donations as CEO of Daddy’s International Inc. and attending parties with the politically connected, Mazigh led the fight to have her husband freed from his Syrian captivity. Mazigh arguably has more experience in foreign affairs than the minister, Bill Graham who simply mouths platitudes to the United Nations. While Belinda Stronach could have ended up being the prime minister of Canada, the most that Monia Mazigh can accomplish is to sit in Parliament as a member of a third or fourth party.
Mazigh had also been sought out as a candidate by the federal Liberals and one wonders if Newman would have seem so perplexed about her lack of experience had she sought the nomination of the Natural Governing Party.