Ethics pop quiz: What would you do?
The fascinating thing about the news business is that for its employees, every day offers the potential for real-life practice in making tough choices.
For example: Was publishing this photograph the right thing to do?
Say you’re the editor of the paper, and the FBI asks you to perform what it believes is a public service. It says that a pair of Middle Eastern-looking men have been spotted riding the ferries of Seattle in recent weeks, behaving in a curious manner. They’ve been taking lots of photos — not of the usual tourist vistas, but of the ship itself. They also seem to poke around frequently in areas of the ferry not open to the public. Their behavior on one ferry was so suspicious that a ferry employee snapped his own photo of the two men.
Sure, the men haven’t broken the law as far as anyone knows, but they might be up to no good. The FBI wants to talk to the pair but needs the public’s assistance in identifying them. The FBI asks you to publish their photo in the paper.
Do you do it?
One paper in Seattle agreed to do so. The other declined. The editor of the paper which refused to run the photos took a beating from readers on his blog, where he explained his rationale. Typical of the comments was this: “So you publish the name and photo of the guy accused of having sex with his dog, then bury the story where it turns out his wife made it all up to get a divorce, but you won’t publish photos to help the FBI locate some people they are curious about. Your line is very fuzzy.” (I tried to find that dog story on Google using the search words “sex with dog seattle post intelligencer” but it came back with 110,000 hits. Seattle must be really … uh, interesting.)
It’s worth thinking about what you would do in this situation because it forces you to sort out priorities: privacy or safety? In a sense, those two concerns are mirror images of each other. Having your privacy invaded is a real, ongoing threat, considering how much information about you is traded commercially. But the consequence of a loss of privacy is small potatoes, relatively speaking. It might be embarrassing, but it won’t be fatal. In contrast, your chance of being the victim of a terrorist attack is barely measurable, but if it occurs the result will horrifying and traumatizing.
We don’t gain much as a society if we have to give ourselves over to a police state in order to feel safe. But in this specific instance, I’m not finding much traction in a privacy claim. It’s a well-established principle of constitutional law that you have no right to visual privacy in a public place. Your photograph can be taken and published in the newspaper. Frankly, you’ve got little say in the matter. These two men were on a public ferry, which had already been identified as a prime terrorist target, and they were behaving suspiciously. It’s reasonable that the FBI would want to talk to them.
And helping the FBI figure out who they are is likewise reasonable. I would have published the photo. How about you?
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:45 am
Publish the photo!!
And by the way, I firmly believe that if you publish a picture of a man accused by his angry wife of having sex with the dog and the charge is subsequently found to have been false, then the subsequent retraction should be on Page 1 - above the fold.
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I don’t believe you have framed the stakes accurately. For a Middle Eastern man in George Bush’s America, the potential consequences of having your photograph published in connection with an alleged terror plot seems to me a mite more serious than “embarrassment” or even loss of privacy.
Your decision could cost these men their lives.
A newspaper’s value to its community lies in its ability and willingness to undertake serious, committed, shoe-leather investigations into allegations like this - not in its willingness to act as an unquestioning arm of the government.
The FBI’s value to the community would seem to lie in its ability to, at a minimum, identify two guys whose photograph they have, and who apparently spend a lot of time in the same place - without deputizing the local press.