Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

Former journalist here.

Undercover investigative journalism is an absolute minefield, legally and ethically, and in school we went over historical cases and the potential legal liabilities that were present.

Undercover reporters do not enjoy ANY of the protections afforded to undercover police officers, and indeed there have been recent high-profile cases of undercover sting operations by media organizations resulting in criminal charges.

For instance, in 2015 an anti-abortion organization called the Center for Medical Progress conducted an undercover investigation at Planned Parenthood facilities, and two members of that organization were later charged with 15 felonies in the state of California related to presenting fake IDs and "criminal conspiracy to invade privacy."

Edit: To clarify, I am not defending the actions of this group. I agree that they engaged in deceptive, grossly unethical behavior. I am merely pointing out that just because they claimed to be undercover journalists doesn't give them any legal protections. They were still able to be prosecuted and convicted.

>Center for Medical Progress

Wait a minute.

That group was pushing their own agenda / opposed to Planned Parenthood and put out deceptive videos to push a false narrative.

That's not 'journalism', that's their own form of activism and lying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Medical_Progress

thank god reputable journalists never put out deceptive videos

I think intent matters. Journalists can be wrong, but it's different if they're wrong / pushing lies intentionally.

Then they're not reputable, by definition.

I agree that it's not objective journalism.

My point was not to suggest that their actions constituted good or ethical journalism. My point was that claiming to be a journalist doing an undercover sting is not going to get you any legal protections that would be afforded to police conducting an undercover operation.

It shocks the conscience to read this, and even though I think I "know" what happened, I always double check.

After spending 10 minutes with the court complaint, a large group of people were funded to spend a very long time posing as doctors, using fake IDs and signing NDAs, to, among many things, attend abortion doctor professional conferences, get access to a list of members of an abortion doctor federation, access clinician-only areas and databases inside planned parenthood locations, and all in service of proving Planned Parenthood was an industrial operation focused on "infant organ trafficking."

When they couldn't show that after months and 100s of hours of footage, they retconned life-saving fetal tissue donation into "infant organ trafficking" through video chopping.

(Note: I grew up in Buffalo, the reason why the roster stuff is scary and they signed the NDA with the fake names, is abortion doctors are regularly targeted, ex. two classmates lost their father, he was shot in their kitchen)

The article notes that both the school district's Superintendent, and the school's Principal, approved the "undercover in high school" journalism.

Apples != Oranges

> by media organizations

> presenting fake IDs

You forgot felony wiretapping.

Project Veritas and all associates of them deserve to sit in prison. That's the worst possible example you could bring up here.

My point was not to say that their actions were defensible.

My point was that journalists don't just get to say "I'm going undercover" and all of sudden enjoy legal protections, the way an undercover police operation would.

So just because the members of the group claimed that they were conductive investigative journalism does not mean that they can't be criminally prosecuted for their actions.

That’s not true.

I’m tempted to argue with you, but the facts so clearly speak for themselves that I’ll just link to the Wikipedia article so that others can see what really happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Medical_Progress

> CMP established a fake company to pose as buyers of fetal tissue and secretly recorded Planned Parenthood officials during meetings.

> The CMP released edited videos of the discussions which made it appear as if Planned Parenthood intended to profit from fetal tissue, although the full unedited videos instead showed that Planned Parenthood requested only a fee to cover costs without any profit.

> [...]

> [In] March 2017 Daleiden and the second CMP employee were charged with 15 felonies in California—one for each of the people whom they had filmed without consent, and one for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. Planned Parenthood also sued the CMP and Daleiden for fraud and invasion of privacy, asserting that the videos were deceptively edited to create a false impression of wrongdoing.

I’d like to avoid an argument thread, so please go improve the Wikipedia article if you think something is inaccurate.

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