The Media

Ethics and investigative reporting

THE LAW professor from Harvard is presiding at a game-playing exercise and one of the players — Art Fetacque, a veteran reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times — was explaining to him "how we do things in Chicago." The exercise was part of a Conference on Media Practices and Investigative Reporting cosponsored by the Sun-Times just a few days after that newspaper published a series of stories accusing Cardinal John P. Cody of misusing Roman Catholic church funds.

Though the case under discussion at the seminar of lawyers and journalists was a hypothetical one, it presented many of the same practical and ethical complications.

Petacque said it was commonplace for reporters in Chicago to deliver unverified tips to prosecutors in exchange for a front-row seat at the official investigation and a first crack at any resulting news stories. Reporters do this, he said, because the state's attorney or other prosecuting authority have "the power of the grand jury and the subpoena." If the Cook County state's attorney is uncooperative, Petacque said, the newspaper or broadcasting station can always "go to the state, which may be of a different political persuasion."

One of the other panelists, a television reporter from Miami, was aghast at such cozy arrangements between journalists and public officials, professing still to believe what a reporter's job is to "report the news."

The Sun-Times sat on the Cody stories for over a year while the editors pondered what to do with them. At one stage, the reporters who worked on it were told that the project lacked a "peg" — a news development upon which to hang it. That need was taken care of by appealing to the U.S. district attorney to initiate a grand jury investigation and attempt to subpoena archdiocesan financial records. The decision to publish was not made until the day after a reporter for the Gannett newspapers (which had been tipped to the same leads by Cody's enemies) asked the U.S. attorney's office to confirm essentially the same information the Sun-Times had.

Until quite recently, it would be unthinkable for a newspaper that depends on the good will of its subscribers (and advertisers) to take on a prince of the church — any church. But the cardinal forced the issue this time by counterattacking publicly as soon as the reporters started questioning his relatives and associates. True, the church hierarchy has never been known to hide its power under a bushel in Chicago, but the harshness of the cardinal's charge that the Sun-Times was engaging in anti-Catholicism was both absurd and odd — odd for a leader whose conscience was clean.

The Sun-Times hardly wanted to be scooped by an outside news organization on a story that, thanks to the cardinal, the whole world knew it had.

By being able to begin the series with a statement that the grand jury was investigating, the project was given more credibility and the Sun-Times was less vulnerable to Cody's broad counteraccusations.

Beyond the emotions of the Cody matter, the use of supposedly secret grand jury proceedings to advance news media interests is only one of many troubling questions raised by invetigative journalism.

Charles R. Nesson, the Harvard professor, put it well at the Chicago seminar when he said: "It's becoming big business. Media personalities develop around it. You need more and more of it to fill the thirst. And the thirstier you are, the more risks you are willing to take."

Russ Ewing of WLS-TV said he knew a reporter who had a hidden microphone built into the handle of his briefcase. Before leaving an interview, he would activate the tape recorder, "forget" the briefcase, and return a few minutes later to retrieve the briefcase (and the record of the private conversation that followed his departure).

The Chicago journalists assured the professor that hidden cameras and bugging devices, undercover work, theft of documents and other illegalities are usually never more than "a last resort" in an investigation. You must consider the "equities," several of them said — weighing the public good against the improper practices. "Don't fall for that good-of-the-people stuff," piped in WBBM radio's acerbic critic John Madigan. "They do it because it sells newspapers and gets TV audiences."

An opinion poll commissioned by the Sun-Times last year indicated that a majority of Chicago area residents favor illegal or ethically doubtful tactics in newspaper investigations.

The law enforcement officials who participated in the seminar were both aware and concerned that media probers often operate on what one of them called "the margins of the law." But Sam Skinner, the former U.S. attorney in Chicago, said the public would not react kindly to the prosecution of a journalist and no jury would be likely to convict one, a presumption that may soon be out of date if it isn't already.

That thought was carried through to its logical conclusion by the unlikely twosome of Don Reuben, attorney for the archdiocese (and the Chicago Tribune), and Sun-Times movie critic Gary Deeb. Investigative reporting is "a very dicey game," Reuben declared, and media "face the danger of government regulation. . . if you move into the sphere of government law enforcement." Deeb agreed, warning that the media are on the brink of losing public support of their investigative activities if they involve unacceptable tactics.

December 1981 | Illinois Issues | 33