It was a surprise when a Houston Grand Jury came back with indictments not for Planned Parenthood - who were being investigated for selling fetal tissue - but instead for two individuals responsible for the secret videos that threw the issue into the national spotlight.
Now David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt both face charges related to their fake California Drivers' Licenses and attempting to buy the fetal tissue, and their defense will likely fall along first amendment grounds. The pair say they were simply using standard investigative procedures.
"First of all 99.999 percent of journalists have never done an undercover story and never will," says University of North Carolina Journalism instructor Adam Hochberg, who is also a fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media.
He also says that even in investigative pieces, journalists are supposed to be flies on the wall, as opposed to what we are seeing in many of these politically motivated videos, "They're not just putting a camera in this place to see what happens when no one is looking. [They] are coming in and completely setting a false impression and creating this scene to sort of test people and see how they'll react."
In the history of journalism, disguising one's identity has led to big stories Nelly Bly and the mental wards of the late 1800s, Upton Sinclair's muckraking in "The Jungle" were both purportedly stories produced in this method. And the popularity of secret videos became more mainstream in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That was until a story that ABC did on the store Food Lion.
ABC producers faked their identities to gain employment and then exposed the poor food handling that were part of the Food Lion culture. The reaction was strong. Many felt the coverage was unfair, and that the lack of transparency on the part of ABC crossed a line. Food Lion took legal action and was awarded more than a million dollars. The award would be reduced dramatically, but the case had a chilling effect on the use of secret video recording.
Were Merritt and Daleiden practicing journalism, or trying to spread misinformation?
Guest:
- Adam Hochberg, Journalism Instructor at the University of North Carolina, fellow at the Poynter Institute of Media, and former correspondent for NPR news. (@adamhochberg)
