This happened a couple of weeks ago, but I waited to see if there would be any additional fallout. As there doesn’t seem to be, I’m offering it for the board’s consideration.
On Wednesday, April 17, a convicted murderer named Steven Sherer was charged with trying to have his mother-in-law killed. He had previously been convicted of killing his wife; while in prison, he apparently solicited a cellmate to torch his wife’s mother’s house, in revenge for her testimony against him at his murder trial. The initial article detailing these new charges is vague about how the police caught him, reporting only the somewhat oblique background from court papers: “Fire and law-enforcement officials staged an arson at the Bellevue home of <the dead wife’s> mother, to make Sherer believe the cellmate set a fire there.” I’m not sure how an arson is staged without actually doing damage, but there it is.
But then the following day, the same paper reveals that no arson was actually staged: Rather, the report of the arson was staged. Specifically, another area paper collaborated with the police to plant a false story that could be used to “prove” to Sherer that his plot was working.
Apparently, what happened was this: Sherer asked a cellmate to burn down his wife’s mother’s house once he made it to the outside. A jailhouse snitch found out, and reported it. Authorities were waiting for the cellmate upon release, and got him to cooperate. It was discovered that Sherer’s request for burning down his mother-in-law’s house, hopefully with her inside (and his own son, horribly enough), was just a test; if it went off as Sherer had asked, proving the cellmate’s intent, said collaborator would go on to kill, among others, the children of the prosecutor who had put him in jail. In exchange, Sherer would reveal to the former cellmate the location of hidden valuables as payment.
As proof of the cellmate’s deeds, Sherer had demanded a newspaper article. So the authorities contacted a local paper — not the area’s “main” publication, but a smaller regional rag — and asked them to deliberately publish a false story about the nonexistent arson. They could then use this to send the cellmate back to Sherer and get the full plan on record. The article wasn’t the only investigatory tool; they also bugged Sherer’s cell and taped his phone conversations with the released cellmate. However, they had to have the article to prove to Sherer that the cellmate was carrying out the agreed-upon plan, which would trigger the conversations that could then be recorded as evidence. The newspaper agreed, the story was published toward the end of March, and now, a couple of weeks later, Sherer is looking at a battery of new charges that will keep him in prison long after the end of his original 60-year sentence.
There’s no question that Sherer himself is a despicable and dangerous (not to mention thunderingly stupid) individual, and has proved over and over that he doesn’t deserve to see open sky again for the rest of his life. (He’s been caught trying to hire people to kill his mother-in-law before, but for whatever reason he apparently wasn’t charged.) The police should be commended for organizing a pretty airtight sting against him, and ensuring that this monster remains locked away from civilization. That’s not the point of this.
Rather, the debate is as follows: Should a newspaper or any outlet of journalism ever, under any circumstances, knowingly publish or disseminate false information in collaboration with government and/or law enforcement officials?
It’s one thing for journalists to report what someone in power says, and to operate under the assumption it’s probably true until further information comes to light (“we know exactly where the WMDs are” ;)). It’s another thing entirely for journalists to be fully aware that the information is false, and to publish it anyway at the request of the authorities in service to a larger social goal.
I don’t want to debate the mechanics of this particular case. I’m sure that if the police couldn’t get a newspaper to cooperate, they could have PageMakered something up and had the local Kinko’s put it on newspulp. If they were worried that Sherer was having somebody else on the outside independently verify the contents of the paper, they might have concocted some tale in which the mother-in-law gets wind of the scheme and heads out of town, with the cellmate reporting he was forced to go burn down their motel cabin in Wyoming or somewhere it’s harder for Sherer to corroborate the article’s authenticity.
All of that is hypothetical. The point is, it’s easier for the police to just get a real story in a real paper and avoid those headaches. In this case, they succeeded, and got a newspaper to put in black and white something both sides knew was a lie. Needless to say, the paper refuses to apologize for the deception: “Journalistically, we’ll probably take some heat for it,” said the editor, “but we have a responsibility to the community and that weighed heavily in our decision.”
I feel torn. Part of me thinks that this sort of collaboration is dangerous, and that the role of the journalist in a free society is to keep a wide-open eye on the activities of the powerful, so we the people can be assured that we are being appropriately served by our government. It’s sort of a slippery-slope argument, true, but simply for the sake of the system’s integrity we need to know that what appears in our news is accurate as far as the independent entity that produces it is able to determine.
But at the same time, my pragmatic side says that this isn’t a major deception, really. It’s not like the White House is asking CNN to report that Osama’s in custody when both sides know for a fact that he isn’t, even if the intent is to flush out sleeper cells or whatever. Something like that would have global implications, and would in many ways turn the press into an arm of the government (but hey, if we need professional liars, I hear Baghdad Bob’s looking for work). This particular case, by contrast, is small and local and has no impact beyond the immediately involved individuals.
Further, the editor has a point, it seems to me, with respect to “responsibility to the community.” They had an opportunity to participate in the protection of their constituency from a bloodthirsty animal, and the deception was never going to stand in the long term; it would be revealed only after the evidence was gathered and the charges secured.
But continuing in the practical vein, if it’s known that newspapers will deliberately publish wholly fabricated material at the request of the police, then not only can we as ordinary people not trust what we read, but neither can the criminals. In other words, this sting will never work again, if a newspaper article cannot be regarded as proof of anything. In a real sense, this could make the world marginally more awful, as the only proof a smarter Sherer would accept might be an actual photograph of the burned-down house.
It’s worth mentioning that one of the reasons this strikes a nerve locally is that it isn’t the first time it’s happened. Back in 1978, the police asked for a false story to be planted, with largely the same motivation, attempting to deceive a criminal that a plan was moving forward when it wasn’t (details). Ironically enough, the newspapers’ roles have been reversed: The paper that broke the truth about the current story was involved in publishing the false article in 1978, while the paper now taking heat for the recent false story was quite vociferous in taking the other to task for its deception 25 years ago.
So, that’s the debate. Principle, or pragmatism? Or, in other words, do the ends justify the means?
