All Blog Posts from Public Eye

If you want to better understand "To Catch A Predator," the Dateline NBC series we first raised questions about early last year, check out Esquire's long-but-engrossing writeup of the fate of Texas prosecutor Bill Conradt.

Long story short: Conradt allegedly went online, posing as a 19-year-old college student, and struck up a relationship with what he believed to be a 13-year-old boy named Luke. The conversation became sexual, and "Luke" invited Conradt to come to the house where he was staying. Only "Luke," of course, wasn't real, and certainly wasn't 13. And Dateline, along with the local cops, were waiting at the house to humiliate and arrest Conradt.

Only the prosecutor didn't come. And Dateline wanted its man. So they requested that the police quickly provide an arrest and search warrant for Conradt's house. The plan? To ambush interview Conradt, confront him with the IM transcripts, and film him being arrested. Only it didn't go that way. Instead, after a SWAT team stormed his house as part of a poorly thought out police operation, Bill Conradt shot himself in the head.

And that, really, is just the worst of it: Of the 23 men arrested at the decoy house, many of whom clearly showed themselves to be dangerous to children, none received more than the shame that comes from their public exposure. The prosecutor couldn't pursue the cases for a variety of reasons, including the fact that many of the arrests may have been illegal.

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Schadenfreude alert! On Friday, a woman identified as Dateline NBC's Michelle Madigan was outed at Defcon, an "Underground Hackers Convention" taking place in Las Vegas. Madigan, who "had a camera in a small black bag that allowed her to surreptitiously video tape people attending the show," reportedly "hoped to tape people admitting to breaking the law and then attempt to tie them to federal agents who also attended the show."

But Defcon founder Jeff Moss identified her -- making quite the show of it -- from the stage, in front of hundreds of convention-goers. As Madigan was escorted out of the conference to her car, some of them, along with some of the convention's credentialed journalists, followed. They took video of her, shouted questions, and, in some cases, heckled her. And yes, there were "To Catch A Predator" jokes.

Video of what went down is up on YouTube, and I encourage you to check it out before deciding where your sympathies lie. I've had my problems with Dateline in the past, and I'm not a fan of what they tried to pull off here – the hidden camera expose, like the anonymous source, is a journalistic tool that should only be used responsibly. And showing up at Defcon with a camera in your bag, hoping to get some hacker to say something incriminating, is a cheap tactic unlikely to yield anything more than sensationalistic images that don't do justice to the nuances of the story. There are times when going undercover is justifiable --unlike my colleague, I think this is one of them -- but I don't think that this attempt comes close to qualifying.

That said, those hackers sure are tough to sympathize with, aren't they? Watch the video if you haven't yet – the triumphalism on display doesn't exactly make you want to rally to the hackers' defense. The whole thing has this "burn the witch!" vibe, in fact, that makes you feel like you're watching grainy cell-phone footage from Salem, Massachusetts. The comments section on the video, somewhat surprisingly, is divided between those cheering the hecklers on and those criticizing them for going after a producer who was just "doing her job."

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Do some mediocre soft journalism in America, and the worst you have to worry about is a takedown of your work in a highbrow online magazine. Do the same in Pakistan, and you could be facing a fatwa.

Reporters Without Borders brings word of the fatwa issued against English-language fashion magazine Octane after the magazine ran a series of pictures with the caption "Adam and Eve, the bone of contention."

Said religious leader Maulana Abdul Aziz: “The managers of this magazine deserve to die…[for] blasphemy towards the Hazrat (prophet) Adam.” And that's just the start of editor Zubair Kasuri's problems:

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Last night, the lead story on ABC's "World News" was an exclusive report on how the "CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government." You can read about it here, and watch it here. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t. According to many of the commenters at ABC News' "The Blotter" – around 1,500 at last count – running the report was "traitorous" because it revealed a secret U.S. government action.

Bloggers are all over the story as well: As Lynn Davidson at Newsbusters sarcastically put it, "[w]hy should a country go to the effort of spying on Americans when all they have to do is follow the US media?" She compares this story to one in the New York Times exposing the SWIFT banking transaction database and another in USA Today about an NSA phone call database, both of which came under criticism from those who felt that the programs should not have been made public.

Here's a typical comment attached to the ABC News story: "I can't believe you would report something like this! You should be ashamed of yourselves. Whatever happened to country first? Someone should be thrown in jail. It is irresponsible for news agencies in the time of war to put people's lives in danger!" And that's one of the nicer ones.

Presidential candidates are also getting in on the anti-ABC action. As "The Blotter" itself notes, Tom Tancredo and Mitt Romney criticized the report, with Romney saying he was "shocked to see the ABC News report regarding covert action in Iran."

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Pfffffffffffft. That, roughly, is the sound a much-hyped, supposedly-scandalous news story makes when fizzling. And we heard it on Friday, when ABC News aired its report on the DC Madam.

As I noted last week, ABC's Brian Ross had said that the madam's list included people at the "Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers." Some of us – you know who you are – began salivating at the prospect of high-profile names emerging as her clients.

ABC did not provide them, however, having deemed most of the clients "not well enough known to be 'newsworthy,'" according to the Independent. They were, in fact, mostly "dull." (The biggest name emerged early: Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias.) On Brian Ross' blog, Ross, Justin Rood and Lisa Schwartz explained that "many of the identities proved difficult to match." They continued:

For example, calls to hotels frustrated the effort. Many men arranged "appointments" with [Madam Deborah Jeane] Palfrey from a hotel room telephone, which made those clients nearly impossible to identify from the phone records.

Complicating matters further, Palfrey sometimes used the phone for personal calls -- to talk with friends and family as well as to make personal travel arrangements and for other purposes.

And then there were the false leads: The man who claimed to work at the White House but didn't, the "head of a recognized educational institution" whose phone number was the same as one of the escorts except for the area code.

It now appears that ABC News initially thought it had more than it did. While the network ultimately seems to have acted responsibly by showing restraint, some viewers were less than pleased with the end product. The first commenter on the post excerpted above pretty much sums up the tenor of the reaction.

"SO WHERE ARE THE NAMES, BRIAN ROSS???," writes Glenda Scott. "THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN PROMISING. WHERE'S THE BEEF, MISTER????????????"

I was watching CNN this morning and caught an interesting exchange between Soledad O'Brien and reporter Michael Ware, who is following Senator John McCain and his Republican Congressional delegation in Baghdad. The comments aren't online yet, but I've transcribed them below.

O'Brien: Let me ask you a question. There was a report that said you were heckling, and you were laughing, during the senator's press conference. Is that true?

Ware: Well, let's bear in mind that this is a report that was leaked by an unnamed official of some kind to a blog. To somewhere on the Internet. No one has gone and put their name forward, we certainly haven't heard Senator McCain say anything about it, or any of his staff have come forward to say anything about it.

I did not heckle the senator. Indeed, I didn't say a word, I didn't even ask a question. In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question, the press conference abruptly ended. So what I would suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled watch the videotape of the press conference.

The "blog" in question is the Drudge Report, and here's what Drudge wrote, in part:

During a live press conference in Baghdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying, “here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

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NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams has gone to Baghdad, a city that many journalists and news organizations have decided has simply become too unsafe. As Bill Carter notes, no anchor has visited the country since Bob Woodruff of ABC News was severely injured there more than a year ago.

Media watchers, noting that NBC has recently slipped in the ratings against ABC, have suggested that the trip may be designed to help ratings for the "Nightly News," a charge NBC rejects. “It’s utter nonsense and beyond offensive for anyone to think we would put people in harm’s way for the sake of ratings,” a spokeswoman for NBC News told Carter. NBC says it has been planning the trip for months.

News is a business, and ratings are invariably a factor in what the nightly newscasts look like – the CBS "Evening News," which is in third place in the ratings battle, has certainly been trying to improve its standing. But I don't think NBC would put Williams at undue risk for a ratings bump, for reasons both financial and moral. Williams has emerged as the face of NBC News, and, from a business standpoint, the network would be stupid to risk him for the chance at a few points in the ratings. And then there's the fact that the folks over at NBC News are human beings, and I think it's safe to assume they would never send Williams – or any of their people – into a dangerous situation without doing everything possible to minimize their risk.

From the great-moments-in-journalism files: An Australian reporter went on the air with a story about an elderly woman who had supposedly chained herself to a cupboard in order to stay in her nursing home. Reporter Nicholas Boot discussed how "this feisty 84-year-old is refusing to budge" from her room.

Powerful stuff. If only it were true. Government officials went to the nursing home to investigate, only to discover that the whole thing was staged. According to a spokesman for the Minister for Ageing, "the television crew had brought the chains for the interview, then taken them away again afterwards…the process of chaining her up had been instigated by the television program."

The host of the program later apologized to viewers "if you felt misled." Felt? Anyway, Boot has been suspended.

Here's some free advice to anyone who wants to avoid hate e-mail: Don't refer to members of the U.S. military as "mercenaries." That's what washingtonpost.com blogger and military analyst William M. Arkin did, and a lot of folks wrote in to express their displeasure. (Bill O'Reilly, in a not-so-shocking development, also pounced.)

Arkin told Howard Kurtz, his paper's media critic, that "'Mercenary' is a very strong term. If all this has been precipitated by one word, there's not a question in my mind I could have avoided this by not using that word." He also apologized on his blog, saying the word "is an insult and pejorative, and it does not accurately describe the condition of the American soldier today." Washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady said the use of the word "was a mistake. It made it through the editing process, which is unfortunate. We certainly apologize for using it on the site." He said Arkin would not be fired.

Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, meanwhile, wrote that even though the Washington Post and washingtonpost.com are separate entities, most media consumers do not draw the distinction. "Did one online column irreparably damage Post national security journalism? No," she writes. "But it does show that an online column rubs off on the newspaper. Opinions on Arkin vary among Post reporters who write about the military and national security. Some respect him; others think he harms The Post's reputation."

Post reporter Joel Achenbach told Howell that blogging is like handling "live ammo."

"The blog software is a very powerful weapon," he said. "You can publish something very quickly under the name of The Washington Post. You need a steady hand and good judgment."

We missed this when it first happened, but there's an interesting little controversy involving the NBC "Nightly News" that we thought you should know about. As Gary Schwitzer notes, the "Nightly News" did a story on restless leg syndrome, a condition that most of us had never heard about until drug company GlaxoSmithKline started publicizing it. GlaxoSmithKline offers a medication to treat restless leg syndrome, and the company advertises it on the "Nightly News."

The "Nightly News" story focused, in large part, on the fact that this is a condition that you probably didn't know you had until you were told it existed and offered the cure. But the story went on to quote a doctor saying this: "I'm not generally a big fan of direct-to-consumer TV ads. However, for this particular disorder, I think they've done a great service by spending most of the time identifying the problem." Also quoted was a patient who spoke approvingly of the drug.

As Schwitzer points out, the segment prompted an outcry from some viewers, who posted their complaints to Williams' blog. "I thought NBC was trying to cut commercials so we get more news. Does this intergraded ad then count as news or advertising," asked one. Another wrote that "I read all the comments on [restless leg syndrome] and it seemed to me the majority of writers were upset (as was I) about the blatant commercial you ran for an advertiser." (There were also supportive comments from viewers who say they have the condition.)

Schwitzer points to an article called “Giving Legs to Restless Legs: A Case Study of How the Media Helps Make People Sick.” The story discusses "disease mongering," described as "the effort by pharmaceutical companies (or others with similar financial interests) to enlarge the market for a treatment by convincing people that they are sick and need medical intervention."

Concludes the article: "The news coverage of restless legs syndrome is disturbing. It exaggerated the prevalence of disease and the need for treatment, and failed to consider the problems of overdiagnosis. In essence, the media seemed to have been co-opted into the disease-mongering process." In 2002, the "Early Show" ran a segment offering tips for those who might have the condition.