Couple additional things:

1. NBC does in fact pay consulting fees to the group that does the predator stings, per the Oregonian:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf?/base/news/1160790926286390.xml&coll=7

2. That Greg is a good guy, battling the steady stream of ignorance in the comment sections today. And just because he cares about what's right. Really cool.

3. Did anyone else notice that when the ex-wife recalled how West passed her the note on the senate floor to propose to her. "It said, Will you marry me, love Jim" she says on camera. Frontline cuts to a brief shot of the note. Curiously absent--the word "love." Very telling detail.

4. You knew the producers were in the tank when they did the cheap shot cut to the headline session. But ironically, that scene proves how absolutely open the S-R was, with people not playing to the camera but just going about the job normally, while West is "on" and spinning in every single scene.

3)
I did notice that. I also noticed that Frontline did an incredible disservice by utilizing the interview shot with her (the ex-wife)to establish that West was tortured BUT did not act on his homosexual feelings until after they were divorced. Yes, she looked as if she believed what she was saying, but YES she also seemed incredibly naive and gullible. Viewers should have been able to critically address that, but Frontline offered NO alternative. Those rumors of West when he was in the state legislature didn't occur due to his steadfast adherence to a straight lifestyle. The rumors shouldn't have convicted him either, but I felt it irresponsible to offer no other angle than the devoted ex-wife to establish the timeline of West's dalliances.

Uh, gee Frank. Maybe I should take back what I said in the earlier thread about the S-R seeming overly defensive. I guess it was my "self-righteous ignorance masquerading as informed outrage."

But seriously, West was clearly trying to restore his image in the Frontline piece. Why else would he cooperate? I know it would have served the S-R better if he had used the opportunity for full confession and a plea for forgiveness but, alas, it was not to be.

Still, my ignorance apparently won't allow my brain to unwrap itself from the notion that the paper never made a great case for West being a pedophile. Sorry. Unfortunately, that was pretty important. Outing him didn't do the job, for me anyway.

As someone who walked around for a couple of decades with a dirty little secret from my own childhood in Spokane, I'm not about to dismiss such late allegations. But my experiences apparently don't make me automatically accept such claims, either.

Guilt by association? Nah. Lawsuit settlement from the Hahn case? Nope. West as manipulative, smooth-operating politician backed into a corner? Sure, I'll buy that.

Bud, I don't fault West for spinning; I fault the gullible Frontline producers for buying it. Apparently, they're peddling the notion that they were kind of jocked into making the story fit into the easy tragic destruction theme by their PBS overlords. That certainly happens. I once was reporting a piece for a big national magazine about anchorwomen who've been stalked. Purely to hit their readership demographic, the editor asked me if I couldn't find some younger victims--the ones I got were in their 30s and one was horrors! in her 40s. I refused. That's the honorable thing to do when you're pressured to slant a story for reasons that have nothing to do with the truth.

Bud, this is speculation, admittedly, but I believe that once all the dots are connected in what happened in this town in the 60s, 70s & 80s related to child sexual abuse/pedophilia that the overarching scandal will be horrific in its size and conspiratorial aspects.

A few of the dots have been connected.

What I do NOT want to see is Steve Smith or any other editor/reporter of the Spokesman discouraged from doing the (mostly unpopular) work to bring the rest of the connections to light. That horrific period in Spokane's recent history still affects the city in many ways today, and the crimes need to see the light of day.

I have to say I was very disappointed with the Frontline piece. Normally they do excellent investagative reporting. If I didn't know anything about Jim West and watched the proram I think I would have fallen asleep. With Frontline's reputation I believed I was going see some victims of West that had not been heard from before. They left out so many important facts that would have helped paint a better picture of who West really was. I am not sure what their story really accomplished but it was a poor effort.

just in case this post is overlooked on the orginal thread:

so agree with most of the posts here. I too am a former journalist and editor. Check out this story the Spokesman just ran in September...it really put things in perspective. this was the same team that outed West

http://spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo/archive.asp?postID=10591#comments

Bent,
I disagree with you connecting the Lynch reporting with the West reporting. I will say that I thought they rushed to press with the Lynch reporting, while if anything, they were slow to print in the West case (related to endorsing him in the mayor's race, et al.).

And honestly, I think they went to print in the Lynch case because they do see some connection between the West situation and Lynch's. I suspect myself that there is some connection (and no, I have no proof, but I am neither reporting on this case), and I want to see the S-R follow up in this matter.

My understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) was that the rush on the Lynch story was because the conditions on the ground at that time were that he had essentially disappeared. No one (including people in city hall) had any idea where he was, and his closest co-workers hadn't heard from him in several days. Under those circumstances, it's pretty difficult to make a case for withholding from readers what was known at that point.

He re-emerged pretty quickly after the story ran, and with the benefit of that particular bit of hindsight, it's easier to make a more compelling argument for not running that story. I'm speculating, but I would guess that if we knew he was only taking leave for a couple of days, the story wouldn't have run.

Hey Bent,
By the way, I'm glad you agree with most of the posts in this thread (or perhaps that was just a rush job by you to cut and paste your illuminating post from another thread). Either way.

Frank Sennett nails it as usual.

Fellow critics on these message boards, you don’t matter. Observers from outside Spokane, begone. Universal journalism ethics and basic human decency? Nothing but mere shadows and illusion. Out, damn spot! Steven Smith and his court in the Spokesman-Review tower refuse to acknowledge you and, therefore, you don’t actually exist.

Since we are talking about Shakespearean tragedies, as Smith aptly notes, let’s take a look at some of the lines from the cast here. And notice the almost unconscious way that they reveal their own sanctimony and denial about the paper’s moral culpability.

“We got a Payne ethics award,” Editor Steve Smith proclaimed in his initial post. “We will get no crap from anybody in the business,” he said this morning. [Except the New York Times and Frontline, probably the two most respected outlets in investigative news – dubious accolades, but nevertheless.]

“People watching this must think it's kind of funny, the irony of us sitting around the table talking about the problems of context,” Smith told fellow editors this morning.
[Gee, ya think? This may be the closest to a self-realization that you’ll see from the paper in this entire discussion. Yes, Mr. Smith, it’s funny alright but not ha-ha funny. Readers are all too aware that news outlets like yours slant and shade and omit and commit the interpretation of the facts to suit their own frame.]

“But no one likes to be criticized in the personal way that Internet discourse encourages and some folks here are beginning to wonder (if there’s value in the Transparent Newsroom initiative),” Smith complained later today.
[This expression of hurt feelings is coming from a person whose entire professional life is devoted to scrutinizing the shortcomings, real or perceived, of others with the object of bringing public scorn upon them. In the West case, they destroyed a life. But notice how it’s only words on the Internet, aimed at the paper, that are objectionable – put it in ink and point it outward and suddenly it becomes pristine, award-worthy! Don’t believe me? Take a look at the next remark, which Smith made this morning at the editorial meeting.]

“We are a newsroom and we still have our sick black humor and that's part of what makes us what we are and I'm kind of proud of it.”

Next we have Frank Sennett who announced today, “There’s a lot of self-righteous ignorance masquerading as informed outrage in the S-R blog comments section.” In other words, buzz off readers, we are the moral arbiters here, not you. But Sennett’s own righteous anger at West leads him to miss the point of the Frontline piece when he describes it as “West’s quest for a measure of public redemption.” Little, if anything, positive was said about West in the Frontline piece, which showed his flaws in stark detail. No one watching Frontline thinks that West was redeemed – they think he was wronged, by the capricious and underhanded methods of the newspaper.

Take a moment and re-read attorney Duane Swinton’s point #5. A more tortured, pointless, desperate and yet ultimately empty example of moral relativism you will rarely see. There are no consequences, no accountability. His rumination boils down to this: on the one hand, we make our own rules, and on the other hand, so what – besides, Dateline did it too!

And there’s so much to note from the S-R’s eve-of-publication, third-degree grilling of West it’s hard to know where to start. Try clicking ahead to the audio portion where reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn-Steele are cajoling West, with raised voices, to “come clean.” Or consider just these two passages from the questioning, as the reporters know full well they hold a sword over West’s head:

“Last year as we were pursuing some of these leads, by the way I was doing it at the direction of my editors, it's not something I just decided on my own. I'm following orders from Steve Smith, Carla Savalli and a whole battery of folks down on the other floor. I'm not a cop or a police officer, not a prosecutor, I'm just listening to you as a public official and you're a highly-placed public official, and what you do in your private life, I couldn't care less. In fact, you're talking to probably some of the more liberal members of our staff. What you do in your private life is no concern of mine.” [Can you see the glimmer of recognition? They KNOW that what they are doing is repugnant, which is why they try to disavow responsibility for it. For more sickening disingenuousness, compare these next two passages from the “interview.”]

“In fact, if you were a little more open about this, I think people would show a lot more compassion and understanding about where you're coming from. No one is picking on you because of your likes or preferences. That's not the issue here.” [Which the reporter knows to be a stone-cold lie, a false kindness offered to a vulnerable man w

[Here's the remainder of the post, which the software may have cut off due to its length...]
----------
“In fact, if you were a little more open about this, I think people would show a lot more compassion and understanding about where you're coming from. No one is picking on you because of your likes or preferences. That's not the issue here.” [Which the reporter knows to be a stone-cold lie, a false kindness offered to a vulnerable man whom the reporter himself is going to eviscerate. How so? Take a look [or hear the arm-twisting tone of voice in the audio] at how the reporter then turns and shows the knife when he doesn’t get what he wants:

“I'm just going to tell you how this is going to wash with the general public. There going to say here's a 54, 55yo mayor and he's engaged in lengthy chats and what psychologists might call grooming on line with who he thought was a 17yo, 18yo Ferris High School student.”

How telling, then, that Mr. Smith would compare Frontline’s account as “Shakesperean.” He’s right – but if West is King Lear, then Mr. Smith and the staff at the Spokesman-Review are themselves like Prince Hamlets, stalking destroyers who can’t own up to the gravity of their own devious actions.

These questions remain:

If reporters or editors at the paper believe that using a paid operative to deceive a source is unethical, then what are they doing about it? Not just hand-wringing, what actions of consequence?

Has the Spokesman-Review ever taken latitude with a factual account to make it more “dramatic,” as they fault Frontline for doing? This may take some hard reflection, but it gets to the very heart of why the public views the paper’s self-pity party with such disdain. Frontline, in other words, did to the Spokesman-Review exactly what news outlets do to subjects every single day. The only difference was that this time, theirs happens to be the china shop that’s being rampaged.

Smith refers repeatedly to the laborious, collaborative process and moral vetting that the coverage went through. Presumably, then, many various methods for uncovering information were considered. Which, if any, were rejected because they would have been unethical? Or would you have us accept that the Spokesman-Review’s own moral compass pointed true north all the way along?

Mr. Smith may think that everyone has “moved on,” “it is what it is,” or that when the curtain closes, so does the moral ledger. But the audience – that is, the S-R readers and the news-consuming public – know better. And, despite the newsroom back-slapping, that’s not applause you’re hearing.

Food Lion. The Mirage Bar. Dateline's efforts to catch sexual predators. These are the types of stories that elicit passionate ethical debates, and that's healthy. If you believe it's never permissible to go undercover to obtain important information regarding corruption or public safety that may be otherwise unobtainable, you're surely entitled to that opinion. But all of the efforts cited above led to demonstrable public good. In the West case, the irony is that the consultant was hired to confirm facts. It was an extra effort to make absolutely sure the story was solid. I think it was done responsibly and for the best reasons, and I think it was ethically handled. Your mileage may vary. But reasonable people can disagree on this point; it's highly disengenuous, Jim McCarthy, for you and others on these boards to imply or state that there's some hard and fast edict against these journalistic practices. Carefully considered, carefully done as a last resort or a final confirmational step, many journalists believe they have a place. You don't like it. Noted. But the end result here was exposing scummy behavior. Others have commented on these boards that the S-R killed West. Cancer killed West. Some have said the paper destroyed his life; actually, it revealed the sordid truth of his life beneath the thin veneer.

Jim, you make one point I agree with wholeheartedly and I think most folks in the business would, too: "Frontline, in other words, did to the Spokesman-Review exactly what news outlets do to subjects every single day."

It's instructive for any journalist or group of journalists to be subject to the hard reporting and analysis of their peers. But that doesn't mean they can't point out errors and omissions just like the sources of any other story are free to do. I don't see any pity parties being thrown; just hardworking, dedicated professionals pointing out issues they have with the coverage.

You take issue with the S-R. Some of us take issue with Frontline's piece. It plays out in a healthy marketplace of ideas. Seems reasonable to me, but you can keep thundering about it if you want...

Yes Greg, that was a poor cut and paste job. I agreed with most of the posters on the original string...certainly not the SR defenders, who I suspect are all getting paid by the SR. And I disagree that the Jack Lynch treatment is irrelevant to this discussion. That situation is so similar it is scary, really. I find it humorous that you guys can't open your minds even a smidge to listen to your professional collegues from around the country explain why they felt this story treatment and the tactics employed by the Srwere flat out unethical...

God, I WANT to be paid, so if you can find anyone to send me a check, feel free to forward them my contact information. I can't seem to even get the S-R to pull the trigger on pizza (though Lord knows I've tried).

And Bent, you can't seem to acknowledge that sometimes the ends justify the means.

To me, this settlement validates the veracity of Galliher's allegations concerning Hahn, which also provides some creedence to his allegations as to West.

What credence?
It it disingenuous to read from a lawyer that because the County settled the Hahn case with Galliher, it suggests guilt by West? Does it make sense to make a settlement that, win or lose, would be at a much cheaper cost, than goint to trial? Again, we see the assertion that if there is doubt, there must be smoke caused not by mirrors, but by fire.
While humerous discussions as to potential headlines occur, I'm sure daily, in my opinion, at least in a situation like the West story, it would be better that those exchanges stay within the newsroom because of how they can become misinterpreted.
No doubt you would have preferred such exchanges remain in the newsroom, pray tell what possible misinterpretation could be made here of what you call "humorous discussion?"
Still, I think of all the victims of molestation who can't come forward when they're little and often get sent by their abusers on a hard-luck path in life. The ones who finally work up the courage to level the accusation decades later rarely have any physical evidence to back them up, lacking a "CSI" time machine. So even if several unrelated accusers step forward as flawed adults, if the person they're accusing is a slick, charismatic guy, they just end up getting victimized all over again.
Where's the comment-string outrage about that?--Frank
Comment: it is a straw man to put forward anybody suggests that victims of child abuse do not suffer horrors, often on a "hard-luck path." Nobody has argued against this truism any more than Frank is referring to West as the "flawed" adult being victimized again or Galliher as being the slick one, because nobody would mistake West as being the charismatic one. As Frank might well know there is more than ample evidence that sex abuse accusation arising from "recovered memory" has an extremely problematic history. Case after case astoundingly shows that even with the accused often confessing guilt, it has turned out to be proven to have been entirely false. Because someone comes forward with allegation 29 yrs later is the weakest case that can point any finger of gotcha at West We need to look no further than the famous case in Seattle, Mateu v. Hagen (King County Superior Court) or the infamous Rigby, Idaho case, http://www.csicop.org/si/9503/memory.html or the Rupert, Idaho case http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/la_times/216O.html. One does not even have to believe Galliher had financial motivation for coming up with what he well might believe after so many years given the allegations, the suspicions, the accusations against West suggested all this to him. It is dreadfully common in recovered memory cases. http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/12/22/false_memory/ , but many, many others abound. If, in another strike out, Frank claims that because West knew Hahn are we then forbidden to make the giant leap that this is suggesting guilt by association or is just again the case of smoke assuming there a a fire beneath

Did anyone else notice that when the ex-wife recalled how West passed her the note on the senate floor to propose to her. "It said, Will you marry me, love Jim" she says on camera. Frontline cuts to a brief shot of the note. Curiously absent--the word "love." Very telling detail. --borrowing from Duane
Give us a break, and tell us what this detail tells. Another grave and substantial error by Frontline?
I did notice that. I also noticed that Frontline did an incredible disservice by utilizing the interview shot with her (the ex-wife)to establish that West was tortured BUT did not act on his homosexual feelings until after they were divorced. Yes, she looked as if she believed what she was saying, but YES she also seemed incredibly naive and gullible. Viewers should have been able to critically address that, but Frontline offered NO alternative. Those rumors of West when he was in the state legislature didn't occur due to his steadfast adherence to a straight lifestyle. The rumors shouldn't have convicted him either, but I felt it irresponsible to offer no other angle than the devoted ex-wife to establish the timeline of West's dalliances.
Posted by Greg | 15 Nov 4:27 PM
I think this nicely sums up the entire mindset of this entire witch hunt. If West was a closeted gay man, then he must have always been gay and therefore probably guilty of gay dalliances! Well, have ya eveh? Well duh, Greg is good and no doubt a practioner of the het lifestyle, & that's certainly is mighty cool indeed, to establish what a miscreant West was. Convinces me he was a child molester..

If West was a closeted gay man, then he must have always been gay

Um...yes. Unless you think homosexuality can be "caught" or learned....

By the way, not too confusing your responding to several different posts by different people all at once. Fun read.

So, it’s “highly disingenuous to imply or state that there’s some hard and fast edict against these journalistic practices.” Is that so? Well, let’s take a look. Here’s what the New York Times states in its ethics guidelines, in a section simply titled, “Masquerading”:

“Times reporters do not actively misrepresent their identity to get a story.”

And here’s the standard the Washington Post uses:

“In gathering news, reporters will not misrepresent their identity. They will not identify themselves as police officers, physicians or anything other than journalists.”

Did the S-R attempt any other approaches to confirming West’s chat-room identity? They won’t say. Did they explain why the “consultant” (a howler of a euphemism) was never identified or how much his services cost? Not that I’ve seen. What methods were considered and then ruled out during the S-R’s supposedly vigorous vetting process? That’s the third time I’ve asked that question without reply. How about it, Frank?

Does it meet the “highest professional standards” when you seek to confirm someone’s identity in a gay adult chat-room? Wait, let me ask that another way: Is there anything lower or more tawdry than snooping around someone’s private, consensual sex life while in disguise?

And what to make of Frank Sennett’s claim that, “all of the efforts cited above led to demonstrable public good.” Um, what “good” would that be exactly? Public officials are now on notice that the S-R has printed its own license to pry into their sex lives? The sanctity of unpaid townhall internships is now safeguarded? Closeted gay officials had better tow the party line or face an outing? Ooh, wait, I got it – unnamed and unsubstantiated sources (even felons!) can get space on the front page to point fingers of sexual impropriety. Here’s how Sennett describes their vaunted, achieved good: “the end result here was exposing scummy behavior.” Well, congratulations, and let nothing stand in the way of your pursuit of that excellent goal.

Gauging from the message boards, the responses on Frontline’s webpage and the assessment of other major news outlets, whatever good the S-R thinks it accomplished, it seems threadbare at best – and indisputably came at the cost of a life destroyed. But look a little closer at Sennett’s assertion and you’ll see how frightening it truly is. He’s making a classic ends-justify-the-means moral argument. (And yes, Greg, some people adhere to that view but you’re in dubious company
)

That’s the core problem here: journalism ethics are flexible. Sennett is sadly, horribly right: the rules are simply made up by the news outlets themselves and then they can be applied or discarded at whim. Oh, sure, journalists will claim to go through all sorts of hand-wringing and agonizing, but is there any actual restraint or consequence? Of course not.

If any other sphere of American public life behaved in that fashion, people like Sennett would scream to the church rafters. Imagine if a pharmaceutical firm said that they were self-regulating and that the “healthy marketplace” of doctors and patients would hold them accountable. What if the Senate Ethics Committee argued that they have vigorous discussions about ethics but that “fair-minded people can disagree?” What if Hewlett-Packard argued that it’s A-OK to hire “consultants” to surreptitiously, though legally, obtain the phone records of journalists who were disseminating their trade secrets?

What’s especially damning, I think, is the total lack of contrition. Is there really no one at the S-R who has any misgivings about the harm that was done or the methods used that caused it? Journalists love to wrap themselves in a mantle of virtue but when it comes time to bear the actual burden of their convictions, those voices grow silent and the actions, empty. (The one exception is when they go to jail in defiance of court orders – in the belief that they have special rights not afforded to the rest of us).

Yes, passionate debate is healthy, I agree. But unless those debates lead to actual, enforceable standards, they are nothing more than a glorified dorm-room bull session. It amounts to a hollow policy that says essentially: on the one hand, on the other hand, go for it.

Frank, you're on your own with this one.

Jim, if you're going to mischaracterize my comments, it's tough to respond. The demonstrable public good line referred to the three examples of major news organizations, ABC, Chicago Sun-Times and NBC, using tactics you claim are not part of some "universal" code of ethics. ABC uncovered safe food handling issues, the Sun-Times uncovered corrupt city workers, NBC outed scary sex predators. Not too shabby there, Jim. No? I think there was demonstrable public good from the West investigation, too, because it exposed his scummy, predatory behavior, which investigators concluded broke the law. Ethics in journalism are about reaching consensus. There is no consensus about using these particular techniques--some condemn the S-R for its confirmational actions, but plenty of regular readers and experts in journalism ethics support the actions. That's a fact, Jim. I'm sorry, no matter how much hair you pull out in insisting the contrary, it doesn't change the reality that this is a point upon which reasonable professionals in this industry can disagree. The S-R didn't discard anything at whim. The editors and reporters discussed each step at length and reached out to independent ethics experts for advice and support. Your angry proclamations to the contrary can't change that fact. As for your questions, I write a column, I did not participate directly in the investigation, but my clear understanding is that the paper secured the consultant only after much deliberation and only after exhausting other attempts to confirm the information. Finally, I don't think your implication that journalism should move away from the self-regulation model will fly. Check out that little item atop the Bill of Rights. And yes, with rights come responsibilities; in this case, I believe the S-R lived up to them in full. No matter which side of the debate you're on, no one I know believes journalists should lightly take the decision to go undercover.

Good job, Frank.

By the way, that little exchange was one I enjoyed (from both sides). Doesn't mean you have to agree, but at least come up with reasoned arguments with supportive evidence.

I'm getting sick of the "The S-R is the Devil! Steve Smith should be fired, and how does he sleep nights?" rants.

Everyone has their little agenda, and everyone enjoys using these "transparent newsroom" blogs to flame anonymously, but I've seen little of actual reasoned debate, which means that I can arbitrarily discard much of what is written here, no matter how vehemently the author believes what they've written.

Can I move? I'm better when I move...

Greg,

I just want to agree with your point RE: the "S-R is the Devil!" posts.

According to one guy - Mark, iirc - in the other (larger) "Frontline" comments thread, I'm going to burn in Hell for working here.

Man, I just write about restaurants and bars.

Hell? Really?

Or, as a wise man once said: Oh, really?

Having read through these comments with interest as well as a good deal of the archived material at the newspaper's site, a couple of thoughts occur.

Clearly the staff of the paper has an almost evangelical attitude toward this story, a story that they clearly feel they own.

There's no way you can get around the fact that the paper entrapped West. Having read motobrock's posts it is clear that he was coming on to West not the other way round. If the staff of the paper was so concerned with the moral health of the young adults of Spokane the correct thing to do would have been to hand over whatever evidence they had to the police.

The conflation of pedophile with gay runs through all the reporting I read. The paper seems to have launched the story as being one of a pedophile only to adjust to the 'predator' angle when no WMDs were found. And we are talking about fantasy for most of the time. Two adults separated by physical distance.

If the mayor's private behavior was ignoble so were his public politics. Why should anyone be surprised.

Clearly the paper thought it was occupting the moral high ground. And still does, to judge from the tone of the replies of its employees here. Anyone caught up in this kind of sting launched by a paper has no chance of ever correcting the record. Read 'The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum'. You all have been angered by the Frontline report and are using your access to a public forum to try to trash their work. We private citizens can't even get so much as an apology printed when a newspaper gets things wrong.

But I repeat: If you all thought the mayor's behavior to be so dangerous you should have turned your evidence over to the police. Not used it to entrap a man against whom you clearly held some animus.

And to answer a question put repeatedly by a spokesman for the paper, no I would not want a newspaper to run a story about a son or daughter of mine who was being courted by an older man. I would want to deal with the situation myself.

Well said, Stephen. I'm outraged by the posture of the journalists at the S-R and I've tried to reflect that in what I've written on these boards. But the objective, calm and clear common sense of your post I think has been the most persuasive indictment so far. Bravo.

I'm willing to accept the crass comments in the newsroom about headlines as reporters being reporters -- being one myself. But even without Smith's "We were right" suggestion, the S-R editor reveals his bias when he says he feels for West, just not as much as the children he victimized. Even rookie journalists know it's not their place to decide guilt or innocence. No wonder West felt like Smith and the S-R had it in for him.

Two credible allegations of child sexual abuse. Reports of highly inappropriate behavior with Boy Scouts. Grooming young men online. Hitting on a teenager he encountered near his office. Offering another young man money to swim nude with him. Closely associated with two notorious molesters.

Gentlemen, what's the threshold for connecting those dots as journalists? The debate over the methods used to confirm the online grooming (emphasis on confirm) behavior is understandable. The notion that West was a victim in the overall context of the story is absurd, and completely contradicted by the facts.

There seems to be some thought that more accusers would have had to step forward for it to be a legitimate story. What's the number, then? Those guys stepped forward and took a lot of flak for it. But hey, what do you need? Three credible accusers? Six? Twenty? Just give us the number so we can update the "universal" ethics code.

You guys should go hang out with the editors in Florida who spiked their Mark Foley investigations and let him keep up his predatory behavior for an extra year. You'll be a lot more comfortable hanging out with those paragons of ethical perfection.

Meanwhile, I guess we'll all just go on reporting the news.

And there's nothing evangelical about pushing back forcefully against illogical, ignorant attacks from anonymous ranters, "Stephen."

I have been sharply critical of the S-R, in print, over a few troubling incidents over the years. In fact, I picked a bone about the first paragraph of the first story in the West series. I'm never afraid to point out problems as I see them. The problem here, though, isn't with the S-R. The posture in the newsroom is proud and unapologetic because the paper tackled an important story that needed to be told. The bad things that happened to West, he brought them on himself. If you're willfully blind to that fact, or willfully ignorant of it, well, that's your right, but there's not much left to discuss at that point...

The Mirage Bar, Food Lion and “To Catch a Predator”? These are the justifications you wish to cite for moving the ethical goalposts? The first was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Sun-Times and ultimately repudiated in the profession by many including Ben Bradlee, Scotty Reston, and Clay Kirkpatrick – and never repeated. The second resulted in a finding of negligence and malice against ABC by a jury of ordinary citizens in a court of law. The third involves a quasi-actor from NBC who, in his own words, “enlisted a vigilante group” to conduct entrapment schemes that even law enforcement wouldn’t conduct. Nice. That’s setting the bar way high, isn’t it?

If reasonable people can disagree, then let’s think about both sides for a second. Which is better, honesty or deception? Which moral system is preferable, the one with hard, fixed standards, or the one that’s flexible and optional?

Newspapers hold themselves up as guardians of the public trust and watchdogs of public ethics. Yet, they will only abide by scant accountable standards of their own, self-devised.

Journalists regard themselves as moral arbiters and take offense when the public doubts their rectitude or questions their judgment. Yet, they are willing to troll through private sex lives, lie to sources, hire operatives, slant stories, lay waste to any institution and, yes, destroy lives.

Dear readers, this isn’t a debate between the critics on this message board and the paper. Worthwhile debate with them is barely possible – because that implies a truth can be found and as Frank Sennett has pointed out to you, truth is in the eye of the beholder. At the Spokesman-Review, there aren’t really standards, only suggestions.

But remember, what the Spokesman-Review is selling, in essence, is their credibility. That means *you* get to decide whether they are worthy, by either reading their paper or by shunning it. And here’s the truth by their own account:

1. They paid someone to lie to facilitate a story.

2. They abide by no universal standards.

3. They will resort to means that even law enforcement forbids and they will defy rule of law if a court interferes with their methods.

4. Even when individual reporters object to the misconduct of the paper, they will condone it by continuing to work there nevertheless.

5. Given a second chance to let a separate news outlet like Frontline observe their methods first-hand, they would opt not to. (Notice: they will indulge, though dismiss, public feedback on board like this one – but are wary of the scrutiny of other professionals who are savvy to their tactics.)

Spokesman-Review online producer Ken Paulman asks in a previous post whether you, readers, would let a Jim West have contact with a child of yours. Fair enough, but here’s the parallel question: would you want someone with the elastic, situational values cited above, the values of journalism, to stand caretaker for something you value either?

Those reporters from the S-R insist that any critic must read their entire macabre opus on Jim West, which I’ve managed, antacid in hand. Allow me to suggest a little further reading for them. Try “Hamlet.” Seriously. The king may have wronged, the play points out, but it is Hamlet’s inability to come to terms with the morality of his own destructive impulses that is enlightening.

Next, try “The Journalist and the Murderer” by A-list reporter Janet Malcolm. “Every journalist knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she reflects. “The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced moral anarchy.”

More recently, there’s this remarkable flash of confessional clarity from media writer David Carr of the New York Times that somehow made it into print there last year: “The public has a well-established mistrust for the press. It is the people who endure journalism, in all of its blunt and wily manifestations, who hold it in the lowest esteem. They have learned, often painfully, that a fraud is embedded not so much in the telling, but in the finding out.”

The real pathos in this story is that there probably will never be any hard accountability, no real consequences. No one will lose their job at the S-R and you can be damn sure no one will resign out of principle. Like gawkers past a car crash, most observers will simply move on (as several S-R posters have accurately reassured themselves). This ain’t the movies and far and few between are the reporters that pay for their misdeeds. When that does happen, say with Jayson Blair or Judy Miller, the public outcry isn’t because of plagiarism or sourcing nuance. Take note, S-R scribes: it’s because the readers want a comeuppance.

In any event, as is the nature of journalism, the S-R will simply sharpen the blade, scan the horizon and quietly select their next target. So take their advice – don’t cooperate

[Last graf was cut off...]

In any event, as is the nature of journalism, the S-R will simply sharpen the blade, scan the horizon and quietly select their next target. So take their advice – don’t cooperate with reporters, they are not to be trusted and they are not your friends.

The people held someone accountable as a result of the series. He lost 2-1. But you wield the hard hammer of truth. I bow to your all-seeing, all-knowing sermonizing. I'll buy you a drink at the Mirage sometime and you can teach me all about journalism.

Frank Sennett wrote:

"Can I move? I'm better when I move...

Posted by Frank Sennett | 16 Nov 2:21 PM

To add a bit of levity to all this heated morass, I hereby acknowledge that when I move, I wiggle inappropriately, or so my kids tell me. So maybe I'm better off where I am.

Although I'm done talking to broken record "Jim McCarthy" (hope that's his real name because we all know how he feels about the universal prohibition against deception), who when he finally researched my examples did not disprove they led to demonstrable public good but merely illustrated what I said all along, that the undercover technique is controversial, this issue is important so I'll take one more run at it for open-minded followers of this thread:

1. Let's reverse-engineer what actually happened here into a proposed ethics statement that seems quite reasonable to me:

We will only report undercover if there is an story important to the public interest that we cannot otherwise confirm. In those rare cases, we will debate the decision with care before going forward with any undercover reporting and we will limit the scope of such reporting only to confirming the key details in question. Upon concluding those rare, carefully considered undercover reporting projects, we will clearly explain to readers how and why we did so.

If you disagree with that, ok, but that's not an irresponsible policy.

2. When it comes to accountability, look at an analogous situation with police departments. Undercover operations are a small part of what they do, and as long as the operations are carefully thought out and used to crack an important case, such as bringing a hit man to justice, they do not tend to harm the department's credibility. But if the department sends officers to a massage parlor undercover to repeatedly have sex, as has happened recently in one county back east, the department's credibility deservedly takes a hit. It's not whether or not you go undercover, in my view, it's about why and how you do it.

Journalists rarely go undercover because stories are usually obtainable in other ways and, as in Food Lion, there are ancillary legal issues to consider. But if they go undercover in rare, thoughtfully considered circumstances in a way that advances an important story that otherwise cannot be obtained, then I don't see how the mere fact of going undercover tarnishes the news operation. "60 Minutes" rose to prominence and respect in part on the strength of its undercover reporting. And just like any operation that engages in undercover activities, media outlets do so at their peril. If they do so recklessly or in cases where there's not a compelling reason to do so, they will lose credibility. Although this series has drawn some vocal and passionate critics, overall that's not the case here.

While accusing me of 'ranting' Frank Sennet declares:

"The posture in the newsroom is proud and unapologetic because the paper tackled an important story that needed to be told. "

And I think that's your problem in a nutshell. I would have thought a better posture would be one that is unemotional and professional. Mr. Sennet then repeats highly-colored accusations (this style seems to be typicalof the paper from what I've read in its archive) some of which - the accusation by Galliher (sp?) of the sexual abuse of children - are simply not credible.

I find troubling the vehemence with which the employees of this newspaper continue to insist that their actions and attitudes are beyond reproach. I thought that my original posting was polite if mildly critical. Mr. Sennet replies to it in a most intemperate, personal and unprofessional manner.

Clearly, the editor and his staff have become personally involved in this story. Clearly you see yourselves as keepers of the public morality. This leads the writers into absurd uses of language. What on earth is 'online grooming'? Whatever it is it is clearly a great deal more dangerous than chatting, which is what was going on. Your paid agent clearly led the conversations into sexual and intimate areas and not the other way round.

I repeat, if the Spokesman considered mayor West's actions to be so dangerous to the citizens of Spokane it should have handed over the story to the police. The self-righteousness of the reporters who confronted Mr. West is palpable on the recordings. So is their eagerness to play gotcha with him. For grown-up reporters to now defend their lamentable behavior while searching for headlines by pretending they didn't understand the double-entendres being presented with such glee in the newsroom is laughable.

Pedophiles and 'sexual predators' have become the new Satanic Ritual Abusers. Clearly the editor and reporters who constructed this story expected Pulitzers all round. It seems to me to be disingenuous to pretend now that the motive behind the outing of Mr. West was to protect the children of Spokane.

And why are you all spending so much time defending your actions? This seems very peculiar to me. My work gets reviewed by reporters all the time. Sometimes they don't have a clue what I'm writing about and write nonsense. I don't go off in a huff and devote hours to attacking them and defending myself. Instead, the staff of the Spokesman who are posting here are reacting in what I can only decribe as a petulant, even childish manner which does nothing to reassure a reader like myself. Perhaps it's time you let your work speak for itself. You can't control the way outsiders regard its merit. No one can.

The assertion that Mr. West somehow used the producers of Frontline is ridiculous. There is a pronounced subtext on this board that the truth-loving reporters of a provincial newspaper were used by big-city slickers who were hoodwinked by the anti-Christ. When he was interviewed by Fontline he was dying. Clearly his intention was to set the record straight as he saw it. That you don't like his version of the story is understandable. That you don't like it that there are those of us who saw that program and question the actions and intentions of the Spokesman is also understandable.

Please don't reply by telling me what a credulous, ranting non-entity I am. It really doesn't help your case.

Yes, grooming is a wild, wacky word no one ever uses:

http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/cybercrime/children.html

Yes, it's nutty to have a healthy back and forth on a blog called "News is a Conversation."

Yes, Galliher is so lacking in credibility that he has just won a settlement in a related sexual abuse case.

Your personal attacks grow even more tiresome when you fail even to spell my name properly.

I think I'm done here...

Mr. Sennett, personal attacks? Huh? I spelled your name incorrectly? My apologies.

"I think I'm done here". So you flounce off? What is this? Your paper maintains this blog. If you don't want people to tell you what they think then close it down. Otherwise, not to be personal about it, what can we think but that it is an excercise in vanity.

It seems that when you think you are being personally attacked you have an awfully thin skin. You might now imagine what your paper's personal attacks feel like to their victim.

To be the defendant in one case of sexual abuse is indeed a misfortune. To be the victim in two, as you now say is true of Mr. Galliher, begins to look like a career.

Best wishes for your future work.

Stephen at 7:16 a.m.: "And why are you all spending so much time defending your actions? This seems very peculiar to me."

Stephen at 10:14 a.m.: "So you flounce off? What is this?"

When the internal logical consistency breaks down to that extent, it's hopeless to continue.

Enough said. Time to flounce...

Just a few notes for this topic, one in which many of the participants have "flounced off" apparently.
A settlement gives "credibility" to no one. It's a legal decision commonly used in any situation (malpractice being a common one) in which the cost of litigation will exceed the cost of the settlement. If Jim West were a habitual pedophile, dozens of men would have flocked to reveal that, just as they have in the Catholic diocese cases, on the mere chance that they could receive some sort of settlement. The fact that NO ONE, other than Galliher has come forward to make this charge tells the tale. The reporting staff of the paper HAS to know that on some level, otherwise they wouldn't be in such a defensive mode about this angle of their story.
I'm a gay man, and extremely liberal. I wouldn't have voted for Jim West if he had agreed to pave Spokane's streets with gold. I had many, many qualms about him, even while recognizing that he was a very competent "get things done" politician, far better than what we are accustomed to in local Spokane politics. That being said, the constant innuendo in the paper that homosexuality = pedophilia was repugnant, and continues to undermine what you think or keep saying was your story.
Perhaps you need to do a little self-examination which satisfactorily explains to you why Charlie Chaplin's marriage to Oona O'neill when she was 17 and he was 54, or Tony Randall's marriage when he was 75 and his bride was 24, or Tony Sinatra and Mia Farrow when she was 21 and he was 50, or Humphrey Bogart when he was 54 and Lauren Bacall was 20, don't bother you nearly as much as the idea of an older man like Jim West chatting online with someone 18 years old. (I'm assuming that the husbands met their future wives when they were still in their teens).
The age differential in ALL these cases makes me shudder quite a bit, but it's still a realm where the activity itself is legal and merely offends our sense of what is appropriate. Until you arrive at a better level of self-honesty about what REALLY bothered you about Jim West, I think you need to lay off this entire "Jim West was a pedophile because we say so" routine.

Let’s have a review. Ken Paulman’s rebuttal of 11/18 seems a fair summary of the S-R’s posture:

One. The critics don’t live in Spokane. This is the same parochial rationale favored by vigilantes and witch-hunters of every locale. Rhetorically, it’s also a non-sequitur but, hey, whatever. Besides, the claim is false: many posters are indeed from Spokane – and by my read most of those, on both the S-R site and Frontline’s, are sharply critical of the paper.

Two. Jim West was a manipulative tactician, a narcissist who harmed others. Perhaps so, but that in no way infers that the Spokesman-Review acted ethically or responsibly. That’s the encompassing point that the S-R so stubbornly refuses to consider: West behaved badly and so did they.

Three. Critics haven’t examined the whole of the paper’s work. Yet, those who review it at first blush are revolted. Those who actually have reviewed the entirety, like myself and many other readers, are as well. And top-notch news outlets, far superior by any measure to the Spokesman-Review like the NYT and Frontline have also indicted the paper. Memo to S-R echo chamber: that’s about as comprehensive a focus group as you can get.

Next, scan the conversation that’s taken place in these boards. Editor Steven Smith made an initial post, and has said scant little since. Frontline has published an eight point rebuttal of his contentions about their piece and those points have gone unanswered.

And since Smith’s initial remarks, the main defenders of the paper’s conduct have been a columnist – who has little first-hand knowledge about the editorial/investigative process involved – and the manager of the website, Ken Paulman, who says, “I’m just the Web guy – I observe, document and sometimes analyze, but these [editorial] decisions aren’t up to me.” [And to answer Frank Sennett, yes, my real name is Jim McCarthy and I offered Ken Paulman my direct number to verify my identity. And, no, I didn’t need to research the stories you cited, their infamy is well known.]

So, where are Steven Smith and the reporters whose conduct is in question? Where are the reporters who have ethical objections to the paper’s methods and the wreckage that resulted – and, especially, what do they intend to do about it? Or are readers to believe that no one in the newsroom is really bothered – at least not enough to make a meaningful stand? How about Bill “Come Clean” Morlin? His apparent moral contradiction in the Frontline piece has gone unresolved as far as I can tell.

Here are the questions that I’ve posed several times now, which have also gone ignored:

1. Did the S-R attempt any other approaches to confirming West’s chat-room identity and what, specifically, were they?

2. Why was the operative the paper hired granted anonymity and how much did his services cost?

3. What methods, if any, were considered and then ruled out for ethics reasons during the S-R’s supposedly vigorous vetting process?

Smith posed these additional questions and thoughts himself on the blog recently, albeit about the paper’s latest sex-in-the-city sleuthing:

“Is the paper beginning to look like the community’s old Victorian aunt, so prudish and judgmental that we bleed life out of the community?”

“Does our aggressive crusade for truth in these matters begin to overwhelm our other interests and our other journalism?”

“But in this community, with a culture that allows folks and circumstances to just fade away quietly, we ultimately decided it was time to tell folks what we know, dispel some of the outrageous rumors in the process and set the stage for additional reports.”

Well, readers have weighed in. The paper claims to value dialogue and they’ve got the Payne award to prove it. So, what do Smith and the reporters involved have to say about all these open questions?

I watched the Frontline report and have read through the articles and all of the comments posted here and have come to a few conclusions.

I believe that the SR acted irresponsibly in their "sting". Supposedly their motivation was to confirm that Mr. West was taking advantage of underage boys. It seems to me that (discounting the accusation of Mr. Gallaher) their sting failed at the point where they had to change the age of their "bait". As far as I can tell, there was no discussion of sex in exchange for the UNPAID internship. According to the FBI report, anyone that applied for the internship pretty much got one. The fact that there is no record of the initial discussion of the internship is also problematic for PROVING that Mr. West initiated the discussion.

I cannot speak to the allegations made by Mr. Gallaher but I do find the timing of his suddenly accurate memory suspicious. Perhaps, I wouldn't have these doubts if he had made the accusation BEFORE the SR sting - certainly his accusation added fuel to his case against the county. Did he use the paper for his own benefit? Who knows, not me certainly.

I am one of those people who doesn't read that paper and well heck I don't even live in the United States so I guess I can expect to take some heat but I just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth (hmmm I guess that's about 3/4 of a cent US lol)

Jim McCarthy asked:

So, what do Smith and the reporters involved have to say about all these open questions?

Jim, didn't you get the memo:

"We, the S-R newsroom, and the community have moved on"

By the way, I love your commentary.

What's it called when you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

That would be kicking a dead horse Greg.

The dead horse refusing to see the glacial error of its ways is called bald face arrogance. Neigh?

Dave, it a lost cause. I have yet to hear anyone who is not finanicially benefiting from the SR, defend their actions on this story -- other than a few gay folks who out right hated Jim West. Ken was just promoted, and Frank is paid as a columnist, and Greg is alowed to use this online forum to blatantly plug his bookstore. Check it out:

Posted by Greg Delzer | 19 Nov 11:11 PM | Comments (2)

I wonder why, in the article in the S-R regarding the 1996 Ice Storm, was mention not made of the book put out by the S-R about the storm back in 1996:
Ice storm '96: Days of darkness, days of cold : a pictorial record of the worst winter storm in the history of the inland Northwest : featuring reports and photos from the Spokesman-Review

While it's true that the book is out of print, it can still be found, say, in bookstores that specialize in used and out of print books. Probably locally. For, say, $24.99.