Do the Ends Justify the Means?
On page 337 of Converging Media, a yellow side box stands out on an otherwise black and white page. It is about media ethics and dilemmas. On Nov.5, 1992 ABC's Prime Time Live broadcasted a report on the unsanitary working conditions in a Food Lion supermarket. The show's producers designed a plan to put hidden cameras inside a Food Lion stores. To obtain the plan the producers applied at the Food Lion stores under fake identities and filled out fraudulent employee applications. After they started working at the store chain, they brought in hidden cameras and recorded what they witnessed going on inside the store. Such things included: harry employees, unsanitary conditions, and wasted food. This paragraph concluded by saying: The problem was that much of the neglections observed were due to the ABC employees neglection their own cleaning duties as Food Lion employees. Umm...was this just an action that the "employees" did just to add to their story? I think so. The Food Lions weren't unsanitary enough to groce people out, so with the fraud and lawful video tapping under their belts they decided to add neglect or otherwise known as sabotage.

Of course, Food Lion objected to the airing of this report and sued ABC (which they should have). The case was held in late 1996 and concluded in January 1997; the jury decided to prosecuted Prime Time Live and said that the program's producers had committed fraud and illegal trespass.

At the end of the story there are these questions: Do you think the decisions against ABC was justified and what other ways could the journalists have obtained the kind of information they did on unsanitary practices at eh supermarket chain? I do think that ABC should have lost the lawsuit, because they went behind the backs of Food Lion. It wasn't just going undercover, they broke the law. A good ethic based journalist should know the law comes first before trying to uncover a good story. There are other ways the producers could have went around breaking the law. They could have went and interviewed the corporate office's head people, found out when the Health Department was making their inspections and tagged along with them, or they could have got permission from the managers from the Food Lion to do the story and go around the store to look. Simple plans that aren't breaking the law. The producers were looking for the dirty story (no pun intended) and didn't look at all their options.