Everyday Ethics

Perhaps you've heard or read about the tragicomedy that has been playing on the corporate stage at Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley computer company that is one of this country's better-known brand names. As sports announcer Dick Enberg likes to say about a dazzling play, "Oh, my!!!"

The action within HP may prompt exclamations galore, but there's been little to cheer about. Jeers are much more likely. The execs who run the company have managed to bring considerable scrutiny upon their behavior, putting themselves in ethical boiling water and quite possibly legal jeopardy.

In a nutshell, some of the HP execs apparently ordered or approved a wide-ranging investigation in search of leaks to journalists by either corporate board members or senior executives. The investigative tactics carried out by HP lackeys appear to have ranged from possibly illegal access to phone records of board members and journalists to a spy and sting operation on reporters.

There's plenty to be said about the corrosion of ethical values that this episode suggests. There's lots to be written about the bad judgment, poor decisions and ethical incompetence of some of the leaders of HP.

But that's all fodder for another time. For now, let's look instead at the journalistic dimensions of this story.

The HP corporate suits decided that one of the ways to ferret out the leakers within the company was to nail the journalists. Figure out who the reporters were using as confidential sources, this theory goes, and you find your leakers. HP investigators used deception and misrepresentation to get phone records. Company execs considered putting "spies" inside at least one news organization. The reported scheme: these "plants" would steal information that would reveal the "bad guys" within HP.

Journalists and their news organizations have reacted with revulsion. Let's imagine what they might say:

• "What do these executives think they are doing hiring people to steal our phone records!"
• "How dare these corporate hacks try to infiltrate our newsrooms!"
• "These blatantly bad actions could compromise our relationships with important confidential sources and undermine legitimate reporting!"
  

In fact, I've made some of those points myself in various interviews. I'm appalled that the journalists would be targeted and I'm concerned about the negative consequences.

But there is another side to this terrible triangle of deceit and decay.

Journalists who get huffy and puffy about the shenanigans of the HP executives should step back and reflect about how we do our work.

Journalists are not above using some forms of deception to get stories. We've long used our own form of sting operations. We've played private detective in ways that aren't always so kosher. Sometimes we pretend to be someone other than a journalist. Sometimes we are just less than forthright as we gather and glean information.
 
From Spokane to Chicago, newspapers have used sleight of hand to investigate public officials who were suspected of bad behavior.

From Hartford to St. Louis, news organizations have pulled punches on the true identities to get the truth about racial injustice.

Across the land, TV news networks and local television stations have used forms of deception and hidden cameras to target sexual predators, bad medical practitioners and the proverbial "snake-oil salesmen" ripping off consumers. Create a fake company. It's doable. Pretend to be a patient. Easily done.

And, in every state on the map, reporters have sweet-talked a low-level public bureaucrat or company serf into giving access to proprietary documents that the journalist could use to nail down an investigative story. Deception? Maybe not. Honest? Hmmmm.

To be sure, journalists often argue that the use of deception was essential to get to the truth. That the misrepresentation of identity, the surreptitious taping, the reporter undercover was a legitimate means to accomplish a justifiable end.

But isn't there great irony now as we watch the implosion within Hewlett-Packard and waggle our fingers and furrow our brow about that company's ethical failures?

Shouldn't the journalists -- from the intrepid investigative reporters who work on thin ethical ice to the editors and executive producers who encourage questionable tactics by demanding more edge to the stories -- be thinking hard about how we do our work?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of holding the powerful accountable. I'm behind revealing system failure in government. I'm championing stories that inform the public and illuminate frailty and fraud within major institutions.

And I've written about the rare times when it might be justifiable to consider deception to reveal important truths.

But I look at the Hewlett-Packard imbroglio and I can't help but wonder what happens when we shine the light of scrutiny inside our world of journalism.

What would happen, for instance, if one courageous news organization went "undercover" inside another news organization?

What would we learn if hidden cameras were placed inside the room where the story assignment meetings were held?

What would be revealed about why and how we deal with confidential sources if there were an account of those dealings?

We can look with disdain at the failures of Hewlett-Packard's leaders. We can condemn what the HP investigators apparently did to the journalists.

But how guilty are journalists of some of the same ethical failures we're spotlighting at HP?