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Write vs. WrongWhat should a reporter do when he meets a terrorist?

By Scott Shuger
Posted Tuesday, April 23, 2002, at 9:07 PM ET

Monday's USA Today featured a remarkable first—an interview with a Palestinian woman trained by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who's planning to carry out a suicide bombing against Israel. The reporter, Gregg Zoroya, met in a West Bank refugee camp with her and her AAMB handler.

A remarkable story, and an ethically complicated one. Zoroya agreed not to use the woman's real name, a concession USA Today rarely makes. And to ensure that he was not being scammed, he went to Israeli security sources, who confirmed that they counted the handler as active in the AAMB. But he didn't tell the Israelis who the woman was or where his meeting was taking place. From a pure journalism point of view, this all makes perfect sense. But think about this story just a little bit and watch your moral intuition needles start bouncing all over the place.

Maybe you think it's obvious that USA Today did just what a newspaper should do because journalism is all about reporting the news, not changing it. The paper found out that a woman was planning a suicide attack and reported on her plans, period. But wait a second—recall that to satisfy its own professional requirements, the paper contacted Israeli security sources, thereby notifying them that a particular AAMB member had trained a particular woman to carry out a suicide mission. This is journalism's inevitable Heisenberg effect: Reporting on the world changes it. So, why not change it in a way that could save many innocent lives—by turning her in?

Suppose USA Today had managed to convince another young angry Muslim to talk on the record about his intention to conduct a suicide mission—and that he'd been trained by al-Qaida to hit an American target. Are you still sure the paper would be right not to go to the (U.S.) government and blow the whistle on this guy? (Bill Sternberg, a Washington-based USA Today senior editor, told me that what the paper would or should do in such a hypothetical situation never came up in the in-house editorial discussions of Zoroya's story; they mostly focused on ensuring the woman's authenticity.)

Maybe you think the difference is that USA Today is a U.S. paper, not an Israeli one, and that simple patriotism dictates going to the cops in the latter case but not the former. But this can't be right—if it were, then no American paper would ever have the obligation to help prevent the death of innocent non-Americans.

If anything gets USA Today off the hook, it's that Zoroya didn't know any details of the woman's plan.. She was definite about her intent, but not about anything else. She said why she would attack—because "Life is worth nothing when our people are being humiliated on a daily basis"—but nothing about what or where or when. If she had gone into these specifics, then surely the paper would have had to drop a dime on her, right?

Since it's specificity that seems to tip the moral scales here, a reporter working on a story about terrorism probably knows that almost any details he learns about planned acts can turn his work from a story into just a police tip. Therefore, it's understandable that reporters on such beats would tend to curb their ordinarily insatiable desire to learn as much as possible. (Not only did Zoroya not use the would-be suicide bomber's real name in the story—he never learned it.) But journalists should never forget this dilemma posed by terrorism: If knowing something can kill their story, not knowing it can kill us.

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Scott Shuger is a Slate senior writer who spent five years in the U.S. Navy and served overseas as an intelligence officer.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

John's post, below, produced an excellent thread on this topic: highly recommended by Scott Shuger himself.


Reader Comments From The Fray:


Most professions have professional societies that establish a code of ethics to help in situations just like this. Do journalists have such a society and a corresponding code of ethics? If so, what does it say?

The dilemma faced by this reporter is not unlike the one faced by mental health professionals working with a client or patient who reveals plans to kill someone. If the plan is specific (i.e., if the threatened individual is specifically identified), the "Disclosure" paragraph of the American Psychological Association code of ethics dictates that the patient's identity be revealed (and that the threatened individual be warned). Patients are usually informed in advance that the therapist is obligated to act in this way, so the patients can decide for themselves whether or not to discuss the specifics of their darker intentions.

It seems reasonable to me that a similar ethical standard could be applied to journalists. If so, then this USA Today journalist did not behave inappropriately (so far as I can tell).

--John

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


I am still stuck on a question regarding terrorism that I have been asking since Sept 12, and have not gotten an answer that satisfies me yet: What can the U.S. do to fight terrorists that Israel has not already tried?...

I don't want to completely capitulate to terrorists. But I wonder if antagonizing them is such a brilliant idea. Seems like maybe we should either remedy some of their grievances, or just go all-out into WWIII and turn the middle east into a wasteland. Both of these are ugly propositions, but one is far worse than the other...

--Mfbenson

(To find or answer this post, click here or here.)


Perhaps I am a bit too much the conservative to be participating in a discussion of legal matters when emotions are running high over terrorism (more than twice as many people die from unintended gun use each year than all the people killed on 9/11, perhaps we should be hysterical about that), but I believe that our Constitution places a high emphasis on criminal action being the actual execution of a crime, not the expresssion of intent. I have always been taught that you can not be punished for crimes you have not committed.

If terrorists have an outlet to the press, perhaps the need to do more than express themselves becomes less important. Certainly, those that oppose the terrorist get plenty of air time, making their side of the story sound more reasonable, whether or not it is...

--Ejk

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

(4/24)

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