Undercover Reporting

"Deception - Honest Tool of Reporting?" - David Shaw - Los Angeles Times

1979-09-20

A reporter for the Detroit News poses as a Michigan congressman to prove how lax security is at a treaty-signing ceremony on the White House lawn.A reporter for the Los Angeles Times poses as a graduate student in psychology working in a state mental hospital to expose conditions there.A reporter for the Wall Street Journal works three weeks on an assembly line in a large plant to investigate charges that the company routinely violates labor practicesAre these unethical activities? ...

"Undercover, Under Fire" - Ken Silverstein - Los Angeles Times

The Washington press corps is too busy cozying up to the people it covers to get at the truth.

2007-06-30

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I put on a brand-new tailored suit, picked up a sleek leather briefcase and headed to downtown Washington for meetings with some of the city's most prominent lobbyists. I had contacted their firms several weeks earlier, pretending to be the representative of a London-based energy company with business interests in Turkmenistan. I told them I wanted to hire the services of a firm to burnish that country's image.I didn't mention that Turkmenistan is run by an ugly, neo-Stalinist regime. They surely knew that, and besides, they didn't care. As I explained in this month's issue of Harper's Magazine, the lobbyists I met at Cassidy & Associates and APCO were more than eager to help out. In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year, they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think-tank experts they would recruit. They even offered to set up supposedly "independent" media events in Washington that would promote Turkmenistan (the agenda and speakers would actually be determined by the lobbyists).   All this, Cassidy and APCO promised, could be done quietly and unobtrusively, because the law that regulates foreign lobbyists is so flimsy that the firms would be required to reveal little information in their public disclosure forms. Now, in a fabulous bit of irony, my article about the unethical behavior of lobbying firms has become, for some in the media, a story about my ethics in reporting the story. The lobbyists have attacked the story and me personally, saying that it was unethical of me to misrepresent myself when I went to speak to them.

"Despair for the Mentally Ill" - Lois Timnick - Los Angeles Times

Metro Hospital - Place of Little Hope

1979-08-12

"It is 3:30 a.m. on the darkened, locked wards of Metropolitan State Hospital, the hour that belongs to demons, nightmares, cold sweats and fears. A mockingbird is singing monotonously in a scrawny bush outside Ward 406. And inside, 20-year-old Dudley Stewart is screaming, "I don't want no shots, no drugs . . .."

"Youngsters of All Ages Free to Browse Among Hashish Pipes, Obscene Comic Books" - Mike Goodman - Los Angeles Times

1972-04-09

"Two 13-year-olds parked their bikes and strolled into the dimly lit shop, barely glancing at the four-foot-high plastic marijuana plan at the entrance."They sniffed at the sweetish aroma of incense as do hundreds of other youths who frequent similar 'head shops' across the Valley that specialize in everything for the dope smoker. "Head shops used to be frequented mainly by hippies and drug 'freaks' but observers say they now attract a broader clientele. "And few so-called 'straight' parents or adults interviewed said they had the faintest idea what's inside the more than 20 head shops scattered among Valley communities. . . ."