Lapses
"A TV Station's Dirty Trick - Did St. Louis's KMOV Play Pimp to Snare a Priest?" - Howard Kurtz - The Washington Post
1993-06-03
". . .'I think it's appalling,' Joyce-Hayes said. 'I don't expect the media to create incidents that create news. This is pretty seamy stuff.' . . ."
"Going Too Far With the Hidden Camera?" - Lyle Denniston - AJR
A Meatpacking Firm Is Suing CBS Over a Covert Operation
1994-04-01
". . .In recent weeks, CBS and its lawyers have been trying to fight off a challenge in the courts of South Dakota and the U.S. Supreme Court. The network's two minutes of videotape filmed secretly inside a meatpacking plant in Rapid City have now been aired, with the help of an emergency order by Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. . ."
"NBC: Staging the News Again?" - Michelle Malkin
2006-04-04
". . .Catch that? The apparent “sting” involves targeting Nascar and other sporting events. ‘Cause that’s presumably where the fair and balanced NBC news staff thinks all the bigots are. . ."
"Dateline Mole Allegedly at DefCon with Hidden Camera" - Kim Zetter - Wired
2007-08-03
"DefCon security on Friday warned attendees at the annual hacker conference that Dateline NBC may have sent a mole with a hidden camera to the event to capture hackers admitting to crimes. DefCon says it was tipped off by their own mole at Dateline who sent them a pic of the undercover journalist who DefCon employees identified as producer Michelle Madigan. . ."
"Nightmare Without End" - Mary A. Fischer - GQ
Manic, bankrupt and naive, U.S. TV news producer Stephen Roye went to Thailand in pursuit of a story that he hoped would restore his career. Instead he wound up in an overcrowded, squalid Bangkok prison, where his Hollywood connections carry neight clout nor hope.
2007-10-07
". . .That Stephen Roye knowingly carried drugs is inarguable. That he was guilty of naivete and bad judgement is also beyond doubt. But his story, like that of a spellbinding novel, is more complicated, his motivations more complex than a single grave and foolish act might suggest. What led Roye to Bangkok illustrates an especially American kind of arrogance about the world and oneself, an arrogance that frequently leads to tragedy. The realities of being stranded and in mortal trouble in a foreign country, particularly a county in Southeast Asia, remind us once again that when you travel halfway around the world, you don't take the protections of the United States Constitution. . ."
"Staged on ABC" - Michelle Malkin - National Review Online
News Writer Fill-In for the Hollywood Strikers
2007-11-07
". . .On Monday, the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Ala., blew the whistle on an ABC News sting operation intended to elicit bigoted responses from local residents. The national ABC News program Primetime Live hired actors to pose as same-sex couples and engage in public displays of affection on a park bench. Birmingham police department sources told the Fox affiliate about the social experiment; a local merchant spotted an RV where the ABC crew was stationed. The merchant was told “ABC was working on a week-long project to see how people would react . . . A FOX6 news reporter approached the RV and talked with an ‘actor’ who said, ‘Yes, we are working for ABC News’" . . ."
"Antigay Lutheran Pastor Protests Too Much" - John Townsend - Lavendar Magazine
Reverend Tom Brock's 'Courage' Falters When Faced with Exposure
2010-06-18
"As cantankerous and varied as GLBT activism is, virtually everyone holds privacy sacred. The exception is if someone in a public position of political, social, or theological influence engages in homosexual or transgender activity while at the same time denouncing the basic civil rights of GLBT citizens. Former Senator Larry Craig’s restroom cruising and Dr. George Rekers’s Rentboy.com allegations come to mind. "The GLBT community and its allies have a wide variety of principled viewpoints, often conflicting, on just how out a GLBT person should or should not be, as well as what constitutes healthy sexuality or sexual excess. Both sides of these big philosophical questions are discussed and argued conscientiously every day. "However, it’s a universal consensus among GLBT individuals and straight allies that to bash GLBT persons physically and/or sociopolitically—but then turn around, and be homosexually active oneself—is hypocrisy. . . . "
"BBC denies endangering students with undercover visit to North Korea" - The Guardian (UK)
Panorama reporter accompanied London School of Economics students to communist country to carry out secret filming
2013-04-14
"The BBC has denied claims that it put students from a London university at risk when an undercover journalist accompanied them on a field trip to North Korea. John Sweeney, a reporter for the Panorama programme, is said to have joined the student group from the London School of Economics (LSE) on a visit to the communist country so he could carry out secret filming."
"North Korea Undercover" – John Sweeney - BBC One Panorama
2013-04-15
"While North Korea's 'Supreme Commander' Kim Jong-Un has been threatening thermo-nuclear war against the United States, Panorama reporter John Sweeney spent eight days undercover inside the most rigidly-controlled nation on Earth. Travelling from the capital Pyongyang to the countryside beyond and to the de-Militarised Zone on the border with South Korea, Sweeney witnesses a landscape bleak beyond words, a people brainwashed for three generations and a regime happy to give the impression of marching towards Armageddon."
"BBC Tactics in Covering North Korea Are Faulted" - Ravi Somaiya - The New York Times
2013-04-15
"As tensions escalated between North Korea and the world late last month, a small group of students from the prestigious London School of Economics crossed the border into the reclusive country for what was described by organizers as a government-sanctioned “week of sight seeing, meeting with ministers, government officials” and academics. But among the students, the university announced in an outraged statement over the weekend, were three BBC journalists filming an undercover documentary."
"Panorama: North Korea Undercover – TV review" – Sam Wollaston - The Guardian (UK)
How much does BBC reporter John Sweeney discover from inside the secretive state that isn't already known?
2013-04-15
"'Journalists are all but banned from North Korea, so I'm going in undercover," says John Sweeney. I think he quite likes saying that. He is of course with a group of LSE students on a study trip, pretending to be a history teacher. He looks the part too. Don't forget they don't really have the internet in North Korea, so they won't have seen his famous Scientology rant on YouTube."
"Panorama North Korea documentary goes undercover with 5.1 million" – Mark Sweney - The Guardian (UK)
Controversy over BBC's decision to use trip a organised by LSE to film in secretive nation, helped fuel bumper ratings
2013-04-16
"The BBC's controversial Panorama documentary, North Korea Undercover, attracted an average of more than 5 million viewers on Monday night. The storm of controversy surrounding Panorama journalist John Sweeney, who used a trip organised by the London School of Economics to infiltrate and film in the secretive nation, helped fuel bumper ratings for the BBC."
"A Woman Approached the Post with a Dramatic - and False - Tale about Roy Moore" - Shawn Boburg, Aaron C. Davis, Alice Crites - Washington Post
She Appears to be Part of an Undercover Sting Operation
2017-11-27
"A woman who falsely claimed to the Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican US Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversastions in an effort to embarrass its targets." See full story link below.