Undercover Reporting

Comment: "Comment at Albany" - Unsigned - New York World

New York World  1888-04-02

Editorial: "What to do about 'Sweatshop'" - Unsigned - Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

What Herald Examiner staff writer Merle Linda Wolin's "Sweatshop" expose has revealed (aside from sometimes inexcusable working conditions in the Los Angeles garment industry and the seeming governmental impotence in improving them) is one incontestable fact: Just as it took an awful lot of people to get the garment industry into the state of decay it is in, it is going to take an awful lot of people to get it out of trouble. Cleaning up our sweatshops will require that everyone - citizen groups, government agencies, and espeically the industry itself - pitch in as a team and help. 

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner  1981-02-08

City Slave Girls: George M. Sloan Reviews the History of the Slave Question from Early Times

To The Editor: As the doctor must diagnose his patient's case before he can write a perscription, so the case of the alleged slave girls must be thoroughly studied before knowledge of the fit remedy can be gained. 

Chicago Times  1888-09-03

City Slave Girls: Lyman J. Cage's Belief that a Discussion of the Subject Will Be Beneficial

"The questions you raise as to a cure for the evils pointed out in The TImes articles on wage-working girls are difficult," remarked L. J. Gage, vice president of the First National Bank.

Chicago Times  1888-09-01

City Slave Girls: Col. Abner Taylor Tells of the Good Results Following General Agitation

Col. Abner Taylor, the bachelor republican candidate for congress in the first Illinois district, said: "I don't know that legislation can do anything for work-women, except to regulate the sanitary condition of the shops and factories where they work." 

Chicago Times  1888-08-31

City Slave Girls: Judge O.H. Horton's Views on the Best Way to Improve Their Condition

Judge O.H. Horton of the circut court was on the point of starting for a fortnight's outing with fishing accompaniment at Alexandria, Minn., when informed that The Times would like to have his views on the working-girl question.

Chicago Times  1888-08-30

City Slave Girls: Mr. Charles H. Ham's Opinion of a Modern City Which Neglects Its Children

"Have you read The Times' displeasures in regard to the 'city slave girls?'" was asked of Mr. Charles H. Ham. "Yes, with absorbing interest." "What do you think of them?" "I think the subject the most important one that can engage the attention of man." 

Chicago Times  1888-08-29

City Slave Girls: Milton George Believes that Education Will Surely Solve the Wage Question

Milton George, editor of the Western Rural, an agricultural paper, was raised on a farm and loves the country, though he works in the city. "I have made a study of the labor question," he said, "more on behalf of the farmer than of the factory and shop girls, having been a farmer myself and consequently being

Chicago Times  1888-08-28

City Slave Girls: Views of a Member of the Firm of Marshall Field & Co. on Female and Child Labor

"I can say in a general way," said a member of the firm of Marshall Field & Co. "that from a mere humanitarian standpoint it pays to treat female employes humanely, show that we respect them and enable them to be self-respecting, and at the same time to pay them the highest market wages.

Chicago Times  1888-08-25

City Slave Girls: What a "Little Hell" Physician Has to Say on the Future of the Factory and Store Drudges

A Division street physician whose practice for the last twenty years has been largely among the residents of the factory disctrict in the vicinity of "Little Hell" has this to say on the future of the factory girl:

Chicago Times  1888-08-24

City Slave Girls: Opinions of Prominent Men on How To Remedy the Great Evils of Female and Child Labor

"I can't speak as freely about female as I can male labor," said one manufaturer."Why not?"  "Well, women are different from men.  That remark is not original, but it is a basic truth and one which all employers must recognize. Without mincing matters, and confidentiality, I will say to you that women who do men's work are not worth as much as men to the employers of labor.

Chicago Times  1888-08-21

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

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.

Los Angeles Times  2007-06-30

"Can Trickery by Reporters Be Right?" - Edward Wasserman - Syndicated

"In a cover story this month, Harper's Magazine Washington editor Ken Silverstein described his undercover foray into hiring two top-tier D.C. lobbying firms to represent Turkmenistan, an energy-rich former Soviet republic known for gross human rights violations and anti-democratic lunacies. Silverstein was in no position to hire the firms, of course. That was a ruse. Under an assumed name he posed as an emissary from a shadowy London middleman. He created phony business cards, a British cell phone number and an e-mail address."

Miami Herald  2007-07-09