Eat The Press

Times Disclosure: Eichenwald Paid Subject In Web Porn Article (Or, Jack Shafer Is Gonna Love This)

Glynnis MacNicol |  Posted Wednesday March 7, 2007 at 12:47 PM

Hot on the heels of yesterday's USA Today article about the escalating nature of "advocacy" journalism, comes a disclosure from the New York Times that Kurt Eichenwald, who wrote the much lauded 2005 article "Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World" about internet child pornography rings (an article that led to both congressional hearings and arrests), gave his main source, an eighteen year old boy and the main subject of the article, $2000 — something that is expressly forbidden by the Times.

At the time of publication Eichenwald drew both plaudits and criticism for his unusually close relationship with 18-year-old Justin Berry, who had been involved in online pornography since he was thirteen years old, and whom the reporter eventually convinced to get sober, leave the world of pornography, and become a federal informant.

Jack Shafer at Slate, in particular, took issue with Eichenwald's involvement with the story, saying at the time that while he admired Eichenwald's

"journalistic enterprise and thoroughness, I'm astonished at how he loses control of his 6,500-word investigation when he appears two-thirds through it to serve not as a reporter but as the legal advocate and protector."

Eichenwald subsequently engaged in a short dialogue with Shafer online, in which he defended his actions saying that:

"Our way, I can go to sleep at night knowing that kids who were in horrible situations have been saved. I'm not sure I could have handled the alternative choice of just standing back and letting it happen"

He did not, however, disclose the payment he had made, which slides Eichenwald's behaviour along the slippery slope of journalistic advocacy into the forbidden territory of paying a source — though the outcome, which saved a number of young children from abuse, is hard to argue with.

In yesterday's AP article Eichenwald "acknowledged that he should have disclosed his $2,000 payment to his editors, but said it slipped his mind [emphasis added] amid the other complicated ethical questions surrounding the story." It seems unlikely, however, that he would have forgotten the payments over the course of his dialogue with Shafer. Eichenwald also told the AP:

"He didn't intend to write about Berry, but had come across his distressing Web identity while researching an unrelated article. Eichenwald said he and his wife decided to try to get help for the young man...We were gambling 2,000 on the possibility of saving a kid's life."

It was a big gamble. And for the children involved it clearly paid off, as well as for Eichenwald and the Times, who published and important piece of investigative journalism. However, it's also quite clear that Eichenwald crossed a real journalistic line here. Did he slide too far down the slippery slope? Should he have looked at Justin Berry as a reporter, not as a protector? We do know that he should have disclosed the payment; everything else, though, will no doubt be a matter of debate. The real question is, at the end of the day, would Eichenwald do it all again? Would Jack Shafer? Would you? And, should you? The journalistic lines crossed here are clear, but the moral lines remain very, very, blurry.

Related:
Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World [NYT]
The New York Times Legal Aid Society [Slate]