I Went Undercover With Dateline, Too
As my colleague Erik Larkin (along with half the Web) has reported, Friday wasn't a great day for Dateline NBC associate producer Michelle Madigan--her secret videotaping at hacker conference DEF CON in Las Vegas went really, really badly, and she was forced to flee the event. I'm on vacation at the moment, but I've been fascinated by the story, and feeling kind of personally invested in it. That's in part because Madigan did some reporting for PC World back in 2002, when she was a reporter for the Medill News Service of Northwestern University. But it's also because I've done undercover camera work for Dateline NBC myself.
Back in 2000, PC World and NBC's news program collaborated on an investigation into the PC repair business. We broke a bunch of PCs in exactly the same way--with a problem that could be fixed by replacing a cheap cable--and took them to both national PC retailers and mom and pop shops to get them fixed. Our goal was to see if they'd diagnose the issue accurately and fix it at a reasonable price. (Here's PC World's report on what we found, much of which wasn't pretty.)
When we went into stores, we carried hidden cameras to document our interactions--some of the footage was used in Dateline's TV report--and I was one of the guys doing the carrying and documenting. It was a remarkable experience which resulted in an important story for consumers, and we took lots of care to make sure that what we did was both fair and legal. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done as a journalist, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
All I know about Madigan's mishap is what I've read in the blogosphere, so I'm hesitant to express any definitive opinion it it. It does sound like everything that could have gone wrong for her did go wrong--and that she may have made multiple mistakes that led to her own fiasco. (If reports of some of her actions are accurate, some of them were at odds with the practices we followed when I worked with Dateline producers in 2000.)
Most of the coverage of all this is in dogpile-on-the-rabbit mode--I haven't seen a single account (including Erik's) that was even semi-sympathetic to Madigan's overarching goal or specific actions.
Like I say I'm reserving judgment. But I do think that one of the interesting things about this case is that it involved a reporter being sneaky (albeit unsuccessfully so) at a conference where sneakiness of various kinds was very much on the agenda. I'd tend to take that into account when figuring out what the appropriate reaction is, and when considering the opinions of the various people who are weighing in.
If the response of the conference's organizers is as reported, I like it--they encouraged the attendees to figure out who the mole in the audience was--fair enough, since they were certainly under no obligation to help her investigation. And then, after she'd been uncovered, they offered her a press pass so she could cover the show openly if she wanted to. Apparently, she didn't. (Gee, I wonder why not?)
I do kinda wonder how much of the outrage is on moral/ethical grounds, and how much of it is a reaction to her abject failure. To put it another way: What would the reaction have been like if she'd gotten her footage and done her story? We'll never know--and we'll also never know exactly what sort of story she'd done...
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Great, thoughtful commentary on the situation, Harry.
In the era of shock-media where bombastic opinion is far more important than critical thinking and thorough, even-handed analyisis, it is nice to read someone say "[I only have biased, reactionary data on the situation]...so I'm hesitant to express any definitive opinion..."
Moreover, I think your dog-pile analogy is spot on.
That is not to say that I disagree with the actions of the DEF CON organizers nor think she was in the right. Rather, if she was indeed going to out federal agents as proposed (amongst other things), such actions were absolutely mandatory.
However, I am bemused by the sheer amount of critical, reactionary coverage it has received without thoughtful, meaty discussion of the subject matter (why what she did was wrong and/or the ironic balance of journalistic integrity and goals versus the immediate well-being of the subject matter, which is more important (and why), etc.)
damn, I'd almost forgotten that story. I am also one of the pcw reporters who went along with the dateline folks back in 2000. I remember the hidden camera in the bag trick, and thinking we were walking a fine ethical line when we did it.
but judging from the first-hand accounts coming out of defcon, it seems like michelle crossed that ethical line. for one thing, this was an event where press were clearly invited; in the shopping story, knowing that we were press would have changed the store's behavior, so being undercover was essential to the reporting. in this case, you can watch video of michelle's outing on youtube -- clearly somebody was taping openly.
for another, her apparent goal was to out an undercover federal agent talking to hackers on national tv. I think that's a few orders of magnitude beyond outing repair stores with questionable policies.
I don't know michelle, and I feel bad for her. but she really brought this on herself. she should have taken the press pass.
dt
"Gee, I wonder why not?" - What is that supposed to mean? People were very good natured about the whole thing, they would have joked a little but plenty of people would still have been happy to talk to her.
As for "sneakiness of various kinds" - the whole point of the convention is openness between hackers and other groups. The whole event is about education and demonstration. In what was is this "sneaky"?