Yesterday, news broke that a former New York Times reporter made a substantial payment to the primary source of a sprawling, 6,000-word investigation of online Webcam pornography featuring underage models. According to The Times’ report, the journalist, Kurt Eichenwald, paid $2,000 to his primary source, Justin Berry, a model for one such site.
News of Eichenwald’s payment did not surprise the people who had been following this story closely. The Times’ article, published in December 2005, had already amassed a high level of controversy because of its author’s insistence on becoming a part of the story.
Eichenwald’s article, “Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World,” details the downward spiral of Berry – documenting first his purchase of a Webcam, and later his exploitation at the hands of sexual predators and online pornographers.
At 16, according to Eichenwald’s original article, Berry had partnered in pornography with his father and another adult. Truly, this was a disturbing and terrible story.
However, halfway through his article, Eichenwald entered his sordid tale of underage online pornography – as the savior of the young man, a protector willing to intervene in Berry’s life, ultimately finding him a lawyer. Finally, Berry sought legal council and received immunity from the state in exchange for his testimony against those who exploited him.
Questions arose from this article: At what point should a journalist intervene to help a source? Does a conflict of interest arise when a journalist is so close to his source? Can a journalist report accurately and objectively when he is playing a significant role in the story?
The University’s School of Journalism awarded Eichenwald the prestigious “Payne Award” for achievements in ethical greatness in 2006. I’m not sure what the Journalism School’s criteria for ethical greatness is, but if Eichenwald represents it then I am slightly concerned for the future of my profession. (Note: Eichenwald also came to speak to staff at the Oregon Daily Emerald.)
But as reports indicate, Eichenwald’s connection to Berry did not end at finding him a lawyer or helping him quit drugs. It also appears that Eichenwald gave Berry $2,000. This is where the story gets weird, and it highlights the most damning ethical lapses performed by Eichenwald and facilitated by the New York Times, primarily because the $2,000 gift, unlike the other forms of support documented in Eichenwald’s story, was kept secret.
The Times stated: “Mr. Eichenwald said he was trying to maintain contact out of concern for a young man in danger, and did not consider himself to be acting as a journalist when he sent the check.”
Berry would later return the check to Eichenwald, once Eichenwald started reporting on Berry.
Nonetheless, the statement is highly amusing. What, exactly, did Eichenwald mean when he said that he did not consider himself to be acting as a journalist when he sent the check? How, exactly, did Eichenwald fall onto Berry’s Web site? One does not simply start surfing the Internet, shopping Amazon or reading the Drudge Report and then – boom! – images of naked boys start popping up on your screen, beckoning you for money (actually, this might be the case at the Drudge Report).
Eichenwald said, he did not even identify himself as a journalist when he struck up his friendship with the underage Berry.
Connect the dots, and this is just plain creepy.
In January 2006, Jack Shafer, media critic for the online magazine Slate.com, wrote a column about Eichenwald’s situation. It was a follow-up to a previous column Shafer wrote when The Times first published Eichenwald’s story. In Shafer’s second column, he wrote that he discovered that KurtEichenwald.com (on which the web-savvy journalist peddled his books and newspaper journalism) used a Web developer named Xpertcreations.com, whose president was listed as Justin Berry – the same Justin Berry from Eichenwald’s story.
Newspapers deserve praise anytime they publish in-depth stories about challenging topics. Often, newspaper journalism relies too much on the strange notion of objectivity, too much on simply relaying facts in a boring, redundant inverted pyramid style. However, a daily paper should also refrain from making the news, and the reporters who report for these publications should be transparent about their relationship with their sources.
The strange events surrounding the publication of Eichenwald’s article highlight the questions surrounding journalism. Activist journalism, in which an author takes a strong stance, is common in magazines and news weeklies. Regardless, this form of activist journalism is ethically unsound and questions the objective integrity of the author and newspaper.
But who am I to speak? After all, Eichenwald has his prestigious Payne Award, courtesy of the University’s journalism school.
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