The ethics of publishing stolen material
IABC President Julie Freeman TechCrunch’s decision to publish internal documents stolen from Twitter, “Was it appropriate to publish stolen documents? Even if the information obtained was accurate? Was it ethical? Does the public have the right to know how Twitter (or any company) plans to make its money and when? Does how information is obtained affect whether it should be published?”
I’ve decided to post my answer here.
I was struck by one of Robert Scoble‘s remarks on FriendFeed, part of a lengthy discussion on the controversy. In response to the argument that nothing in the Twitter documents seemed to rise to the level of “public interest” that would justify their publication, Robert wrote, “I went to journalism school and we were taught to publish information, even stuff that was gotten through questionable means, and not hold back when it comes across our desk.”
I went to journalism school, too, though admittedly many years earlier than Robert. But I don’t remember ever being taught to publish whatever crossed my desk. Given how long it’s been, though, since I sat in a journalism ethics class, I decided to throw the question to a friend who is the chair of the journalism school at a reputable university. (I haven’t heard back from him with permission to cite him, but will update this post when he returns, assuming he gives me the go-ahead.)
I presented the situation in generic terms: “A reporter finds a package on his desk. He opens it and finds it contains documents that were clearly and unquestionably stolen from the source. Their exposure does not serve the public interest (unlike, say, The Pentagon Papers or the Brown & Williamson documentation whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand turned over to 60 Minutes).”
Here’s what I heard back:
- First, the editor would have to verify the contents and try to figure out who delivered it, where they got it from, and so on.
- Most reporters would try to find another source to corroborate the information.
- A reporter or editor would have to evaluate the news value vs. the privacy and potential harm issues.
This response dovetails nicely with my own recollection of journalism ethics from my days in journalism school (1972-1976). It’s also inconsistent with Robert’s “publish stuff” approach and the quote TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington offered as justification: ““News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising” (attributed to newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe, although there’s no evidence he actually said it).
I’ve seen dozens of definitions of news and most of them convey the same fundamentals: News is information or an event that is current, involves some kind of change from the way things are, and has an impact on a group of people. While the communication of such stories may piss some people off, that’s not the criteria for deciding what gets covered. Rather, it’s something journalists shouldn’t let influence them when deciding whether to go to press with a story.
As near as I can tell, nothing in the Twitter documents published by TechCrunch rises to the level of “public interest.” It was published because it was titillating and would draw traffic.
Given that there is probably no legal liability for publishing these documents, you have to ask yourself who would be most inclined to publish stolen content the release of which does not serve the public interest. It reminds me of ethics discussions we had when I worked for a global consulting firm. If somebody handed you a proposal stolen from a competitor for a client you were bidding on, would you use it to improve your own chances of winning the work? Answer: No, we’d return it to the company from which it was stolen. (On the other hand, if someone from the competing firm happened to leave a copy lying around, that’s another story.)
Pepsi embodied the highest ethical standards when they refused to accept a formula stolen from Coca-Cola and offered to them for a price, opting instead to turn the material back over to Coke and the thief to the police.
My friend, the journalism school chair, did suggest that “Murdoch would definitely publish (the documents).” He’s speaking of Rupert, of course, whose News Corp. owns such bastions of journalism as The Sun and News of the World, two of the most brazen London tabloids.
Nowhere in Michael Arrington’s many, many words devoted to the Twitter documents did he indicate that he tried to find an alternate legitimate source for the information, corroborate it or engage in any of the other practices ethical journalists are expected to embrace. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch should consider acquiring TechCrunch, since they would seem to be birds of a feather.
One has to wonder how Arrington would have reacted if the confidential internal documents in question had been stolen from TechCrunch and published by Mashable or ReadWriteWeb (not to suggest that either of these sites would publish stolen documents). Somehow I suspect he would have been a little less cavalier about the ethical breech.
The public has a right to know that Twitter has some security issues. But Techcrunch is not acting in the public interest by publishing the data - purely in their own self interest. These things have a habit of back firing later. If someone gets hold of the Techcrunch strategy (assuming there is one), then put this up on the web too and be dammned. Is this world news? Does anyone care? Er, no.
Posted by Jonathan Marks on 07/17 at 12:39 PMThis is really the only side any sensible person could ever take in such a situation. It’s actually a very sad day for all that champion Social Media and plays right into the hands of such cynics as Andrew Keen that makes us all out to be a bunch of monkeys. And we have to all effects taken the bait.
I had expected so much more from Michael Arrington yet much of the same from Scoble, the latter revealing himself to be a nouveau riche of the business world, traitor to the apparently misplaced trust of all that made him who he is today.
Even though we have learnt to ignore some of Arlington’s less politically correct stances, this has to be a giant leap in attitudes. Maybe the reality is that we never really knew him.
Ironically, I envisage that Arrington’s stance will only encourage many a hacker to give him much of the same medicine. From Twitter’s rather humble response, I suspect their reaction would have been very different. Yet who knows.
The ego is a strange thing.
Posted by Nuno Machado Lopes on 07/17 at 01:05 PMScoble never graduated for college Shel. I think that might explain the gap in understanding of ethics when it comes to how information is obtained.
Posted by Rob Safuto on 07/17 at 01:57 PMI already posted a couple of comments on Julie’s blog so I won’t rehash them here, but I think the point where I might stop defending Michael Arlington’s actions is on what he does around your friend’s third point, “A reporter or editor would have to evaluate the news value vs. the privacy and potential harm issues”.
Having spent more time looking at his coverage, I think he’s probably taken the easy way out by reproducing verbatim some of the material. I would have done more of an analysis and discussed it. (I was a radio reporter, so we couldn’t have reproduced facsimiles, anyway.) The most newsworthy information could have been published, with less potential harm to Twitter’s relationships with the other people it is doing important with.
Michael Arlington could have saved himself a whole lot of grief if he’d just written stories and said they information came from “confidential information obtained by TechCrunch”. But instead, he made a big deal of how he got it. That was probably a silly move.
This is an interesting debate, and I’m open to being convinced that I’m wrong.
Posted by Iain MacLean on 07/17 at 04:10 PMPublishing an information just because it can bring in some good web traffic is something very unethical.Even every newspaper and new channels has a table of editor where in all the news brought are sorted and formatted and then presented to the public.People have forgotten about ethics in this new age journalism, they have become commercialised and dont have any loyalty to there profession. If twitter is doing so i am not surprised, but yes it has to be stopped some where, one should know where to draw line.
Posted by Amy rich on 07/17 at 08:25 PMHear, hear. Great points, Shel—especially the one about how Arrington would likely have reacted had it been TechCrunch’s information, obtained by another news source and published. And I agree with Nuno that this whole affair just throws raw meat to the wolves who would dismiss social media and its champions.
Traditional journalism has its champs (RIP Walter Cronkite) and chumps (anything associated with Murdoch), and obviously so does social media. Arrington’s made the same mistake too many traditional media make today—confusing “gotcha” with investigation, mistaking voyeurism for news, and using the “watchdog role” to disguise or excuse antagonism.
One of the truisms of life is that what goes around comes around. It will be interesting indeed to see how Arrington (or Scoble, or any of those most ardently defending this ethical shrug) reacts when it’s his turn.
Posted by Christopher Barger on 07/18 at 06:11 AMThere is no gray area.
Arrington and Schonfeld wanted the clicks.Scoble is a windbag with NO credibility.
He was going to spin this to defend Arrington,
and hurt Twitter any way he could.
He’s still whining over the SUL.
If one person threaded everything he has said in 2009 alone, they’d get him a psych intervention.There is so much pathetic banter out there
(See: friendfeed).Posted by Ed on 07/18 at 09:09 AMWell said. When something so clearly violates our intuitions about ethics, it makes one wonder how the law could be as disconnected from our common sense understanding of fairness as it is in this context.
Posted by Dave Levine on 07/19 at 09:22 PMI think he’s probably taken the easy way out by reproducing verbatim some of the material. I would have done more of an analysis and discussed it. The most newsworthy information could have been published, with less potential harm to Twitter’s relationships with the other people it is doing important with.
Posted by stools on 07/20 at 06:27 AMI went to jounalism school too.. in high school then in college before i switched my degree(s) to criminal justice AND pscyhology….
a. it’s against the law to obtain stolen material in california..
above you said pepsi did the ethical thing… they did what was prescribed by law.
the law?
http://bit.ly/ArringtonGoesToJail
nothing else really matters… period
Posted by @steveplunkett on 07/20 at 12:06 PMNews is NOT “what someone else wants suppressed.”
It’s far more complicated than that, but it boils down to a dissection of the NEED to know, the WANT to know, and the RIGHT to know.
Lawyers have a right to suppress information that is obtained illegally, no matter how many people WANT to know.
Personally, I think someone at Twitter just played Arrington big-time, and he was so eager to have an exclusive that he never bothered to investigate just what he was handed and why.
And this all confirms why I follow neither Scoble nor Arrington, nor any of their affiliated feeds.
Posted by Ike on 07/21 at 07:53 PMI’m surprised that anyone thinks there is a grey area here. It’s very clear that stealing information is illegal and it’s certainly unethical to publish information that was knowingly stolen. If social media is to be seen as a credible replacement for mainstream media then the “journalists” need to conduct themselves in a more ethical manner. There is no glory in being “first” if you totally abandon all semblance of etiquette.
Posted by Louise Armstrong on 07/22 at 06:30 AMApart from these acts being unethical, surely it should be against the law. Unless the information accessed is in the interest of the public and I don’t mean some juicy piece of gossip, then anybody found to have obtained such information, should be dealt with the same as if documents were stolen from my own home.
Posted by traceyjoy on 08/04 at 02:18 AM