Should Journalists Publish False Stories?

Deliberately planting false or misleading stories with the public in an attempt to solve a crime is a questionable tactic that should be used rarely if ever, law enforcement and media experts said Wednesday November 7. An article written by Robert Moore, a journalist from the Coloradoan, questions the ethics of law enforcement, as well as, journalists. A request for a new trial in a Fort Collins, Colorado, murder case is raising a variety of ethics issues, including a controversy about whether it's proper for police to plant false or misleading stories in the press in order to further an investigation. The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports that some law enforcement officials and media experts planted a false story in the local news paper implying that progress was being made in a murder case, when in actuality the case was stalled. The Coloradoan claims that the fake article that was planted in the local news paper, was aimed at Tim Masters. Tim Masters was the prime suspect, who was later convicted and imprisoned for murdering Peggy Hettrick in 1988.


Fort Collins police Lt. Deryle O'Dell wrote a Jan. 8, 1988, memo to his superiors saying investigators had "exhausted all of the leads" in the Hettrick slaying. He requested approval from Glasscock for several new steps, including planting a story that would say police had made significant inroads in the investigation. Under a heading titled "F.B.I behavior science recommendations," O'Dell's memo outlined a plan that called for "preparing our own newspaper articles" and "making sure the suspect is aware of newspaper articles." To make sure Masters saw the story, the plan called for police to deliver the Coloradoan to his home for a month leading up to the Feb. 11, 1988, anniversary of Hettrick's slaying. The plan also called for "anonymously placing and mailing the newspaper articles on the suspect's vehicle/residence." The plan called for several days of round-the-clock surveillance of Masters as the story came out to see if he did anything incriminating, such as visiting the murder scene or Hettrick's grave. If the plan didn't work, "we would essentially close the books on the case," O'Dell wrote.

According to the memos, authorities:
 Fed a local reporter phony information that police were closing in on a suspect
 Delivered newspapers carrying the fake story to Masters' trailer
 Had one of Masters' friends deliver him a copy of his mother's obituary

The false story was written by Cara Neth, who was working her first newspaper job a few months after graduating from Colorado State University. She said she was naïve at the time, but other, more experienced reporters suspected something fishy after her story was published.


The Fort Collins police tactics in 1988 raise troubling questions for both investigators and journalists, said Bob Steele, an ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism education program. "It is exceptionally rare to have a law enforcement agency or government agency try to plant a patently false story in order to then generate a specific action, in this case on the part of a crime suspect," Steele said. "It can corrupt and corrode the essential trust that must exist between law enforcement and journalism, even while there are different values and different purposes for the professionals involved.” Steele said the 1988 Coloradoan story is an example of what can happen when reporters and editors don't approach stories skeptically.

I feel that it is unethical for law enforcement to plant false news stories in newspapers no matter the circumstances. False stories can corrupt the essential trust that exists between the reader and journalists. According to the SPJ code of ethics, Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. They should also test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible. Therefore, I feel that Cara Neth was being unethical and naïve by publishing a false article. By publishing a fake article, she was not being honest or fair. Neth should have questioned her sources motives. Journalists are supposed to seek the truth, and publish the facts.