There can hardly be anything left to say about hidden cameras or how ABC News used them inside the food preparation rooms of Food Lion supermarkets to show, it said, stale and spoiled food being rewrapped for sale, and other nasty things.
ABC is of course appealing the $5- million fine at North Carolina jury levied because network employees, the ones who worked the secret cameras, had used false job applications to get hired by Food Lion. Some of the noblest voices in journalism have dived into print decrying this low-rent way of getting a story, fussing that it demeans the journalistic process, and now wonder people hate the media.
Which leaves nothing left to say except perhaps, this:
"News is what someone somewhere wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising." One of the earliest British press tycoons formulated that useful definition. How many news stories in your favorite newspaper or newscast were obviously done with the help and for the benefit of the people in those stories, and how many are about what somebody wants to keep quiet?
Selling the public moldy meat is something that whoever is doing it wants to suppress. It also is something you want your newspaper or newscast to tell you. The report should be accurate, of course. But accuracy was not an issue in this case. This was not a libel case. It was about reporters using subterfuge to get into Food Lion's back rooms. After the trial, a juror said, "If you're going to do it, do it legally." Another said, "You can't misrepresent yourself to get the news."
Food Lion officials who claim that the ABC News report cost the company billions of dollars in lost revenue and lower stock value, gave out some argle-bargle that they would have claimed libel if it had been technically possible. But even if that's so, the truth of what ABC News said never came out before the court. In short, economically damaging reporting is punishable even if it is not proved false. Or even misleading.
The constitutional implications of this would seem to be terrifying. But it is not what frightens those panjandrums of the Fourth Estate who decry hidden cameras or undercover reporting as beneath the dignity of their high calling. "News organizations should not be untruthful in their search for the truth," one said primly, sounding more like a pooh-bah than a reporter who had to pry news out of reluctant sources.
