By Robert Moore
The Coloradoan
Published 11/7/2007
Excerpt:
The Coloradoan 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.
"I figured I'd been manipulated within about two days after being told by
other reporters. They said, "You know that story was a plant, don't you?" said
Neth, now director of presidential and administrative communications at CSU.
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.
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"It is exceptionally rare to have a law-enforcement agency or...
