The Guardian happened upon a huge story while discussing a journalism partnership with Whisper, whose social media app promises anonymity to users, encouraging them to share their secrets.
It turns out Whisper users aren’t so anonymous after all. The company tracks its users’ locations, even when they’ve turned off geolocation, according to The Guardian. It stores their messages—even deleted ones—indefinitely, despite promising to hold them only for “a brief period of time.” And then there’s this:
A team headed by Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, is closely monitoring users it believes are potentially newsworthy, delving into the history of their activity on the app and tracking their movements through the mapping tool. Among the many users currently being targeted are military personnel and individuals claiming to work at Yahoo, Disney and on Capitol Hill…
Separately, Whisper has been following a user claiming to be a sex-obsessed lobbyist in Washington DC. The company’s tracking tools allow staff to monitor which areas of the capital the lobbyist visits. “He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him,” the same Whisper executive said.
Where did The Guardian get the scoop? From the company itself, which had invited the paper’s reporters in to discuss how to further an extant editorial partnership.
It lucked into it, basically. I would have guessed anyone in their position would have reported it just as The Guardian did, and with no hesitation. Not quite.
It was bizarre to see a bit of backlash develop against The Guardian this weekend for reporting the story—particularly since much of the questioning came from journalists themselves.
Business Insider Editor and CEO Henry Blodget said this on Twitter:
Whisper looks bad here http://t.co/LNv9FiPhDr That said, doesn’t seem Guardian behaved ethically, either
— Henry Blodget (@hblodget) October 17, 2014
Wall Street Journal tech columnist Christopher Mims thought this out loud (ADDING: and I should say, later went the other way):
And Fortune senior editor Dan Primack chimed in:
@mathewi @hblodget @mims @NYTFridge that actually makes it worse. u don't go into a meeting w/ your partner, then report on it.
— danprimack (@danprimack) October 17, 2014
@ryanchittum @hblodget i agree with @hblodget that there is implicit privacy in that sort of meeting.
— danprimack (@danprimack) October 17, 2014
Then there was the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Keith Rabois, who said The Guardian’s reporting was “tantamount to fraud” and called for “subpoenas of email and texts” from its reporters.
(I should note that I prompted several of these responses this weekend by criticizing this line of reasoning on Twitter. You can read the chain here.)
The questions focus on whether The Guardian somehow tricked Whisper into giving it the information or whether it violated an understood compact of business secrecy.
This is absurd. What The Guardian did was entirely ethical. Whisper told its reporters highly newsworthy facts about its own service. The information was all on the record. The Guardian reported it. It would have been a journalistic lapse for the paper not to have told readers what it had learned.
In fact, even had the sessions been off the record, or as Primack asserts, implicitly private, The Guardian would have had to give serious consideration to burning its sources if it couldn’t otherwise confirm the information. I’d argue that the right of the public to know that it is being gravely misled clearly outweighs the agreement by the paper not to publish that information.
Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that hypothetical in this instance. But it’s troubling that journalists would look askance, even for a little while, at The Guardian’s decision to report what it learned—on the record.
The ethical problems, meanwhile, are entirely in Whisper’s corner, and not just over how it handles its users’ data and how that differs from its promises to them. Whisper editor in chief Neetzan Zimmerman, the former viral wunderkind at Gawker, outright accused Guardian reporters Paul Lewis and Dominic Rushe of high journalistic fraud. Zimmerman said they were “lying” about much of the story’s information, particularly the quote about tracking the “sex-obsessed lobbyist.”
“It is a fabrication because it was never said, and no such person exists,” Zimmerman wrote on Twitter—an astonishingly reckless thing to say about two reporters with notes of a meeting that Zimmerman didn’t even attend.
When Whisper CEO Michael Heyward finally responded to the scandal on Sunday, The Guardian noted, accurately, that, “Unlike other Whisper representatives, who have strongly denied the disclosures, Heyward did not dispute the accuracy of the Guardian’s reporting.”
This is really depressing. As the nonsense continues to pile up, people, including journalists themselves, seem to be forgetting what journalism actually is. Or was. (I guess Blodget is technically a journalist, but he's not really one.)
Two further observations:
Zimmerman very suddenly clammed up on Twitter after his extended tirade, except to link to Heyward's response. I'm guessing that at the very least he was ordered to towel off, and he's probably still sopping.
Also, I find it odd that the Guardian reporters didn't name the execs who bragged about the privacy breaches, particularly the one who told of following a "sex-obsessed lobbyist" for the "rest of his life." They don't need to necessarily name that exec, but at the very least I think they need to say why they haven't named him or her. I asked them a couple of times on Twitter, as have others. They've ignored all those queries.
#1 Posted by Dan Mitchell, CJR on Mon 20 Oct 2014 at 11:58 AM
Exactly. I am extremely troubled by journalists of all people calling out the Guardian. WSJ is a Murdock rag, so that is to be expected. First amendment press rights are under attack as privacy advocates and privitisation of news, combined with government secrecy. News media and journalists in general need to stand up for their colleagues. If its news it should be reported. Fraud? what nonsense.
#2 Posted by Patrick HAughey, CJR on Mon 20 Oct 2014 at 12:20 PM
So, when a potential business partner discloses that they are lying to their customers - warning people about the unethical (and possibly fraudulent) business practices is itself a form of fraud?
From the sounds of things, the line between journalism and being a corporate flack has not only been blurred - the term "journalist" is now a synonym for "corporate flack."
#3 Posted by RepubAnon, CJR on Mon 20 Oct 2014 at 03:12 PM
Do agree with you.
If, for some reason journalists happened to be in a business meeting with an advertiser - and it turned out the advertiser was doing something super shady - they would be ethical in reporting it. Might be a business decision - but not un-ethical.
And such is the case with the Guardian. I doubt that the Guardian and Whisper will form any kind of business relationship going forward but the Guardian made their choice. And I don't see anything unethical about their choice.
The only way this would be unethical is if the Guardian was flat-out wrong because of negligence about the story (as Neetzan claims). But the Guardian is sticking to their story and they have the credibility to do that. To prove them negligent in this story would be pretty tough.
#4 Posted by Digidave, CJR on Mon 20 Oct 2014 at 06:09 PM
Henry Blodget is assessing the ethical behavior of others? And he's doing so in the guise of a journalist? I'm looking up in the sky to see if pigs are also flying. Let's recall who it was that's been banned from working in the investment industry and paid a $4Million fine due to his own unethical behavior. In an article about Business Insider published last year the New Yorker quoted the following regarding Mr. Blodget.
"Even now, Steve Shepard, the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, says that he doesn’t read Business Insider. Shepard was the editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek in 2000, and he still holds Blodget partly responsible for the collapse of the market. “I don’t trust him, and I just can’t forgive him for his deceit,” Shepard said. “A lot of people suffered—lost jobs, lost income, lost pensions. Blodget wasn’t the only villain, or even the primary cause of the boom and bust, but he typified the worst of the excesses on Wall Street. Blodget was dishonest and deeply cynical. Journalists should be the opposite. It hurts me to see him ply our trade.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/08/business-outsider
#5 Posted by Jack, CJR on Mon 20 Oct 2014 at 07:05 PM
Dan, I don't think it's a big deal that The Guardian won't speak to that. It's an anonymous source. Presumably the exec asked to be on background. Of course, it's always better to explain as much as you can about why they're anonymous, but sometimes you really can't say much.
#6 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 21 Oct 2014 at 12:15 PM
Let´s just tackle that from a different angle.
A company learns some pretty disturbing things about a business partner. What would happen if someone else found out, broke the news and proved the company knew beforehand?
I think any company would have to either break off any business contact or report on their partner, simply to preserve their own business integrity.
Now let´s tackle the ethical part.
If anybody found out about unlicenced tracking, data-storage and probable breach of anonymity commited, against its own, clients by a third party. They had to ask -aren´t we compelled to report on this? Maybe we might give them a warning.
Business ethics says, report it.
Moral consideration says, give them fair warning and then report it.
Implicate privacy in business meetings cannot, in my opinion, claim any right of way over misleading customers...
#7 Posted by sheperd, CJR on Wed 22 Oct 2014 at 04:48 AM
Any real effort to do real journalism these days is suspect.
See Movie: Kill the Messenger. Very relevant.
Chicago's Sun-Times recently just forced the resignation of it's top state political reporter because he did an investigative piece that made the Republican look bad. The paper then endorsed him, after not making endorsements for 3 years and vowing not to do so. The candidate used to own 10 percent of the paper.
#8 Posted by moto, CJR on Thu 23 Oct 2014 at 12:36 PM
The Guardian totally did the right thing. Go looking for more stories like this, they're out there.
#9 Posted by Dave Winer, CJR on Thu 23 Oct 2014 at 06:33 PM
Tech company builds system to spy on users.
Tech company lies to users about spying.
Tech company asks journalists to partner with them on spying.
Tech company does NOT have journalists sign confidentiality agreements.
Journalists report news that was given to them by tech company.
Tech company blames journalists of violating imaginary confidentiality agreement.
Tech company's paid journalists lash out at real journalists on social media.
Random journalists pile on real journalists for violating imaginary confidentiality agreement.
Lesson: If you have a secret, don't tell journalists your secret on-the-record.
#10 Posted by Capt.Obvious, CJR on Thu 23 Oct 2014 at 06:49 PM
Well, on questions of ethics, exactly how much weight should one give to the opinions of a convicted stock swindler??? (Blodget)
#11 Posted by sribe, CJR on Thu 23 Oct 2014 at 07:54 PM
If you want a commercial meeting with a publication meet with its commercial arm, or legal, or marketing or even editorial team and you can reasonably expect that covenants on implicit privacy or confidentiality agreements will be honoured. But if you meet with a journalist you should surely know that you're dealing with the working end of the shark and that loose-talk-costs-lives?
#12 Posted by TUGG, CJR on Fri 24 Oct 2014 at 03:46 AM
Hearing Henry Blodgett in high dudgeon about the definition of journalism and the manipulation of business relationships, that just made my day.
#13 Posted by Bill Maggs, CJR on Fri 24 Oct 2014 at 12:04 PM
Guardian reporters Paul Lewis and Dominic Rushe poked their fingers into the eyes of the new business models infecting journalism: emphasis on content repurposing, unique business-oriented partnerships and frenzied trend chasing. Profit drives such strategies, not the old standards of journalism that us old reporters still revere, and which Lewis and Rushe honored.
#14 Posted by Bob Donath, CJR on Fri 24 Oct 2014 at 12:52 PM
blodget, mims et al ..... your beliefs/standards are exactly why the public has come to distrust your type of 'reporting'. Maybe you should join Whisper as see how it goes for you, then get back to us.
#15 Posted by JLynn_Olson@jlynn_olson, CJR on Sat 25 Oct 2014 at 12:03 PM
So Gaurdian acted with integrity rather than being a shill. And other journos are calling them wrong ? What is the world coming to ? Have we turned into pea-brained idiots ? At least now we know what sites NOT to follow.
#16 Posted by Alekh Khanna, CJR on Sun 26 Oct 2014 at 09:21 AM
What a shock - people associated with or formerly associated with Gawker are again involved in ethical lapses. And Blodget - seriously?!? I think the stupid Kardashians are more relevant than that guy. As others pointed out, he's the last person to be anywhere near a conversation involving ethics!
#17 Posted by EricE, CJR on Mon 27 Oct 2014 at 12:57 AM
"You had something to hide
Should have hidden it, shouldn't you
Now you're not satisfied
With what you've been put through"
The essential problem is that Whisper has a Policy Of Truth.
The problem with lying is that you must remember everything you've said, and to whom. Deception requires management and incurs overhead costs.
Clearly Whisper had lost track of these basic facts.
Apparently some journalists have, also.
Journalism was once an honorable profession. Notice how public officials and other privileged individuals have polluted it by threatening denial of access in case of unfavorable reporting -- cited in the disgusting Twitter conversation.
Yet it is the journalists themselves who have traded integrity for access. Integrity is far more than just honor and truthfulness BTW -- Integrity is strength.
It's bad enough that we all know now that corporations cannot be trusted. What a crying shame that journalists can't, either. Whither Edward R. Murrow to wish us good night -- and good luck?
#18 Posted by Brad Morrison, CJR on Wed 29 Oct 2014 at 02:39 PM
It seems to me that to think the Guardian's behaviour unethical one would have to be a very devout worshipper of Mammon.
#19 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 31 Oct 2014 at 07:18 AM