Police pose as press
By Sean Ransom Posted Fri, Sep 1 2000
Police responding to armed hostage-takers in Luxembourg and New Jersey last June devised similar ploys to defuse the events — pose as journalists to approach the assailants and free the hostages.
Both times the plans worked, but the events have sparked a lively debate about whether such tactics will endanger journalists in the future and whether journalists have an obligation to preserve law and order going beyond their professional duties.
The first situation began May 31 when Naji Beajaoui, a Luxembourg citizen with a history of psychiatric problems, walked into the Spatzennascht day-care center in Wasserbillig, a small town on the Luxembourg-Germany border, armed with a pistol, grenades, a knife and a can of gasoline. Beajaoui, who apparently believed that the day-care center was involved in a custody dispute between him and his ex-wife, took 25 children and three young teachers hostage.
The negotiations were slow-going. Beajaoui’s emotions swung dramatically during the 28-hour standoff. Police were afraid that Beajaoui had raped one of the center’s young teachers and that he had doused the center with gasoline. These fears would turn out to be substantiated.
During the course of the crisis, however, Beajaoui twice telephoned a Luxembourg radio station. Noting his desire for publicity, police ordered Vic Reuter, the station manager of independent television station RTL-Luxembourg, to give up an RTL camera and microphone, a station-owned car, three RTL jackets and press credentials. Beajaoui fell for the authorities’ bluff and came to the center’s front porch holding a child and a grenade. With a gun hidden in the camera, police shot Beajaoui twice in the face. All the hostages were freed unhurt. Beajaoui is recovering from his wounds.
Two weeks later, police in New Jersey used a television camera taken from a New Jersey Network (NJN) reporter to placate Ali Kemoum, a chemist who had already killed two relatives. Kemoum, who was holding his 7-year-old son hostage, refused to negotiate with police but said he would speak to a journalist. After police took the NJN camera, a police sergeant posed as a reporter and interviewed Kemoum. In exchange for the interview, police were able to recover the boy, and Kemoum surrendered about an hour later.
The New York Times reported the next day that Newark Mayor Sharpe James apologized for the seizing of the camera but said the police felt the ruse was necessary to prevent Kemoum from causing further harm.
Despite the success of these ruses, professional journalism organizations have responded in tones ranging from concern to outrage.
Following the Luxembourg incident, for example, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), a Brussels-based organization representing nearly one-half million journalists, released a statement condemning the actions of Luxembourg’s police.
“Each year many journalists die reporting on incidents of violence or from conflict zones and their life is dangerous enough without adding to their difficulties. ... These are disturbing tactics and we have to be aware of the consequences,” the statement says. The IFJ also issued a statement condemning the tactic used in the New Jersey incident.
Aiden White, general secretary of the IFJ, says that while it is “relatively easy and convenient” for police to pose as journalists in desperate situations, such tactics are easily abused.
“In Luxembourg, given the potential loss of lives, it may be possible to forgive the deception,” White says, “but only if journalists are satisfied that it does not establish a precedent that will endanger media staff in the future. The New Jersey incident suggests, however, that the problem will not go away so easily. ...
“In incidents like this — even when we welcome the outcome — the police must be subject to scrutiny and questioning. If not, we could open the door to widespread and potentially dangerous abuse not only of the rights of journalists, but civil rights in general.”
The Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), an international organization based in the United States, used harsher language after the Luxembourg incident.
“For journalists to be seen as an arm of law enforcement severely undermines public trust,” says RTNDA President Barbara Cochran in a statement. “This incident … could have serious repercussions around the world.”
A resolution passed by the RTNDA reads in part as follows: “Allowing law enforcement officials to pose as journalists could endanger journalists covering volatile situations. Reporters who attempt to open the eyes of the world to civil war, ethnic strife and other conflicts are put at risk if they are suspected to be undercover government agents.”
Not all journalists, however, agree with such sentiments. Dunc E. Roberts, editor of the English-language weekly Luxembourg News, had harsh words for some of his concerned local colleagues. “Some journalists take on the mentality of a lynch mob in demanding to know which of their colleagues broke the law in providing police with their official Professional Journalist cards,” Roberts wrote in a June 15 editorial. “Few local writers have been brave enough to jump off this particular bandwagon, take a step back and look at the way in which the press once again glorified its role in society and wallowed in its own self import.”
The Poynter Institute, a highly regarded media training institution in the United States, expresses a more moderate reaction.
“News organizations that readily and naively help police pose as journalists in hostage standoffs are not considering the long-term consequences of their actions,” write Poynter's Bob Steele and Al Tompkins. “But journalism organizations that unequivocally rule out the possibility of such deception ignore the complex and competing ethical pressures journalists and law enforcement agencies face.”
Journalists who are stridently concerned about the safety of their colleagues should be just as stridently concerned about the lives of others, Steele and Tompkins write.
“That principle is especially applicable for those whose immediate fate hangs on a thin thread, as opposed to journalists who ‘could’ end up in dangerous situations. ...
“In the case of hostage situations, there is an exceptionally important principle at stake. A human being facing great danger deserves protection. Journalists should do everything they can to protect a vulnerable person from profound harm or loss of life,” including, they write, very rarely allowing police to use a journalist’s identity to save a gravely endangered person.
Although hostage situations can involve complex ethical questions, authorities have sometimes masqueraded as journalists for less-humanitarian activities. Police in Gdansk, Poland, for example, filmed anti-government demonstrators with a camera decorated with the logos of a television news station. When authorities pose as journalists for surveillance and covert activity, journalists and ethicists alike loudly decry the deception.