Even the small number of speech pathologists who knew about the study called it the “monster experiment.”
In 1939, hoping to confirm his theories about the cause of stuttering, University of Iowa speech pathologist Dr. Wendell Johnson began an experiment at a nearby orphanage.
A graduate student would try to induce, through pressure tactics and criticism, stuttering among the orphans.
The professor hoped to find a cure for stuttering. And his therapy helped thousands overcome their impediments.
But at a devastating price.
Some of those Iowa children, a few of whom were non-stutterers before the experiment, were scarred for life.
Until recently, they were never told of the experiment.
Johnson, fearing it would destroy his career, never published the study.
The rest of the world learned of the experiment two months ago, in a San Jose Mercury News series by reporter Jim Dyer – a series of enormous impact now tainted by the tactics the reporter used in uncovering it.
The reporter gained access to confidential files at the Iowa state archives by identifying himself as a graduate student, not as a reporter.
Dyer is a graduate student at the University of Iowa, in journalism. The original document at the archives reportedly identified him as a student in psychology.
Dyer also said he sought the information for scholarly research and would protect its confidentiality.
So, in several key respects, Dyer deceived Iowa officials to get his hands on the explosive material.
What’s more, he wasn’t straight with his editors about how he got the information. Dyer’s promising career is now in jeopardy. He resigned recently after being publicly criticized by his editor for the deception.
Increasingly, newspapers are turning away from tactics that have earned other journalists Pulitzer Prizes.
The methods Dyer used would not have been permitted at The Arizona Republic. According to the Gannett Newspaper Division principles of ethical conduct, “We will not lie. We will not misstate our identities or intentions.”
Ethical guidelines like these have developed as a way to ensure credibility with readers.
Yet, they can collide with the reality of difficult stories. Some of journalism’s most significant investigative work has emerged from information that powerful people didn’t want revealed and took extraordinary steps to cover up.
Given that, to what lengths should a reporter go to obtain and reveal it? Can we afford to be so prissy about our ethics when others are not?
Had some graduate student pilfered the material and sent it to a competing newsroom, would they have run it? I suspect so. Would it be any more ethical because someone else deceived the archivists?
In journalism, we often balance competing ethical values. Does the good achieved by publishing the news outweigh the potential harm?
That is one of the points Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute for journalists, makes. He has developed a checklist on deceptive tactics.
Is the information of profound importance? Were all other alternatives for obtaining the information exhausted? Are the journalists willing to fully disclose their tactics?
“A reporter should not act on his own,” Steele added. “The use of deception demands a rigorous decision-making process that includes supervisors and top editors.”
Useful advice for the ethical journalist confronting an occasionally unethical world.
