Undercover Reporting: Entertainment, Expos and Ethics

(Senior Seminar: JOUR-UA.401.1.001, Fall 2016)

Ted Conover
ted.conover@nyu.edu

Undercover reporting is one of the most potent practices in journalism, and one of the
most controversial. Here it will be considered on a continuum with kinds of participatory
reporting that have aimed to produce not expos but rather a deeper, insider quality of
understanding. With exceptions, both methods involve immersion and the kinds of ethical
stakes that come with one's subjects either forgetting, or never having known, that one
intended to write about them. Using Brooke Kroeger's authoritative history as a principal
text (and the accompanying online database as a resource), we will consider key works of
the past 125 years of (mainly American) undercover and participatory reporting in their
ethical and literary dimensions.
Students will present texts and historical and critical contexts; participate in in-class
debates over the merits of controversial projects such as the Chicago Sun-Times' Mirage
Tavern investigation and John Howard Griffin's series for Sepia magazine that became
Black Like Me; and develop case studies of less well-known reporting not on the syllabus
to evaluate in terms of ethics, efficacy, and literary value.
Due dates
Short response essays of 300 words will be due most weeks.
In addition, each student will do two research projects on journalists referred to in
Undercover Reporting. Most of these will be readable via its accompanying database,
undercoverreporting.org. The student will read the original work; assess critical
reception; and write an essay of 1700 - 2000 words describing the work and its impact,
ethics, and literary value. For each essay, an oral presentation to the class of about 15
minutes will be offered. Deadlines for these will be staggered; most weeks, two students
will present. Presenting students will be exempted from that week's short response essay,
but not from the reading.
As an alternative, the second research project can be a first-person undercover reporting
assignment of 1500-1750 words. Students will take on a reporting assignment that either
(a) features a hidden agenda, or (b) encourages the writer to "pass" in some way. You
need to discuss and clear your idea with me first.
Grading

One third of the grade will be based on the weekly response essays; one third will be
based on the two research projects; and one third will come from class participation.
Thoughtfulness and thoroughness in your written work will be praised; lateness and
errors will lower your grade. Plagiarism and fabrication are firing offenses.
If you need to miss a class, email me in advance. Missing more than two classes will
lower your grade (if the circumstances extenuate enough we can discuss an extra
assignment). Try not to miss any, and please do not be late to class.
Texts to buy
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin (1960)
Rush, Kim Wozencraft (1990) or Donnie Brasco, Pistone with Woodley (1987)
Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper's Magazine,
ed. by Bill Wasick (2010). This book is optional: We will read several pieces from
this volume, but NYU students can obtain all of them free at harpers.org.
Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception, Brooke Kroeger (2011). Also
available in pdf's (free) at http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780810163515
Class Unknown: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the
Progressive Era to the Present, Mark Pettinger (2012)
1. On meeting strangers, and not telling the (whole) truth
What's so bad about undercover journalism? What's so good?
Kroeger, introduction to Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception.
Plus, the opening of Janet Malcolm's famous article, "The Journalist & The Murderer," a
response by Tom Junod, and more.
2. The Founding Mother
Nellie Bly, Ten Days in a Madhouse (1887)
(with reference to Norah Vincent, Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the
Loony Bin (2009) and Samuel Fuller's film "Shock Corridor," 1963, 101 min.)
3. Tramping with George and others
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933); Jack London; Josiah Flynt;
and more.
4. Like Me
John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (1961), and 1964 film (105 min). Controversy and
descendants.

5. Gonzo
Gloria Steinem, "I Was a Playboy Bunny" (1963)
Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw
Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
6. Watersheds
The Mirage Tavern (1977)
Food Lion (1992)
7. Drugs, the Mob, and the Unhappy Inner Life of Undercover
Rush, by Kim Wozencraft (1990), and film (1991)
Donnie Brasco, by Joseph Pistone (1987), and film (1997)
8. Deep Immersion
Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000)
Ted Conover, "The Way of All Flesh," Harper's, May 2013
with reference to The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (1906)
9. and 10. The Provocations of Harper's
Submersion Journalism, ed. by Bill Wasick and the editors of Harper's magazine
Barbara Ehrenreich, "Nickel and Dimed," Harper's, 1999
Ken Silverstein, "Their Men in Washington," Harper's, 2007
11. New Directions, I: Subcultures
Lawrence Otis Graham, A Member of the Club (1995)
Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
(2009)
Tracie McMillan, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's,
Farm Fields and the Dinner Table (2012)
12. New Directions, II: The Hidden Camera and Extra-Journalistic Activism
James O'Keefe and partisan politics
13. New Directions, III: The Hidden Camera and Extra-Journalistic Activism
Animal rights videos and farm state backlash
14. Patterns: Clusters, Justifications, and Denials

Journalism codes of ethics. Commentary by Tom Goldstein, Sissela Bok, and others on
ethics of undercover reporting