An enthralling story. I highly recommend the podcast.
I mostly disagree with the author's apparent bias (that the podcast wasn't "worth the pain" it would cause to its subjects). If Reed was doing his journalistic duty in assuring consent of his subjects (which he seems to unfailingly respect, as evidenced from the content of the podcast episodes), then the subjects have consented to being "on the record," and have essentially waived their right to private conversation.
It's trickier with the main subject of the podcast, given the circumstances. He clearly consented to being recorded, but uncovering more of his private life through the testimony of others could be against his wishes. I would argue that the main subject would want this story told in its entirety, given his raw disposition and tendency for taking a microscope to the problems of the world.
Ultimately, I think it was an ethically sound journalistic telling of a captivating story. I highly recommend taking a listen.
> uncovering more of his private life through the testimony of others could be against his wishes
I don't see why this is relevant. As long as the journalist reports from within the ethical and legal boundaries of the profession, I don't think we can fault him/her if the subject doesn't like the end product. Very few journalists will give retroactive veto power to an interview subject, nor will they allow the subject to dictate who else may say what about the story. In the general case, in the absence of submitting the story for review before publishing, it is impossible to ensure that the subject will be happy with it. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of this.
1) I doubt the subjects were aware of the context their statements would be framed in.
2) "I would argue the subject of the podcast would consent" is not the same as consent. It's one thing if it's a public figure. The subject of this podcast was not a public figure.
Regarding 2, I'd be interested to know whether there was a different legal/ethical standard for people who have died. Surely there must be a journalism professor around here somewhere.
2) I completely agree; it's 100% not consent. The third-party testimony about the subject, however, was consented. Whether or not it is responsible and/or respectful to share that about the main subject is what I'm pondering in my remarks. It seems ethical from a purely journalistic view, in my opinion.
I don't know...Reed at one point exposes something John specifically told him to keep off the record and he writes it off for two reasons, both of which I take issue with. I can't explain it without getting into spoilers though, which I think any sane person would expect from this thread, but nevertheless, just in case, please stop reading now if you plan to listen to the podcast.
So the first reason Reed gives for revealing John's apparent first lover is because John is dead and based on his assessment of John's personality, he believes John would not care, because again, he's dead. Besides the fact that there is obviously more at stake than your personal relationship with private information, i.e secrets effect your friends, family and enemies who are still alive, presuming that someone feels a certain way based on a few years of talking to them towards the end of their life is not an ironclad basis for an assumption like that. This reasoning is so shitty, that it almost makes the second reason weaker, as if Reed was kind of desperate to bolster his argument for exposing this somehow. The second reason is that other sources corroborated what John told Reed in confidence, so he feels that he can reveal it even though John told him not to. This logic sounds a little better than the first, but still, I'm not an expert in journalistic ethics, but I would venture to say that it's still a bit immoral to reveal that information via a third party, not least because they may be giving you a corrupted version of it. In my opinion it would almost be better to say "This person told me that John had a sort of boyfriend at one point early in his life", but not verify it with John's own off the record remarks.
Additionally, it doesn't realllly seem to add a ton to the story for me. I think that whether or not John had boyfriends early in his life could have been left vague and had the same effect.
As for the "church" stuff, again, I'm sort of at a loss. One thing that is for certain, as the article says, is that John intentionally did not reveal to Reed what was actually going on in these sessions. Again, I don't really know what's acceptable here from a journalist's standpoint, but to me it seems like he went a little overboard with it. By the end I got the impression, which I think was intentional, that John was getting something vaguely sexual out of "church" based just on Tyler's account. This is really dicey because John gets no retort because he's dead and it's clear he didn't really want to talk about it in the first place. I think that the pain addiction was an important part of the story, but again, I'm not sure it was worth the better part of an episode since John didn't want to talk about it when he was alive.
Anyway, I'm not saying that totally agree with the writer of the article. And as I said twice above, I can't figure out exactly how I feel about the whole thing. On some level though, it definitely made me a little bit uneasy, like I was eavesdropping.
I agree with most of what you're saying. In my opinion, the most questionable thing Reed did was captured in your first point; Reed shared large bits from his "off the record" conversations with John. I'm not an ethicist or a journalist, but that seems "wrong" to me.
In terms of the "church" topic, I think Tyler's accounts are completely valid/ethical to share (since he was "on the record"). Still, it doesn't sit well with me that John's account of "church" doesn't align with Tyler's. As a listener it feels like I'm hearing something John isn't completely comfortable with sharing.
I pretty much accepted the explanation as to why, which included according to Johns own beliefs he's just dirt in the ground and it wouldn't actually hurt anyone.
I'm not going to spoil the podcast I guess, but towards the end I was definitely really not enjoying how deep it was going. I think it pushed at least an episode beyond the journalistic ethics I'm comfortable with.
I don't think any of us can speak for the subject of the podcast (and I think it still matters despite how it ended up), but when I put myself in his shoes I would not feel good about how far the podcast went.
This is the bargain you make when you talk to a journalist, you get your side of the story on the record, but you usually have no control over where the journalist takes it. You're not comfortable with that, don't speak to journalists. Barring outright misrepresentations by the journalist about their intentions, I don't see anything wrong with this.
Okay, but if journalists had no ethics whatsoever beyond a legal obligation, than no one would want to talk to them and we would not get to listen to people's stories. It's not so much about what you could get away with as a journalist, but about trust between you and your subject. I think that by and large Reed did a good job of giving the story a fair telling. There were a few things though, like what was said in the article, that went to far in my opinion.
Right, but I didn't think it was morally right for the journalist to carry it as far as it went beyond the on the record elements.
I'm not talking about whether or not it was allowable, I'm talking about the moral implications.
If I openly talked about my sexual partners with a journalist (in this case, he didn't) — it would be kind of messed up to track them all down, find out my specific kinks, and then publish that without asking me.
You could technically do it, but I don't think I could feel good about publishing it.
Reed's spending 5-10 minutes in that one episode defending his actions was not very convincing to me - where he said he had to guess what the subject would think.
It's tough to discuss without spoilers, but there's no way he could get consent, right? And there's no family to seek consent from (save his mother who didn't seem lucid enough to consent) but he did have consent from the other people he interviewed.
I don't even know.. I felt uneasy listening at times due to this exact question, but I don't think it was unethical at all.
I guess it's Journalistically Ethical, but as a person it just didn't see morally right to me. I think it went from telling a compelling story to airing something the subject didn't explicitly disclose, and in some regards intentionally masked.
I think on balance it was worth it for the insight it provided into the soft underbelly of this country. Made me think more and longer than pretty much anything I've seen, read or listened to in the past 20 years.
My two cents as a sufferer of emotional pain is that if the exposure of a personal emotional wound, raw and without bandage, helps others heal then that is worth it. This is speculation as I have no formal training in mental health nor neuroscience, but it is my anecdotally formed opinion that any person suffering from loneliness is sure to appreciate the palliative effects of the outing of one's personal pain for others to relate to, thereby serving as both a sword by which the personal enemy of loneliness is cut down and a bridge on which to share the same power with others. To me, if one cannot understand this then one does not understand loneliness nor how to dig themselves out of it. Which John may not have.
Brian Reed intimately got to know and was deeply affected by John's story, and it is shameful to me that others without understanding of neither their relationship nor what John went through would think themselves judge and jury on the morality of this production. It is reasonable to question them, but to pass the judgement that Brian Reed is taking advantage of John for his own journalistic advances is to not think very deeply about the podcast in my opinion. Brian likely recognized this relationship between the sharing of loneliness and its cure, and likely conjectured that this is what a healthy version of John would have wanted.
I have deep reservations about the way S-Town was produced and edited.
I think it's likely Brian outed people who didn't want to be outed, who also happen to live in a violently intolerant society. That's journalistically unethical.
Brian also does a lot of bisexual erasure in S-Town and that's not cool either.
I totally agree that things got pretty uncomfortable at times during the show, and the Brian Reed covered some perhaps excessively personal things, but I'm curious if you can go into detail on the bisexual erasure you mention. Are you referring to the perspectives on John's sexuality, or were there other instances I missed?
I'm referring specifically to how Brian talked about John's sexuality. While it's true that he eventually reports John's own words on the subject, otherwise Brian treats it as a dichotomy between gay and straight, and doesn't even talk about bisexuals, or even men who have sex with men (MSM), which is a distinct and important orientation in its own right.
I was actually pretty disappointed in the story, mainly I suppose because I didn't really think there was a story. I can't really say more without spoilers. As far as true crime goes, Crimetown is leaps and bounds better.
I mostly disagree with the author's apparent bias (that the podcast wasn't "worth the pain" it would cause to its subjects). If Reed was doing his journalistic duty in assuring consent of his subjects (which he seems to unfailingly respect, as evidenced from the content of the podcast episodes), then the subjects have consented to being "on the record," and have essentially waived their right to private conversation.
It's trickier with the main subject of the podcast, given the circumstances. He clearly consented to being recorded, but uncovering more of his private life through the testimony of others could be against his wishes. I would argue that the main subject would want this story told in its entirety, given his raw disposition and tendency for taking a microscope to the problems of the world.
Ultimately, I think it was an ethically sound journalistic telling of a captivating story. I highly recommend taking a listen.