Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

When Reuters now-suspended deputy social media editor Matthew Keys was indicted over allegedly helping members of Anonymous deface the LA Times, using credentials that he provided, it was a surprise.

How Keys intends to defend himself is now in the open: His lawyers claim that he was an undercover journalist. As reported by the Huffington Post, his lawyer said the following: “This is sort of an undercover-type, investigative journalism thing, and I know undercover — I’m using that term loosely [...] This is a guy who went where he needed to go to get the story. He went into the sort of dark corners of the Internet. He’s being prosecuted for that, for going to get the story.”.--

Gawker is about $80,000 into a cheeky scheme to raise a couple hundred grand to pay some drug dealers for a video that allegedly shows Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack. The “Crackstarter” campaign has caught some flak on ethical grounds – some people are uncomfortable with the idea of a news organization paying drug dealers for anything – but put those concerns aside and you can see that Gawker’s experiment presents a pretty useful case study for the idea of crowdfunding journalism....

Motor Trend's Jessi Lang says she is a journalist who wants to help "build relationships" between that publication and its readers while covering the auto industry.

She's also being paid to represent oil company Phiillips 66 as a spokesperson who is trying to help influence young people to buy their gas, something Motor Trend doesn't appear to be telling its readers.

Taking payment from a potential newsmaker is a generally frowned upon practice, but Lang, and the PR firm representing Phillips 66, say Motor Trend approves of her simultaneously representing an automotive publication and a company that's part of the automotive industry....

[Ethically challenged? ~ Jeff]