Ethics of paper's fake arson story debated
When officials were looking to catch convicted murderer Steven Sherer in a plot to burn down the Bellevue home where his teenage son lives with the mother of his slain wife, they turned to an unlikely ally — a local newspaper.
King County prosecutors and sheriff's detectives asked the editors at the Eastside Journal, now called the King County Journal, to run a fake story about a staged arson to make Sherer believe an accomplice had carried out his plans. The newspaper complied.
The paper's cooperation helped prosecutors file charges of solicitation to commit arson against Sherer on Wednesday. Their actions also raised red flags in journalism circles as unethical and irresponsible.
"It was a lie," Michael Parks, director of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California, said of the Journal story. "The newspaper deliberately told a falsehood, not just to the guy in the prison cell, but to all its readers."
The King County Journal stands by its decision.
"Journalistically, we'll probably take some heat for it, but we have a responsibility to the community and that weighed heavily in our decision," said Journal Editor Tom Wolfe.
Ken Seal, a longtime resident of the Lake Hills neighborhood where the arson was staged, said he didn't see a problem with the decision.
"I think at times, like a time like that, it's justified and hopefully successful in getting more evidence for the case," said Seal, a member of the East Bellevue Community Council, adding he thought the practice of media cooperating with law enforcement was not unheard of.
On March 23, 2002, the newspaper reported police and fire officials "are investigating a fire." A fire department spokesman was quoted as saying, "it might have been deliberately set." The story also said, "Firefighters arrived at 8:35 a.m. ... (and) the fire caused substantial damage." The story concluded, "The house might have been targeted, but investigators would not give further details."
Steven Sherer, an inmate at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, is serving a 60-year sentence for murdering his wife, Jami Sherer. The Redmond woman disappeared in September 1990 — the day after she told her husband she was having an affair and planned to leave him — but her body has never been found. Seven years later, three Redmond police detectives reopened the case. Prosecutors filed a charge of first-degree murder against Sherer in January 2000. He was convicted that June.
In December 2001, a prison informant told officials Sherer had recruited his 21-year-old cellmate to torch his mother-in-law's house and kill its occupants, court records say. The fire was to be a test run, and if the cellmate succeeded, Sherer would hire him to kill the four children of the deputy prosecutor who tried his murder case, charging papers say.
When Sherer's cellmate was released from prison in February 2002, King County sheriff's deputies were waiting for him at the Walla Walla bus station, court documents say. He agreed to cooperate with authorities and said Sherer demanded proof of the arson — in the form of a newspaper article — before Sherer would reveal where he had hidden $17,000 in jewelry that was to be payment for the crime, documents say.
That's when prosecutors and sheriff's detectives approached Journal editors for help.
"The King County Sheriff's office staged this fire ... and requested that the King County Journal put in a blurb that there was a fire there and it seemed suspicious — and it was then mailed to Sherer," sheriff's spokeswoman Christina Bartlett said yesterday.
Sherer tried to hire a hit man to kill his son and mother-in-law before, Bartlett said. His latest behind-bars plan to commit arson and multiple murders "was an exceptional case that we felt called for exceptional techniques," Bartlett said. "We very much appreciate the King County Journal for printing (the story) for us."
Wolfe, the Journal editor, said the decision to help police is "an exceptional thing for a newspaper" to do. "The targets identified in the investigation were the children of a prosecutor, his own son and the mother of the wife he killed," Wolfe said. "Right there, you have a pretty exceptional situation."
Though he agreed the paper's credibility could be hurt with some readers, he said others have already written letters of support. "We thought it was important, we thought it was for a good purpose," he said.
Journalism-ethics experts, however, say a newspaper's primary responsibility to its community is to tell the truth.
"There's no room in a news report for a false, made-up story," said Parks, a former Los Angeles Times editor. Parks said that to knowingly publish a false story "violates the canons of journalism."
Aly Colón, an ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a nationally recognized journalism school and research center in St. Petersburg, Fla., agreed that printing a bogus story undermines "the foundation of trust a newspaper has with its readers."
"While there are times when things might appear to be (for) a greater good," any time a newspaper engages in deception, "you eat away at any integrity you may have," said Colón, who has worked for The Seattle Times, The Herald of Everett and other publications. "I can see them wrestling with the issue," Colón said of Journal editors. "But they should have wrestled it to the ground and pinned this thing. To intentionally mislead cripples credibility."
Seattle Times staff reporter Warren Cornwall contributed to this story.
Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com