How Far Would You Go to Get a Story?

BARRY LEVINE, A TEMPLE grad, executive editor of the National Enquirer and friend of J1111, recently recounted to New York magazine his fondest memories of life in tabloid journalism:

When his helicopter was blasted with shotgun pellets over Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith’s wedding; when Mike Tyson dragged him into a hotel stairwell and threatened to kill him after Levine asked if he was gay; when his news team was “attacked” by a swarm of tarantulas after sneaking onto Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch; when he had two reporters cross a meadow wearing a sheep costume to get inside Michael J. Fox’s nuptials; when he sent ten operatives into a hospital dressed as doctors and nurses with clipboards rigged with tiny cameras to snap the first pictures of Lisa Marie Presley’s baby.

Would you wear a sheep costume to sneak into a wedding just to get a story? Would you pose as a doctor to get pictures otherwise unavailable? Is there anything wrong with that?

The National Enquirer, which unabashedly pays for information, broke the story of presidential candidate John Edwards' affair (with a woman who gave birth to his child) and was considered for a Pulitzer Prize for that investigation.

How far should journalists go to get a story?

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