OTM #1

This week I listened to On the Media’s podcast called Laws of the Lying Game. This podcast highlights a Houston grand jury who was charged with investigating misconduct involved with planned parenthood. The grand jury has rather instead of perusing planned parenthood, indicted the two anti-abortion activists from the Center for Medical Progress; David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The two used fake identification and secretly filmed officials discussing the harvesting and procurement of fetal tissue. Using the argument of undercover journalism which protects their rights of speech they exposed their works for the public to see. The issue is over media law and ethics and on whether or not the two operated within a legal means of obtaining the information. Using their interviews in Texas with the planned parenthood members they were able to produce the signature of Mellissa Farrell on receipts that they say proves that Planned Parenthood profits from human organ trafficking and then released a new video compilation showing Farrell admit that such revenues create margin to “help pad the bottom line of there company.” (Johnson, 2016)  

With the evidence piled up against Planned Parenthood Harris County grand jury ignored the evidence and indicted Daleiden and his associate Sandra Merritt on a second-degree felony charge of tampering with a governmental record, and a misdemeanor charge for violating the states “prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs.” (Johnson, 2016) With many initial pleas that the grand jury charges be throw out the Harris County District said in a video that the two will have their day in court. The two have both agreed to turn themselves in and fight the accusations in court.

The social context in which they operated was that of deception and lying to get the information in which they wanted. With the lying and deception, the people whom were participating in the interviews were obviously unaware of the situation and didn’t have their guard up to give proper cultural answers. They exposed how planned parenthood officials think and act to generate what they wanted. They manipulated their thinking to get the information that they desired. Using psychological and social methods they built a plan in which to operate. Now the idea and concepts of ethics in media law are at play and they ones who were acted against are not happy and accusing them of acting unethically to receive information. Their argument is that they operated in ways that undercover journalists have for many years and see no implications of why they are being indicted by a grand jury on these charges for they feel as they were serving the public on a right to know basis.