Did 'NY Times' Columnist Cross an Ethical Border?

Whether he's buying prostitutes' freedom or taking college students on a tour of African slums, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof isn't the sort of journalist who worries about getting overly involved in the stories he covers. But did his crusading spirit cause Kristof to overstep the paper's ethics guidelines?

In yesterday's column, Kristof wrote about his longstanding efforts to test the limits of internet censorship in China. His method for doing so involved posing as a Chinese national to write various provocative comments and blog posts on Chinese sites and then seeing how long until the authorities deleted them. To help disguise his identity, Kristof even enlisted a Chinese co-conspirator who made sure his language sounded authentic.

But this method seems to be proscribed by the Times's code of ethics, which states, "Those working for us as journalists may not pose as anyone they are not -- for example, police officers or lawyers." A specific exception is made for restaurant critics and travel writers seeking to avoid special treatment -- but not for well-intentioned human rights columnists.

Did Kristof clear his experiment in advance with his superiors? Or is there some nuance in the ethics code that allows for subterfuges like his? I've reached out to Kristof and the paper's PR department but have yet to hear back. [Update: See Kristof's response below.]

Obviously, masquerading as an average Chinese citizen is a different sort of thing from posing as a police officer to gain access to a crime scene. But there are still reasons to be concerned about tactics like Kristof's. Will the Communist regime use them as an excuse to interfere with the reporting of other Times journalists operating in China? Or turn the episode into a propaganda victory by claiming that all of the anti-Party sentiment on the Chinese web is actually the work of foreign propagandists like Kristof?

Update: Kristof says he didn't misrepresent himself, per se, so much as he merely declined to actively identify himself as an American journalist, an omission that is permitted in the Times guidelines. (Specifically, it says Times staffers "need not always announce their occupation when seeking information normally available to the public.") He notes that the name he used to post his comments, Ji Sidao, is a name he has been using for many years, ever since he began learning the language.

As for his description of himself in the column as "pretending to be Chinese," he allows, "Maybe that wasn't the most felicitous language."

In any case, he says, he did practice transparency by revealing his methods in the column. "The disclosure kind of helps when one is near ethical boundaries. It doesn't obviate issues but I think full disclosure helps." And, he says, his Times superiors must agree, since "I've been doing this a number of times over the years and nobody's ever raised an eyebrow."

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Speaking of full disclosure: I recently wrote a freelance article for the Times.

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