Jim West was a conservative Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., caught living a double life by journalists at the local newspaper. West was discovered to have an online identity which he used to chat with young gay men on a site called Gay.com.
Articles in the Spokane Spokesman-Review outed West for his sexually explicit chatting and accused him of abusing his power by offering internships to men he met on the site. The paper also accused West of molesting two young boys in the 1970s and 80s when West was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader. West refused to step down after the scandal broke, and eventually he was recalled in a popular vote. West died of complications from colon cancer last summer.
Frontline did an excellent piece on the Jim West sex scandal; watch it online here.
The Frontline report highlights some of the ethical issues raised by the reporting techniques employed by The Spokesman-Review in its efforts to uncover West's secrets. Journalists from the paper posed as young men in online chat rooms and tried to lure West into disclosing his identity.
In this digital age there are countless ways to gather information and as a result, there's a greatly increased potential for invasions of privacy. While West's actions were surely hypocritical - he had sponsored several anti-gay bills in his political career - the local paper's efforts to out him smack of entrapment and violation of privacy. The Frontline report does a great job of capturing all sides of this complex ethical case.
