Privately Accused Of Malpractice By A Grocery Site

Grocery stores are important staples of many communities, providing food and other necessities to people across the nation. Taking this into consideration, these communities depend on these businesses to follow proper health guidelines to ensure they receive the highest quality products. Due to this community dependence, grocery stores would be prime targets for journalists for scrutiny to protect the public from corporate greed that causes hygiene and safety standards to fall by the wayside. Following this train of thought, a scenario in which a grocery chain is suspected of malpractice by a broadcast station presents some challenges about getting evidence from a privately-owned business. Should I, a television reporter, try to get the business

Personally, I dislike the use of deception as a means of getting information because lying in an investigation only damages your credibility as a supposedly honest journalist. However, for the argument’s sake, I will pretend that my producers have pressured me into getting the scoop through whatever means necessary, including posing as potential employee to get footage with hidden cameras (Sarapin). While I can assume that privately-owned grocery stores have a form of implied consent for the public since I have never seen someone at the door of a Walmart or Publix that must grant permission for customers to enter, there does exist situations where owners can revoke said privilege, even after the trespassing took

Capital Cities/ABC, Inc (1997). In this case, journalists submitted false resumes to gain employment at a Food Line grocery store for the purposes of filming the unethical food handling procedures Food Line was allegedly practicing. Sound familiar, does it not? While the store could not successfully sue them for fraud, they were sued for trespassing and breaking “their duty of loyalty” (Food 1997). Since the journalists had acted against their second employer’s interests and went to extraordinary lengths to get information (lying about who they were and what they were after to get jobs), the court refused to consider Desnick as applicable to the situation, as it was about clients recording sessions with their doctors and was a precedent in a separate circuit. Fortunately for ABC, the court only awarded Food Line two dollars in damages, but the other possibilities could have been catastrophic, especially when adding the legal fees into the equation (Food 1997). In essence, deception can have different results depending on where you are and how far you go, making it risky to