Running Head: FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

Food Lion/ABC-TV Case of Deception

Chelsea B. Ellsworth
Queens University of Charlotte

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

Food Lion/ABC-TV Case of Deception

In todays media age, things like using hidden cameras seems like an old concepts.
However, when journalist use hidden cameras and deception as a way to gain access to
information other wise deemed unattainable, lawsuits are filed and its marked a scandal. This
was what happened when several ABC-TV producers and journalists went undercover to reveal
some wrong doing within the Food Lion company. At the beginning of the lawsuit, Food lion
was awarded $315,000, but after appeals court Food Lion only received two dollars (Rich, 2013).
The more important question in this case is whether the use of deception by the ABC staff to gain
information is ethical.
Background
On November 5, 1992, ABCs PrimeTime Live aired an episode that exposed the Food
Lion company and their unsanitary food handling (Pratt, 1997). Two producers introduced the
idea to go undercover and investigate charges that Food Lion workers rinsed old meat in bleach,
altered expiration dates on beef and poultry and sold them as fresh, and sold dairy products
nibbled by rats (Pratt, 1997, p. 18). Food Lion in 1992 was the nations fastest-growing, lowest
priced supermarket chain, many of whose stores are located in low-income, minority
neighborhoods (McArdle, 1997, p. 42). Pratt also states that the charges may have been brought
to the producers attention by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) who wanted to
change Food Lions non-labor-union policy (p. 18).
The two producers then falsified their applications and got hired by Food lion, one
became a meat wrapper and the other a sales clerk (Pratt, 1997). One producer was employed by
a store in North Carolina and the other by a store in South Carolina (McArdle, 1997). Once
hired, the two were wired with microphones and cameras. There were other ABC staffers who

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

acted as food handlers and were able to capture some of the unsightly or potentially injurious
to consumers scenes (Pratt, 1997).
Food Lion charged ABC with three charges: harm to the company, cost the company paid
for training for the supposed employees, and trespassing on company property (Pratt, 2007).
These charges were taken to court and Food Lion was originally awarded $5.5 million in
punitive damages on January 22, 1997 (Pratt, 2007). ABC appealed the verdict and ended up
only paying $2 (Rich, 2013).
Legally, ABC did some illegal activity like falsify employment applications and
trespassing. Food Lion did have to pay to train these employees, so suing for punitive damages
would make sense. Since the applications were fake, Food Lion would be able to sue them as
well. All the charges that the company took against ABC made sense and when the final verdict
came down to only two dollars, it was a little surprising since ABC was in the wrong according
to the law when it came to fraud and trespassing. The original amount of over $5 million may
have been excessive, but the grounds Food Lion was suing seemed right.
Ethical Issues
The debate over the ethics and deception has been going on for decades now. In 1978 the
Chicago Sun Times was in a similar situation as ABC (Rich, 2013). The paper had set up a fake
bar to reveal that the Chicago police and city workers were taking bribes to allow the bar to
continue daily operations (Rich, 2013). Like in the Food Lion case, the reporters were not in
much legal trouble, but the Pulitzer-Prize board ruled the series unethical and rejected it for the
medias highest award (Rich, 2012, p. 309).

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

When many reporters have to make the decision on whether to use deception as a means
of getting information for a story, many journalist use the questions asked by Carole Rich or ones
similar to these questions:
Is the information of such overriding public importance that it can help people avoid
harm? Is there any way you could obtain the information through conventional reporting
methods, such as standard interviews or public records? Are you placing innocent people
at risk? For example you should not pose as a nurse, law enforcement officer or employee
in a job for which you might not be trained. (p. 310)
By answering these questions, one can determine whether what the producers and other ABC
staff members did was ethical. The answer to the first question, about public importance, would
be a clear yes. The information needed to be known to the public. The answer is the same to the
third question, yes. However, the line between yes and no gets blurry with the second question.
The second question asks Is there any way you could obtain the information through
conventional reporting methods (Rich, 2013, p. 310). There are several things ABC could have
done when the producers learned about the charges, use deception to get the story, run a story
about the charges and see what reaction they get, or conduct interviews and see who says what.
The problem with the last two options is Food Lion could charge ABC or the producers with
slander or defamatory. If ABC published the charges and had no proof or only anonymous
sources, then ABC could have lost credibility. Also the producers could have lost their jobs since
publishing false statements is an illegal, and most companies do not want to have people on the
pay role that publish lies or start trouble. In short, there were not many other means to get the
information, since Food Lion officials would probably not out right admit to the mishandling of
food.

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

Something to consider in this case is Food Lion never contest in court the authenticity of
the ABC report, had indeed misrepresented the age or the freshness of a product (that is, had told
the consumer a lie (Pratt, 2007, p. 19). Since this was the case, it is interesting to consider what
the scenario would have been if the producers went to Food Lion. However, it seems to reason
that Food Lion officials knew there was enough evidence gather by ABC. On the other hand, it
seems that this justifies ABC actions, making it seem that Food Lion would not have given up
the information easily.
One way of looking at the issue of deception by the media to gain information, would be
to take a utilitarianism stance. Utilitarianism says, The highest principle of morality is to
maximize happiness, the overall balance of pleasure over pain (Sandel, 2009, p. 34). The
utilitarian will use a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate whether the means to access this vital
information would be beneficial to more people.
To gain the kind of information the reporters gained, they would not be able to simply
walk up to the owners of stores or the company and get this information. By using this theory,
one could argue that the information released by ABC benefited more people than it hurt people,
so it would be fine and ethical to get release this information. However, since the information
was not easily accessible, the means of deception to get this information would also be ethical
because the information was important and would be more helpful to have out for the public.
According to Cornelius Pratt, prior to undertaking undercover investigations, U.S. news
organizations routinely ask themselves four questions: (1) Does the harm prevented by an
invasive deception outweigh the harm caused by it? (p. 19) The other three questions were the
same as the questions stated by Rich. When looking into the answer of this question it would

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

seem to reference the ethical theory Sandel of utilitarianism that asks about weighing out options
to see the value in choices.
When evaluating who was hurt by the exposer of the information ABC released, the list is
rather low when the amount of customers buying bad food is counted. There were 88 stores that
were closed down and laid off 3,500 workers (McArdle, 1997). The people that were working in
the stores would have lost their jobs, which would cause pain, but the amount of people getting
sick would also cause pain and suffering there for out weighing the number of people losing
jobs.
Also by conducting a cost benefit analyst for this case, one would have to determine what
the price of a human would be, which how can someone put a price on life. If all the people who
became sick as a result of the bad food sued Food Lion, Food Lion may have had to close down
more store which would have cause more money to the company and its workers. As a result, the
deception the producers did was better than not going undercover.
Libertarianism would take a slightly different approach to this Utilitarianism and ask why
this needs to be regulated. A Libertarians central claim is that each of us has a fundamental
right to liberty -- the right to do whatever we want with the things we own, provided we respect
other peoples rights to do the same (Sandel, 2009, p. 60). In other words, libertarians believe in
less regulation, and believe you can do what you want as long as you are not harming others
(Sandel, 2009). If using this theory, ABC was well within legal and ethical grounds to use
deception to get the information for the story.
However, when looking at this case with more detail, one may wonder, why did ABC not
just publish the charges and see how Food Lion reacted. The company never publicly said that
the accusations ABC made were false (McArdle, 1997). This would make it seem that if ABC

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

published the story with some testimony from sources, the deception would have been
unnecessary and a wast of time and money.
In the article, ABCs Food Lyin, McArdle makes the argument that ABC producers
had a good deal of distorted film and audio that never actually proved the charges against Food
Lion. He argues that the producers wanted the story to be true so bad that the producers tried to
coax the Food Lion workers into doing the wrong thing. If these accusations are true, the use
of deception to create the story would be wrong. If the story was there and this was the only way
to discover it, then it would ethically be okay.
Additionally, ABC left out some key segments from the original tapes when they were
asked to give copies to Food Lion (McArdle, 1997). For example, a scene that was shown to the
ABC viewers was of a man slipping on a grease covered and seemly unclean floor was
supposed to demonstrate the stores inability to keep a clean and safe environment (McArdle,
1997). However, after seeing the entire clip, the worker that slipped after spillin some soapy
water on the floor and then was joking around by moonwalking to make his co-workers laugh
(McArdle, 1997).
Another way to look at these case would be to consider the medias role as a watch dog.
Since many of Food Lions stores were in low-income areas, one could argue that people would
not have listened to their cries for corporate corruption. It would then be the medias job as a
watch dog of society to expose their stories, since they were the ones mainly being effected.
Kovach and Rosenstiel define a journalist role as Journalists must serve as an independent
monitor of power (p. 140). In these case, the power would be held by Food lion and the
journalist would need to expose the corruption that is within if there is any.

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

The role of the watchdog is old and continues to remain a vital role of the modern
journalist. Protecting the public is not the only role of the watchdog, but the purpose of the
watchdog role also extends beyond simply making the management and execution of power
transparent, to making known and understood the effects of that power (Kovach, 2007, p. 143).
In other words, the press has an obligation to the public to make known the effects of the power.
The ABC producers were in the case also ethical in their actions, since they were informing the
public about the effects of Food Lion.
In conclusion, the use of deception by the ABC-TV producers and staff was ethical and
necessary. After considering several different ethical theories and several analyses of the Food
Lion v. ABC-TV case, it seems clear that ABC was within ethical grounds by deceiving Food
Lion to gain access to the information. Deception when used for the right reasons and as a last
resort is ethical by many journalist and ethics professionals.

FOOD LION/ACB-TV CASE OF DECEPTION

References
Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2007). The elements of journalism: what newspeople should know
and the public should expect. New York: Three Rivers Press.
McArdle, T. (1997). ABC's Food Lyin'. National Review, 49(2), 42.
Pratt, C. B. (1997). Food Lion Inc. v. ABC News Inc.: Invasive Deception for the Public
Interest?. Public Relations Quarterly, 42(1), 18-20.
Rich, C. (2013). Writing and reporting news. (7th ed, pp. 309-310). Boston: Wadsworth.
Sandel, M. J. (2009). Justice: what's the right thing to do?. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.