Checkbook Journalism

The practice of paying sources for information—known as checkbook journalism—is something that journalists in mainstream news media in the United States generally consider to be unethical. In fact, many news organizations, including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, specifically forbid this practice in their ethics codes. On the other hand, many tabloid publications regularly pay for news.

Mainstream media have derided the practice for decades. In 1962, Time magazine took the British press to task for its coverage of a case involving James Hanratty, accused of killing two people two decades earlier. In the Time story—which cited accounts from a variety of participants and witnesses, the magazine concludes:

The problem, as Time argued, is that sources whose information is being bought “face an irresistible impulse to embroider the truth for the sake of tomorrow's headlines.” And others who work in the media worry that paying for information puts the credibility of both that information and the news organization at stake.

But as much as it is considered poor practice, checkbook journalism has a long history and it does not appear to be going away. As early as 1912, The New York Times paid a wireless operator on the Titanic $1,000 for his story, and Life magazine paid the seven Mercury astronauts for their stories in the early 1960s. Despite the nickname, payment doesn't always take the form of a check. Hearst newspapers paid the legal bills for Bruno Hauptmann, the man found guilty in 1935 of kidnapping Charles Lindbergh Jr. (the “Lindbergh baby”), to get scoops during the trial. More recently, ABC gave pop singer Michael Jackson a series of free ads for his new album, HIStory, worth $1 million in 1995 in the same week that the network interviewed Jackson and his wife at the time, Lisa Marie Presley, on Prime Time Live.

In notable and more recent cases: