Rolling Stone magazine admits to giving Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman final approval of Sean Penn's interview with him, and that has some journalists crying foul.
"Some names have had to be changed, locations not named, and an understanding was brokered with the subject that this piece would be submitted for the subject’s approval before publication. The subject did not ask for any changes," reads an editor's note at the beginning of the interview.
Penn, an actor, doesn't have a background in journalism, but the magazine agreed to Guzman's terms. Professional journalists occasionally grant quote approval to subjects, but it goes against the profession's ethical standards to allow a subject to approve of a story, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Sunday on
"Reliable Sources."
"Allowing any source approval over a story's content is inexcusable. The practice of pre-approval discredits the entire story whether the subject requests changes or not," Andrew Seaman, chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee wrote in a
blog post.
Rolling Stone's editor's note said Guzman asked for no changes, but that didn't satisfy "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter.
"What if he had?" Stelter asked. "What would Rolling Stone have done?"
Plus, he noted, the fact that a notorious drug kingpin was completely happy with a story written about him should be problematic in itself.
Toobin said many journalists would have given in to the demands to get the story from one of the most important people in the world, though he admitted, "I would have written a different article."
Others weren't as critical, including Danny Gold of Vice News, who tweeted:
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