0 Sting Or Not to Sting?
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200 randomly selected real estate offices conduct limited testing to collect details and record how they were treated. Back- and color for their stories about steering. ing them up would be a separate office, Project editor Joye Brown is skeptical. JUDGMENT with a bank of phones and a full-time Newsday generally opposes undercover staff to verify each tester's cover. To be operations, and she is not about to pro- CALL effective, the operation would have to be pose undercover testing just to make sto- kept secret even from most of the news- ries lively. But she wants hard figures, paper's staff. and the idea intrigues her. The team's Racial steering is illegal under state education reporters, for example, are and federal law, but New York officials compiling a huge database from which 0 STING and many blacks contend that the prac- to analyze spending levels, test scores, tice is widespread and has intensified and other statistical measures to explain OR NOT segregation on Long Island. Housing inequities in educational quality between reporters Michael Alexander and Robert schools in white and black neighbor- Fresco could find little proof of this, hoods. Brown thinks testing might pro- TO STING? however, other than a few personal vide comparable evidence for the hous- accounts of blacks who said they had ing stories. been steered and a handful of prosecu- Later in the winter. Brown dispatches BY MARCEL DUFRESNE tions by state and county officials. "A Peracchio and Alexander to learn the steering test would have been the smok- who, why, and how of testing. The By most standards of investigative ing gun," says Alexander. reporters know that housing advocates reporting, Newsday's plan to document But as the proposal inched up through and law-enforcement agencies use test- racial discrimination in Long Island's Newsday's hierarchy during the winter ing to collect evidence against agents real estate industry had to rank among and spring of 1989, it encountered suspected of steering. As for the media, a the most ambitious, elaborate, and formidable objections, including con- computer search tums up several cases expensive undercover operations ever cems that it smelled like a sting, that it of undercover testing by newspapers, contemplated by a newspaper. couldn't be kept secret, that it was just including The Miami Herald, the Bergen Newsday's staff devised the undercov- too complicated to pull off. The discus- County, New Jersey, Record, and News- er plan in 1989 during early reporting for sion unfolded this way. day itself, and by a few television sta- a groundbreaking series about segrega- tions that had used hidden cameras. All tion. If the scheme worked, it would DECEMBER 1988: Team leader Adri- had found illegal steering, but in even expose an ugly and illegal discriminatory an Peracchio first suggests that reporters the most ambitious stories, testers visited practice. But it also raised questions about deception, among other things. COLOR LINE: Juanita and Dennis Fields told Newsday reporters working on a The idea itself was hardly new: send segregation series that they had been steered from a white neighborhood into a black one. out trained "testers" — black couples But editors wanted to get beyond such anecdotal accounts and measure the prevalence of and white couples posing as home buy- racial steering by Long Island realtors, using an elaborate undercover-testing scheme. ers — to see if real estate agents steer them, respectively, to predominantly black or white neighborhoods. Several newspapers and TV stations had done such testing for stories about segrega- tion, but never on the scale envisaged by the mid-level editors who planned it at Newsday. The plan was a researcher's dream: a massive, scientifically designed experiment that would statistically mea- sure the prevalence of racial steering in Long Island's huge real estate industry. But the plan also had the makings of a logistical nightmare. One scenario would have required up to forty trained testers — some reporters, the rest actors from New York City — each with a cover story, including an employment history and references. The testers would visit Marcel Dufresne is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. al^^AAY/JUNE I991 fewer ilian a do/en sales offices. Typical- black family tbat houses are available in increasingly tough questions, sending the ly, the local real estate industry denied a certain area, or tbe agent might use editors scrambling for answers. tbat steering was cnmnioii and blamed "vigorous salesmanship" on white buy- Interestingly, tbe cost — estimated as violations on a few unscrupulous agents. ers while "they just go through the high as $50,000 — does not seem to be a Tbere are several tbousand real estate motions" for blacks. factor. Instead, Marro's concems fall into offices on Long Island, a strip of land Williams assures Newsday tbat it is four categories: logistics, deception, roughly twenty miles wide that begins possible to design a large-scale test that secrecy, and what he calls "threshold." east of Manhattan and stretches 100 would show the extent of steering on While covering the Justice Department miles into the Atlantic. Most homes are Long Island with 95 percent accuracy. for Newsday and The New York Times, o\\ ner-occupied and range from modest They settle on a working proposal with Marro had seen that agency's question- lower-middle class tract houses to pala- 200 matched tests, using able use of undercover stings. Though he tial oceanfront estates. Brown knows tbat ten white couples and doesn't see the steering test as a sting measuring steering in sucb a diverse ten black couples. On ÍÍ exactly, he has reservations about the market would challenge even New.sday's tbat scale, Williams is Should there lack of probable cause. The proposal resources. But as the team delves deeper calls for picking agents at random — the she becomes convinced tbat there is a foundation of statistical analysis — and way, and her boss. Long Island editor reliability can be that troubles Marro. Charlotte H. Hall, agrees. Gingerly, they acbieved. bad conduct "The question is, should there be a approach managing editor Howard Williams, who has before 3 threshold of presumed bad conduct Schneider, a Newsday veteran who before a newspaper unleashes this sort of thinks most undercover reporting is thing on unsuspecting people?" Marro "unsophisticated and unnecessary." steering tests, sees says. There are times, he says, "when it "1 start with the premise tbat we don't Newsday'^ project as in SOrt Of thing? is perfectly justified for newspapers to do undercover reporting unless tbere is a class apart. If it found do a certain amount of undercover work, no other way to get the story," says widespread steering, but I think there has to be a tbreshold Schneider, whose first reaction to tbe that would challenge the and I'm not sure we had it here with the proposal was, in bis words, "cranky and belief tbat in modem America a black individual realtors." Brown and Hall negative." Couldn't the .series document family witb means can buy a house any- counter that housing pattems on Long steering by interviewing brokers, former where. Island are clear evidence of some level agents, and black homeowners who Schneider is impressed witb Wil- of steering. claim they have been steered? Yes, Hall liams's "very intelligent presentation," But Marro has other concerns: and Brown reply, but the material would but be is adamant that though Williams reporters "are not necessarily equipped be almost entirely anecdotal. If Newsday might be bired as a consultant, Newsday by training or talent" to work undercov- wants to assess the prevalence of steer- should run its own operation. By now er. If actors are used, how will their ing across Long Island, among people of the three editors — Brown, Hall, and behavior be monitored for consistency? all incomes, then massive testing is the Schneider — are convinced tbat large- Nuances of speech and body language only way. After numerous meetings and scale testing is both workable and impor- could affect how agents treat "buyers." memos, Schneider agrees. The editors tant enougb to tbe series to propose And since actors aren't trained reporters, also agree that if they do not find evi- relaxing tbe policy on undercover repori- how could Newsday trust their accounts dence of widespread steering, that too ing. The question is, can they convince in writing stories? Someone suggests will be a story. Newsday editor Anthony Marro? In May, having the actors wear body micro- after months spent refining it, a detailed phones, but Marro is skeptical; "Does SPRING 1989: Research for the propos- plan is sent to him. the process of trying to control it get us al moves forward, even after Brown goes That same month, one state away. The involved in some things we really don't on matemity leave in March. Peracchio Hartford Courant mns a front-page story want to do?" finds Kale Williams, director of a fair describing discrimination it found wben Finally, Marro worries that an opera- bousing agency in Chicago and one of reporters tested fifteen real estate agen- tion of this size can't be kept secret. One the country's foremost testing experts. cies in and around Hartford (see Laurel, leak, he says, and "every fax machine on They exchange letters and finally CJR, November/December 1989). Two Long Island" would start humming. Williams flies in from Chicago to help weeks later, tbe Courant's reader repre- Just before Labor Day 1989, nearly present the case for testing, which be sentative, Henry McNulty. writes a col- ten months after testing was first sug- calls "a valid technique recognized not umn saying the paper shouldn't have gested.