PressEthic

Relatively unknown as a Media Studies professor, Michael Tracy is the man whom delivered John Mark Karr -- the self-professed and short-lived killer of JonBenet Ramsey as well as an aficionado of child pornography -- to the world.

But in helping Boulder prosecutors with the undercover operation, Tracy stepped into some murky territory, according to a story by Allan Wolper in Editor and Publisher.

Tracy made several documentaries on the death of the 6-year old Ramsey, who is shown ubiquitously on stock footage dressed in her beauty pageant garb. Working at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the town where JonBenet was killed, the journalist/journalism professor has a profound knowledge of the crime.

Particularly, according to Wolper, Tracy has been an advocate of the parents’ innocence in the murder, though the parents have been suspected by police and members of the media since the morning the young girl’s body was discovered.

This is where things get cloudy.

Because of his familiarity with the case, "Tracey was quick to respond to a Karr e-mail four years ago that promised to bring closure to the Ramsey family. Karr had seen one of the three documentaries that Tracey had produced in Britain for ITV on the JonBenet case," wrote Wolper.

After the initial correspondence began between the professor and Karr, Tracy helped investigators arrest Karr. Wolper writes that his involvement was "something most journalists thought was wrong."

Aside from the meltdown with the arrest, did Tracy cross the ethical line? Not according to him, as Wolper wrote:

'I am a scholar who writes about journalism and sometimes practices it,' Tracey told me. 'As a scholar, I don't have to concern myself with how a journalist conducts himself.

'And all this talk about ethics. Ethics in journalism in f---ing America? Are you kidding me? For Christ's sake, reporters and the cops were in bed together as soon as this story broke. It was consensual sex.'

Excusing Tracy’s brutish language, the case presents a conundrum, but one that most journalists would hopefully make, especially if they believed that they had a chance to bring a killer to justice.

As for some of his supporters, such UC-Boulder J-School Dean, Paul Voakes -- who is Tracy's boss -- Wolper wrote:

'I wouldn't go so far as to say Tracey was part of a sting,' Voakes added. 'But it is highly unusual for a scholar or a journalist to engage in this degree of cooperation with law enforcement. But if the overriding objective of the story is to get at the truth and bring someone to justice, I don't think it matters as much as we think it does.'

Voakes said that Tracey was an admirer of the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University run by Prof. David Protess that has won national prominence for its ability to free men wrongly convicted of crimes.

"What Professor Tracey is doing is not dissimilar to what we try to do here," Protess said. "There is nothing wrong with either a scholar or a journalist sharing information with law enforcement when they find evidence of criminal misconduct."

This line between reporter and participant grows murkier, ask Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff, who purchased a sex slave only to free her. Since these cases cannot be worked out beforehand, one can only hope that many might breach their ethics in cases as such.