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Is it unethical to snoop? I don’t think so. The weekly conversation among the Ethicists in the Sunday New York Times Magazine is usually pretty interesting, but the one this past weekend surprised me with its opacity.
The upshot is our correspondent has the valuable ring and it’s burning a hole in his pocket. What’s more, he spotted a notice on Craigslist asking for a reward for a missing ring and he’s pretty sure it’s the ring he’s got. What should he do?
Is it unethical to pry this way? Is it unethical to want to know more and to indulge that want? Some will say it’s risky and stupid, and it may be, but that doesn’t make it wrong. When journalists pry it’s the height of virtue. Our correspondent made himself a player in the brawl he described in his letter to the Ethicists. He stayed to watch. He volunteered information to the police. He pocketed lost property and used it to try to conspire with one brawler against the other. Afterward, he went to the New York Times. If at this point he feels—or can be made to feel—it’s his duty to find out more, why isn’t it? Yet none of the Ethicists suggested that as an ethical way forward.
