BOB GARFIELD: In 2003, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington received a tip suggesting that Republican legislator Jim West had been involved in a child molestation scandal, then breaking in the paper. Later tips charged now-Spokane Mayor West with offering gifts and other favors to sex partners he solicited on line. A two-year investigation conducted by reporter Bill Morlin and others culminated this month in a shocking series of stories, produced with the help of a computer expert hired by the Spokesman-Review to pose as a teenager in an internet chat room. That sting operation has since drawn sharp criticism from editors at papers ranging from the Baltimore Sun to the Indianapolis Star. Amanda Bennett of the Philadelphia Inquirer remarked in Editor & Publisher that, (quote) "We are not private investigators. We are journalists. Undercover is a method of the past." Steve Smith is editor of the Spokesman-Review. He explained how the paper's initial reporting on the mayor's alleged pedophilia began back in 2003.

STEVE SMITH: The initial aspect of our investigation focused on tips, actually, that came to our lead reporter, Bill Morlin, that Mayor West may have been involved in the sexual abuse of young boys in the late '70s and early '80s. Bill had produced a series of stories in 2003 documenting a previously undisclosed, as it were, sex abuse scandal within the Spokane County Sheriff's Department. That series focused on a deputy named David Hahn, who had killed himself in 1981. Hahn's best friend and co-scout leader was Jim West, also a sheriff's deputy in those years, and as the 2003 story was published, Bill began to receive some tips from sources that suggested he should dig a little big deeper and could perhaps find the link between Hahn and West in terms of abuse of young people.

BOB GARFIELD: How did you go about reporting that part of the story?

STEVE SMITH: That's a classic shoe leather investigation of which Bill Morlin is a, is a real expert. We had tips, we had no names, we had no dates, we had no documented incidents, we were not going to print these allegations unless we had real people, more than one, on the record, identified and photographed. And it took Bill just short of two years to finally find the individuals that we were looking for, and our story that was released last week. That part of the investigation was built around two named accusers, both adult men now, both of them convicted felons, but both of them with compelling stories of abuse as, as young children.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, how did you come to start investigating the mayor's on-line habits?

STEVE SMITH: Morlin is literally on the street, trying to track down individuals who may have been molested by David Hahn and, potentially, by Mayor West. In the course of that, one of the individuals, a source approached by Morlin, said "Hey, I've just talked to this 18 year old kid. He says he met the mayor on line in a chat room and just had sex with him." Took us by surprise. Didn't know it was there. And that sent us off on a parallel track to try and discern what was going on, on line.

BOB GARFIELD: And here is where you decided to bring in outside help. It's fairly common for police organizations to pose as minors to lure or at least locate pedophiles on the internet. What brought you to the decision to bring in an outsider to do the same thing for the Spokesman-Review.

STEVE SMITH: Here's what we were looking for. We initially had one 18 year old boy who had been chatting on line with an individual - an adult male - who was using the screen name Cobra82nd. He had chatted with this individual for some period of time, ultimately leading to a meeting - a date, as it were. During the course of driving around after dinner, the adult turned to this young man and said - "Do you know who I am?" And he said "No, I don't know who you are. I don't recognize you." And the man said "Well, I'm, I'm Mayor Jim West." Ultimately, they had a consensual sex act in the back of the car outside a country club, late at night. That was in late fall of 2004. For a couple of months, you know, we attempted to try to develop better information about who Cobra82nd was, and the question I asked my reporter was - "Can we be certain that the individual we're dealing with is not somebody posing as the mayor in order to hype their attractiveness to young men, portraying themselves as somebody with power and authority?" And until the reporter could stand before me and say "I know this is Mayor West, without qualification," you know, that's not a story. That's just not a story. We discovered that the only way we were going to get at this story was to go on line ourselves.

BOB GARFIELD: It's no secret to you that all the news organizations in this country, especially in the wake of Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly, have in fact been on the defensive about whether readers can believe what they read. And now here is a news organization that is explicitly misrepresenting itself to the target of, of its investigation. This has consequences. You must have discussed those consequences at some length before deciding to take this course.

STEVE SMITH: I was a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Credibility Task Force for several years. I am steeped in the credibility issue as maybe any editor in the country. So this issue was not resolved easily in my office, and it was an agonizing decision. It's an interesting twist that as I sit here and discuss this, what I'm arguing, in essence, is that the credibility of our stories was enhanced by this move, insofar as our, our readers, the citizens of Spokane, are concerned. Absent this effort to name the mayor as the individual who was on line, without any question or qualification, what we would have had was a he said, he said. Those kinds of stories cause considerable credibility problems. Because what we reported was true and accurate, and because the mayor was forced to confess to it all and acknowledge that it was true and accurate, if you're a citizen of Spokane, we're quite credible at the moment. If you're an editor in Philadelphia, or Minnesota or North Carolina, you've got some serious questions.

BOB GARFIELD: Is it possible that the Spokesman-Review has done its civic duty here and that you've done a service to your community but simultaneously done a disservice to the larger journalistic world by the very act of misrepresenting yourself - the harm ultimately trumping the good?

STEVE SMITH: At the top of the list of services citizens expect from their newspapers is aggressive watchdog reporting of government and public institutions. That's right at the top of the list. And it's an area, frankly, where I think our, our industry may have been a little gun shy in recent years, for a lot of reasons, some of it having to do with resources and corporatization and all the issues with which you are familiar. And so, as I sit here now, and perhaps someone will accuse me of merely rationalizing, I tend to think that what we've done is a good thing. I'm open to the argument, and I'm open to the discussion. I don't for a moment dispute that this is an issue that should be debated within our profession. I wish my colleagues were a little more willing to sit back and discuss these issues before drawing such rigid conclusions that I'm seeing right now.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Steve, I very much appreciate your spending the time with us.

STEVE SMITH: Bob, appreciate it.

BOB GARFIELD: Steve Smith is the editor of the Spokesman-Review. He spoke to us from the studios of KSFC in Spokane.