San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Was undercover student project OK?
Chronicle examines decision on exposé three decades later
I discovered the San Francisco Chronicle’s 1992 “Undercover Student” series in our archive last year, while researching a different story about George Washington High School. The four-part series written by Shann Nix, now Shann Jones, documented the 26-year-old reporter’s experience posing as a student for a month at the San Francisco high school. It’s also the subject of a new Chronicle story, in which Jones and people she interacted with at the school reflect on the project more than 30 years later.
After the initial shock wore off — learning that my employer once sent a journalist undercover among teens — the first person I wanted to talk to was current Chronicle education reporter Jill Tucker, who has covered education in California for nearly 25 years.
I forwarded Tucker my story, gave her access to the original four-part series, and we sat down in the Chronicle archive recently to talk about ethics, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and whether the controversial series could have made an impact.
Peter Hartlaub: Outside of the movie “Never Been Kissed,” had you ever heard of someone going undercover in a high school?
Jill Tucker: Oh God, not that I can remember. Other than that TV show “21 Jump Street,” where police go undercover in high school as narcs? No, this was new to me.
Peter: I told you about the story months ago. What was your initial reaction?
Jill: Can I swear? “Holy s—. Are you serious?” That was my initial reaction. Also, “How did I not know this? How have I never heard this?” Because you would think it would be folklore in San Francisco, in the schools, in the district, at the Chronicle.
Peter: More recently you got to read the 1992 series and my article. Do you accept the argument in the series that going undercover was necessary?
Jill: No, I don’t. I think she got an understanding of the kids. She probably got some really great quotes or anecdotes that might be tough to get because kids are really hard to talk to sometimes and it’s really hard to get them to open up.
But I have always felt, from the beginning of my career until now, 30 years in, that it is unethical to lie to people and sources. Our credibility is everything. Our reputation is everything. When you lose that you have nothing.
Peter: But it sounds like they had tried other things and felt like an extreme approach was warranted. And the series did get a lot of attention.
Jill: Going undercover is a splash, right? How are you not going to read that story when a reporter’s undercover as a high school student? It’s sexy. You know people are going to read it.
But it’s not the only way. Embedding in a school seems like a more common practice, more of what modern journalists do. I’ve done that many times and seen the conditions, and written about schools without pretending to be someone else.
Peter: After spending 15 years in our archive and seeing what we wrote in that era I’m not surprised that the Chronicle went undercover. But I am shocked that the school district let us in with almost no restrictions. It seems as if they had the biggest obligation to the students.
Jill: That would never happen today. Number one, the legal issues alone — there’s just no way. That’s the biggest question for me now. How did the district let it happen?
Peter: This story got more and more serious for me as I reported it. But the one piece of comedy that never waned was Shann Nix going in dressed more like a 1980s Thompson Twins album cover, and the teens are all dressed more like 1992 Eddie Vedder.
Jill: With the popped collar! It really is a snapshot in time. Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was probably out by then.
Peter: It was released almost exactly a year before Shann went to the school.
Jill: One thing that struck me in her stories was the fact that she went in investigating the condition of the schools, and so much of the content of her stories actually focused on the condition of the students themselves.
Peter: I had the same reaction and think it’s the underrated strength of the series. The headlines are “rat in a chow mein container” and “bathrooms closed down.” But the part that affected me the most was that these students had lost confidence and hope. And the voters, the adults, the politicians did that to them. That’s where I think, “This story was worth going undercover.”
Jill: That was a moment in the early 1990s. We were in the middle of a recession, and their outlook on their future was understandably not high — almost like a lost generation. I wanted to go back and tell them, “It’s going to be OK!”
Peter: Shann said something that I completely related to: “The real truth is I was a journalist through and through, and I would have crawled over broken glass to do that story. I was young, I was ambitious and I could feel, ‘It’s a break to be given this story.’ ”
I think at age 26 I would have jumped at the same opportunity and done the exact same thing.
Jill: I think if the Chronicle editors came to me when I was that age and said, “Jill, we want you to do this,” I would not have said no. I would have trusted them at the time.
But, you know, the workplace was very different back then. Before the Me Too movement. Before a lot of things. We were in that sort of Geraldo Rivera era of television, and there was a lot of that undercover TV stuff. It didn’t feel unfamiliar to me. It just was shocking that the Chronicle did it, if that makes sense.
Peter: One question several people I interviewed asked is, “Was there an impact?” It’s close to impossible to measure, but I can ask you: Do you think schools are better today than they were in 1992?
Jill: I think a lot of things are better. And also more complicated.
Certain laws have changed so that districts can raise funds for facilities, which they couldn’t do back then. Class sizes are controlled by contracts and state law, so there are guardrails to a certain degree. There were lawsuits to ensure that there are enough textbooks. The expectation is that a lot more kids will go to college now than back then.
I look at the teachers that Shann Nix had, their passion, and I think there’s still a lot of teachers like that. Those stories don’t get out as much — that wonderful teacher who changes someone’s life.
I think things are better now. But I think they’re different.
Peter: The students never got an “I’m sorry.” Not necessarily for the piece itself, but for breaking their trust. In retrospect — and it’s so hard to do this 32 years later — it seems clear that the Peer Resource Center was the safest space on campus and should have been off limits.
Do you think we should have apologized?
Jill: Did they deserve an apology? Yes. Absolutely. Do I understand why they didn’t get one? Yes. If you’re going to make a decision and say, “This is in the public interest, and we believe that this is the best way to tell a story of such great importance,” then you stand by that.
But was it an invasion of privacy? Yes. Was it ethically wrong or morally questionable? Yes. Their trust was broken at arguably one of the most important and formative moments of their lives.