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Subramaniam Vincent is director of journalism and media ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, ���ҵ���. Views are his own.

CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell recently after the foiled assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner. What were the ethics of O'Donnell asking Trump to respond to accusations or rape, pedophilia, and more made in the intended gunman's manifesto? 

O’Donell framed her question by simply repeating what the attacker had written without naming Trump, but she triggered the president all the same. The president launched into an attack where he “exonerated” himself and leveled accusations at her of the kind we are used to seeing him with the press, particularly women. Let’s parse the issues.

The questions reporters ask high-level politicians in planned settings are actual decisions. They involve the significance of journalistic independence to ask any questions of politicians, yes. But that does not mean ethical pre-review ought not to go into the question framing and deciding which questions are best asked now vs. later. Journalists have some time to decide what questions to ask, how to ask it, and assess their timing with respect to pre-existing legal and political contexts. 

There are multiple ethical issues with the way O'Donnell brought the attacker's manifesto and the claims in it into a conversation with the president. 

Bringing the Gunman’s Manifesto Into the Public Discourse

An ethics recommendation has already been in vogue asking journalistic media entities to not link to manifestos of mass shooters during news coverage. Because that is what the shooter wants. It could legitimize their grievance, and their decision to take the law into their own hands and kill people at will. Even though the WHCD dinner attack appears to have been an assassination attempt and not a mass shooting, the same principle does apply here. 

The gunman, instead of channeling his grievances through non-violent mobilization and other democratic processes such as voting–which millions of people are doing around the world, chose instead to take the law into his own hands and commit a grave act of crime. To bring the shooter’s accusations of rape, pedophilia, and treason into the conversation, and attributing those to his manifesto, is actually giving it credence through amplification. It appeared to be an opportunistic decision to relay the manifesto’s claims to the president for reaction–and going by hundreds of past experiences, he was going to lash out, which he did. So what actual purpose did that exchange serve?

Furthermore, the factual determination of motive for this attacker is already an investigation for law enforcement. They have to resolve it. It's also the media’s job to report on this as more facts emerge about the attacker. But the president is not, and does not have to be, the first line of response to a reporter on the justifications the gunman may have claimed in his manifesto, especially on the claims where the attacker is impugning the president.

The Epstein Files are a Legal Proceeding 

As is now well known, the president is an implicated name in the Epstein files. And two of the initiators of the Epstein files law (Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna) have themselves accused the DOJ of not releasing all the files. They have referred particularly to newly discovered ones in which uninvestigated or underinvestigated rape accusations were made years ago against the president. There is no clarity or resolution on what happened to those investigations or why they did not proceed. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi was going to testify about this particular set of files and accusations from that time, but president Trump fired her. Anything could have happened had that hearing been held in April as planned. 

Given the legal (criminal) and potential prosecutorial context surrounding the saga, whether named actors in it are alleged rapists or pedophiles or not is a factual and legal determination that courts make in a trial. No such trial is ongoing because no such indictments have been made. But that may yet happen. It isn’t altogether clear that new investigations may not happen after president Trump leaves office, or of other associates of Epstein. So by relaying a simplistic factual-sounding question, “are you a rapist,” to one of the implicated people directly in an interview, under cover from a shooter’s manifesto of justifications, what did O’Donnell expect the president would do? Admit to it, given the ensuing criminal consequential implications? 

Clearly she wasn’t expecting he was going to do that. So if he was going to reject the claims, what is the meaning and value of that for public discourse? Denials are easy. Can a leader exonerating himself or herself be treated as a settlement of the issue merely because it got aired on TV? The president has issued those denials earlier too. So what was to be gained by asking him again indirectly under the cover of an attacker’s manifesto? Did the journalist have any receipts to counter any claims that the president was going to make? If O’Donnell had any, we could not see them. None. 

This is why the Epstein files legal process (due disclosure and accountability) is the domain from where answers to these questions need to emerge authoritatively. Answers to questions like, who in the Epstein class of powerful people was a rapist or pedophile or who has been falsely accused. The law needs to take its fuller course on revelations and accountability. 

The president simply used the question–as he has done hundreds of times–to try to show himself as a victim of constant attacks by the press and lash out. 

Contrast this now to Mehdi Hasan’s of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan on sexual misconduct allegations against him that two different investigative efforts went into. A UN investigation report that could not find merit in the allegations, and the panel of judges that also could not find any. In the interview, Hasan, well known for his tough interviewing style, gives an opportunity to the investigated official to respond to accusations. He also asks Khan, “According to the UN investigators, you would not confirm whether you had a sexual relationship with the accuser. Why not?” All this is after a significant amount of process and proceedings have unfolded and findings have emerged.

The Line of Questioning That did Work 

A line of questioning that did work here for Norah O'Donnell was to ask the president about the factual developments that unfolded on the stage when he was sitting there. 

Those questions were valid. Why? Because he was there, and experienced the chaos as the security service reached him, the first lady, and the others, and got them to safety. Because there were specific questions about him trying to watch what was going on initially and then being persuaded to go down into crouching position and leave. There were questions any reporter could ask him as an impacted leader who was on stage. And he did answer them with a specificity that could be verified by reporters with the footage. 

The focus ought to have just been left to the events that unfolded on stage instead of bringing the attackers claims into it.