I read an article about him today in "The Scene." It was pretty funny.
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Indecent Exposure
WSMV-Channel 4 reporter pays prostitute for an interview
By Matt Pulle
WSMV-Channel 4's Darian Trotter is a different kind of reporter. An avid weightlifter, Trotter once posted a link on the station's Web site to a page showing revealing photos of himself. Another time, on-air, Trotter removed his shirt in the middle of a segment. More recently, his taste for colorful on-air garb provoked a fawning profile in The Tennessean, in which his news director said he has the "potential to be a star." More flash: the license plate of his silver BMW reads "Newzman," station sources say.
Now, the Nashville native is again getting attention for all the wrong reasons. He recently admitted to his bosses that he paid a prostitute for an interview, a no-no in journalism, where that's considered a sure-fire way to erode a story subject's—and a journalist's—credibility. Worse, the prostitute later exposed himself, after which Trotter paid him again, in effect compensating the male prostitute for the flashing episode.
"Darian came in and told me he paid him in order to have time with the prostitute," says Channel 4 news director Andrew Finlayson. "I was not happy with that, and we agreed we had to disclose that, and that's what we did on air."
Actually, the station only said that the prostitute "demanded to be paid." It did not say that Trotter heeded his request—repeatedly.
On Wednesday Feb. 2, during the 10 p.m. newscast, Trotter was trying to follow a story about the Metro Police Department paying confidential informants to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. Ironically, Trotter basically did the same thing, using questionable means to expose illicit sexual activity. In the piece, Trotter was driving near Lafayette Street in downtown Nashville when a male prostitute approached him. At first, Trotter didn't introduce himself as a reporter, posing instead, it seemed, as a prospective john, egging on the itinerant sex worker. Here's their on-air conversation, a dialogue that won't attract any 60 Minutes talent scouts:
Trotter: "So, what you talking?"
Male Prostitute: "I'm going to show you something. What do you want to see?"
Trotter: "So, what are you going to do?"
Male Prostitute: "Whatever you want. Just say it! Whatcha wanna see? Just say it! It's your show.
That's when the voice of a now serious-sounding Trotter informs viewers that the prostitute "flashed us a full frontal." Thankfully, Channel 4 blurred the footage.
Finlayson says that when the prostitute approached Trotter's car, he spotted some money near the front seat and asked for it. Trotter gave him $3 at first, and then additional cash to keep talking. All in all, Trotter paid the prostitute $22 for his time.
Trotter insists that he had no idea the prostitute planned to expose himself. "I believe the prostitute flashed himself to get more money," he says. (And, it worked.) But, oddly, Finlayson says he had not yet checked the raw tape to see for sure if Trotter encouraged him in any way.
After the prostitute showed off his workable assets, Trotter introduced himself as a Channel 4 reporter and asked for a separate interview. That's another journalistic no-no. Typically, reporters identify themselves before they conduct on-the-record interviews. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, and Finlayson suggests this might be one.
"There are certain criteria where you don't identify yourself as a reporter to have access to the same information," he says. "This may have been one of those circumstances."
Trotter agrees, saying that he employed this same tactic for a story about a Michigan nightclub that had been discriminating against minorities. "I've been given an award for enterprise investigative reporting by Gannett broadcasting and the Associated Press in which I didn't identify myself as a reporter, and by not identifying myself I was able to get at the ugly truth of the matter."
Interestingly, Channel 4 general manager Steve Ramsey and his news director disagree about the degree of Trotter's reportorial lapses. Finlayson says Trotter should not have paid the prostitute, and he says that Channel 4 anchors Dan Miller and Demetria Kalodimos concur. Ramsey says he disagrees with all of them. "I don't have a big crisis over all this. It was 22 bucks, and we were talking to somebody to get some information about life on the street."
But an ethics expert at The Poynter Institute, a school for professional journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., says that paying for interviews invariably raises red flags. "When you use any money to obtain information, you're putting your credibility at risk," says instructor Aly Col—n. "It doesn't mean that you can't do it, but you want to make sure you understand the repercussions and whether this act will outweigh the fact that people will believe that you're buying information or whether people are responding to you in a way just to get the money."
