Stinging the good guys

Wikipedia defines a sting operation:

In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime. A typical sting will have a law-enforcement officer or cooperative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather evidence of the suspect's wrongdoing.

An example would be: posing as someone seeking illegal drugs in order to catch a supplier.

I have some mixed feelings about the ethics of this: to catch drug dealers seems ok; but it was often used to catch men seeking sex with other men -- an undercover police officer making seductive gestures in a public rest room and then arresting the men who respond.

What about the ethics of politically motivated sting operations to discredit liberal organizations? They killed ACORN with these tactics -- having actors pretend to be a pimp and his woman seeking advice about housing for use as a brothel featuring underage girls brought to this country illegally; filming the responses from unsuspecting ACORN workers and then selectively editing them to bring bring down the organization they hated.

Now the same conservative group is using the same tactics, trying to poison the well of government grants to NPR -- a sting type interview with an NPR fundraiser. A two hour interview, selectively edited down to an 11 minutes clip, designed to outrage conservative House members who will shortly vote on proposed government funding of NPR.

The edited clip shows the NPR fundraiser making derogatory comments about Tea Party members and saying that NPR would be better off in the long run without government funding.

Is this a necessary part of democracy to allow this? Is it the same principle that I defend about free speech having to be free for the bad guys as well as for the good?

I don't like stings even as a means of trapping bad guys; I certainly don't like it when it brings down what I consider the good guys, who are trying to bring intelligent and rational news and analysis, as well as much needed community services to poor and disadvantaged people.

But as a principle? Maybe we have to allow it. And the answer: just as countering bad free speech with good free speech is the answer to the Westboro Baptist Church, maybe exposing the political motives of the sting operators and countering the effect with a good campaign of public education about public radio is the answer.

But . . . it's so hard just to keep up with, and counter, all the tactics of the determined opponents to progressive, intelligent, rational public life.

Ralph