joining us now is professor brooke kroeger, "undercover reporting" is the name of her most recent book. she is a professor of journalism at nyu. professor kroeger, what is the definition of undercover reporting? >> guest: undercover reporting is a subset of investigative reporting that usually involves reporters engaged informs the deceased covering, blending in, actually disguising, depending on the thousand permutations of how to do undercover reporting. >> host: as a legitimate reporting? >> guest: i think in many cases yes, in some cases no. the book argues for the legitimacy of the forum, which is a bit of a contrary decision. >> host: how do you make it legitimate? >> guest: by observing the import guidelines, which would include being sure there is no other effect way to tell the story. some would say no other race but i did not. i

. >> host: brooke kroeger, what about james o'keefe, npr? >> guest: good question.i would widen that, not to pick on mr. o'keefe, but for me the issue is not who does it, that's not so important to me. i said this before. it is really the execution of the work. so it has been very common for decades for newspapers or magazines or television stations to partner with other government associations, humane societies, activists of various kinds. this is not unusual to do really good work. slavery is almost always a topic done with this organization. if you're trying to go around the world come you obviously go to the people who really know where things are happening or how they are happening. in the case of better government associations, they cited this as a matter of course. why would you partner with them? the way i explain it in the book and a very helpful example to understand the difference between activism and journalism as let's say in fact this has been with npr came under a cloud with the o'keefe exposÉ, at the same time, the humane society was doing investigat