User:Chetsford/trs

In 2016, Rolling Stone commissioned Sean Penn to write a feature on Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Penn met Guzmán, then wanted by Mexican and U.S. authorities, at a jungle hideout for an interview, the interview agreed to by Guzmán on the condition he have final editorial control over the article. Upon publication, the article - characterized by the Associated Press as "long and rambling" - was extensively mocked by social media users and prompted a discussion about the magazine's ethical standards. Andrew Seaman, chairman of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, called the decision to allow a source pre-approval of an article "inexcusable" while the Poynter Institute’s chief ethicist Kelly McBride opined that the article evidenced several failures of editorial control by Rolling Stone. In an interview with NPR, Alfredo Corchado, a former Mexico City bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, said that pre-approval rights meant the story was not real jourrnalism: "It's business, it's Hollywood. It's more in the lines of what a public relations firm would do."

Questions also arose as to whether lax security procedures by the magazine helped authorities track and capture Guzmán, who was arrested several days after the interview was conducted. Meanwhile, Kate del Castillo, who arranged the meeting, said that she had to flee the country after the article's publication and charged that Penn had "used me as a bait, and then he never protected me. And risked my life and my parents' life and my sister's life and everybody surrounding me".

Penn later said his article "had failed", noting that discussion about the ethics of the story overshadowed the actual report.