The Daily Beast took down its article on the sexual activity of gay male athletes at the Olympics.

But why, exactly? One answer is that the identities of the (unnamed) gay men could be figured out and some of them are from countries that — as the NYT puts it — are not "gay-friendly." But another reason is that the article got lambasted for the way the reporter — Nico Hines, a non-gay man — used Grindr to find gay men. Grindr is an app that lets gay men find other gay men (for sexual purposes), so Hines was using it for other than its ostensible purpose.

Is it a violation of journalistic ethics to pose as something you are not in order to gain newsworthy information? (I'm not assuming what Hines found — gay athletes having sex — is newsworthy, just trying to isolate an ethical point.) The NYT doesn't fill me in on that gap in my knowledge. It does that thing of calling on an expert to give a quote. They got Robert Drechsel, a just-retired professor here at my university, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was the James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics, so he must know the answer to my question, but his quote is only that the article is "thoughtless, insensitive and unethical."

Exactly what aspect of what Hines did is "unethical"? I want to hear the general proposition so I can think about it apart from the other problems (endangering the subjects, the frivolity of the material, the offending of sensibilities, the interest in maintaining the functionality of Grindr).

Dreschel is also quoted as saying: “It’s hard to find the words to describe. Why in the world — why in the world of journalism — would anyone do this?”

But, in fact, it's easy to understand why a journalist would do that — to get a story that people would want to read. Why pretend not to understand that? Can I just get a clearly stated ethical principle that will apply when the target group for trickery doesn't inspire our empathy?

ADDED: Here's a 2010 piece in Columbia Journalism Review, "The Ethics of Undercover Journalism/Why journalists get squeamish over James O'Keefe's tactics":

The field’s squeamishness with “lying to get the truth,” as the headline of a 2007 American Journalism Review article put it, is well-documented. In the 1970s, the Chicago Sun-Times set up an elaborate sting operation at the Mirage Tavern to document routine corruption in city agencies; the sting worked, but the paper’s Pulitzer hopes were dashed, reportedly because Ben Bradlee and Eugene Patterson disapproved of its methods. PrimeTime Live’s decision to have producers falsify resumes and smuggle hidden cameras into a Food Lion grocery store sparked contentious litigation (an initial $5.5 million jury verdict against ABC was reduced on appeal to $2) and drew two articles in CJR (not online).

Most recently, Ken Silverstein, the acclaimed Washington editor of Harper’s, posed as a foreign businessman to expose lobbyists’ willingness to represent unsavory clients. Silverstein came back with a gripping story and had plenty of defenders, but institutions like the Center for Public Integrity sided with The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz in criticizing his methods....

There are practical reasons for that wariness. As other observers have noted, while the use of deception in reporting can yield sensational results, it also lends the subject a weapon to wield against the journalist. The ready-made complaint: If the reporter has forfeited the high ground of transparency and honesty, how can his conclusions be trusted by the public?....

To mitigate this concern, undercover reporters are urged take care to situate what they’ve gleaned through deception in a structure of traditional reporting—to show that, unlike, say, Punk’d or Candid Camera or even “To Catch a Predator,” the gimmick is not all there is. Wherever one comes down on Silverstein’s work, one of the more effective criticisms of it was that his original story never gave the lobbying firms he targeted an opportunity to comment....

That’s not the only guideline for going undercover. While there are, appropriately, no hard-and-fast rules or central authorities for journalism, a checklist drawn up by Poynter’s Bob Steele in 1995 is often cited for guidance on this issue. A few points on the list are probably too vague to be of much use, but the first two are valuable. They state that deception and hidden cameras may be appropriate:

When the information obtained is of profound importance. It must be of vital public interest, such as revealing great “system failure” at the top levels, or it must prevent profound harm to individuals.

When all other alternatives for obtaining the same information have been exhausted....

ALSO: Hillary did it: "How Hillary Clinton Went Undercover to Examine Race in Education."