Actor Sean Penn interviewed Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo, aka Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, for Rolling Stone magazine.
And El Chapo got pre-publication approval of the article on him. In a disclosure statement atop Penn’s article, published online Jan. 9 in the days following El Chapo’s arrest, Rolling Stone said:
“Disclosure: Some names have had to be changed, locations not named, and an understanding was brokered with the subject that this piece would be submitted for the subject’s approval before publication. The subject did not ask for any changes.”
Penn wrote that he was not paid for the article and that Mexican actress Kate del Castillo helped set up the interview. Penn wrote that he pitched the idea of interviewing El Chapo after El Chapo’s escape last year and Rolling Stone OKed it. The interview was conducted while El Chapo was on the run and published shortly after his capture.
iMediaEthics has asked Rolling Stone why it granted the pre-publication approval and what the explicit terms of the arrangement with El Chapo were.
The New York Times noted Penn’s interview with El Chapo is “believed to be the first [El Chapo] has given in decades.”
On Twitter, the scandal surrounding Rolling Stone‘s 2014 story “A Rape on Campus,” which has been retracted and is the subject of more than one lawsuit against the magazine, was brought up.
Below, see tweets about the Rolling Stone El Chapo article.