Over the weekend, investigative journalists Jon Krakauer and Steve Kroft of the CBS show ’60 Minutes’ may have ended philanthropist Greg Mortenson’s career.

In a spot that aired Sunday night, Kroft accused Mortenson of fabricating parts of his best-selling memoirs ‘Three Cups of Tea’ and ‘Stones into Schools,’ and of running his Central Asia Institute, which supports women’s education in Afghanistan, unethically. Krakauer followed Monday with ‘Three Cups of Deceit,’ an 89-page report published on a new website for long-form journalism, www.byliner.com.

Both sides of this row look pretty ugly in the end — Mortenson and his two Central Asia Institute board members haven’t handled the accusations elegantly at all, and some of the allegations seem impossible to refute. The ’60 Minutes’ spot leaves out a lot of relevant facts; and the scene where Kroft confronts Mortenson at an Atlanta book signing is at least ethically questionable, if not a clear distortion.

Krakauer’s report fills in the facts ’60 Minutes’ misses and gives a compelling alternate narrative to Mortenson’s version of the events. The report leans heavily on unfair attacks against Mortenson’s character, though, and Krakauer’s early support of Central Asia Institute could constitute a conflict of interest. Krakauer hasn’t published a book since 2007, and timing the story to coincide with the launch of a rather innovative journalism outlet seems very fishy.

Perhaps Central Asia Institute hasn’t done a great job in its school-building efforts, but this isn’t news to anyone invested in international development. Development work is extremely difficult, and doing mostly construction work is obviously one of the least useful ways to go about it when compared with sustainable, well thought-out projects done by well-established organizations. Doing good poorly is better than doing no good at all, though.

‘Three Cups of Tea’ presents the upshot of development as the best way to wage the war on terror, and anthropologist Nosheen Ali took issue with this in an article published in the journal Third World Quarterly last June. Development is good because it makes people’s lives better, not because it advances the United States’ interests abroad. The possibility to fighting terrorism makes the charity even more appealing — that educating girls provides maximum returns on development investment. ‘The Greg Mortenson brand,’ as Krakauer puts it, has done more than journalist Nicholas Kristof or economist Amartya Sen could hope to do in popularizing their ideas.

Self-branding in order to do maximal good isn’t at all selfish or egomaniacal, even if it turns out to be incredibly profitable. But lying is a serious concern, and the extent to which Mortenson exaggerated anything in his book isn’t clear — some embellishment is perfectly acceptable to make a book readable, and some of the most damaging facts in Krakauer’s report aren’t entirely convincing.

What we can learn from this story is a healthy criticism toward humanitarian work. Nonprofit accounting tends to be a mess, even though the field has become much more accountable in recent years. Giving at an inspiring event to a charity that does a lot of outreach will always have the side effect that much of that donation is spent on outreach — this isn’t news either. Again, it’s still better than not giving at all.

People who have great stories aren’t always saints, and they don’t need to be. Mortenson’s run on the best-seller list is probably over, and it will be interesting to see how his speaking engagements pan out. But we shouldn’t lose faith in the power of humanitarian work or the value of charitable giving — we should just give it the same degree of scrutiny we would any other spending.

Scott Collison is a senior philosophy and physics major. His column appears every Wednesday, and he can be reached at smcollis@syr.edu.