CBS News helped pay for a Wisconsin family's trip to Samoa and an emotional meeting that was a key moment in Saturday's "48 Hours" special on an adoption scam involving children taken from their South Pacific homes under false pretenses.

While the network defended its involvement, the payment raises ethical questions about whether its financial commitment risked changing the outcome of a story it was reporting.

The special "The Lost Children" involves American families who adopted children from Samoa after being told they were orphans. According to "48 Hours," the children in most cases were taken from families who wanted a better life for their offspring and were falsely told they'd be in a foster situation and have contact with them.

When the practice by the Utah-based Focus on Children agency was revealed by "48 Hours," it forced heartbreaking decisions upon dozens of American families. Should they keep children they had longed cared for or let them decide to return to Samoan families they might not remember?

Patti Sawyer, a divorced mother of teenage twins from Fon du Lac, Wis., was among the people affected and her family one of three profiled by CBS in the special. She adopted a girl, Jayden, who came to the United States in 2005 shortly before her fifth birthday. Jayden had stayed for nearly a year in a Samoan halfway house run by the adoption agency before traveling to the United States, and had very little memory of her Samoan family.

The Sawyer family traveled to Samoa this past summer to meet Jayden's biological family, and the network said it contributed to paying for the trip. Neither Sawyer nor CBS would reveal how much the network paid.

Sawyer was actively fundraising to get money for the trip and CBS' contribution sped up the timing, she said. "They helped us significantly, but we were clearly going there, one way or another," she said.

She said she was confident that Jayden would decide to return to Wisconsin with her new American family, which she did.

Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar at DePauw University, said it was a legitimate story. But CBS' financial involvement raised ethical questions.

"I'm certainly troubled when a news organization financially involves itself in the course of a story and potentially impacts how the story develops," he said.