TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081991/0819101.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 119 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 17

To "Out" or Not to "Out"


The press wrestles with a thorny issue: When is it appropriate to
reveal the private lives of public officials?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- Reported by Linda Williams/New York


    When the Village Voice was offered a free-lance article
last month that purported to expose the homosexuality of a high
Pentagon official, editors of the radical New York City weekly
decided to reject the piece as an unwarranted invasion of
privacy. Last week the same editors permitted a Voice columnist
to summarize the allegations, complete with the official's name.
The rationale for the turnaround: the man's identity had been
so widely circulated by other news organizations that continued
restraint would have been "a futile exercise."

    But at the Washington Post, editors chose to cover the
controversy without citing the official by name. Explained Karen
DeYoung, the Post's assistant managing editor for national news:
"Our policy is that we don't write about personal lives of
public officials unless the personal aspects begin influencing
the way they perform their jobs." The paper canceled a Jack
Anderson column, normally a featured item, because it named the
man, even though editors assumed many of Anderson's 700-plus
clients would run the story, making the Post's discretion
largely symbolic.

    The hottest ethical issue for journalists these days is
where to draw the line between two colliding rights, the
individual's right to privacy and the public's right to know --
and then, having drawn the line, how to avoid being pulled
across it by cunning manipulators or by the competitive urge on
a breaking story. In the case of the Pentagon official, the
press coverage was not prompted by any crime, scandal or even
news event. It was entirely brought about by gay activists
pursuing a political agenda. They had no grudge against the
official. Many professed to admire him. But they were determined
to embarrass the Pentagon about its exclusion of gays from the
armed services. To them, it was hypocritical for Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney to retain a high civilian official,
knowing -- or at least not caring -- that he was gay, while
continuing to enforce antigay rules that apply to the uniformed
ranks.

    The activists had an arguable point about the apparent
double standard within the Pentagon. But their tactics are
controversial, and the readiness of much of the nation's news
media to carry the story about the official raised serious
questions about journalistic ethics and quality control. The
article exposing the official was printed last week by the
Advocate, a Los Angeles-based gay magazine published every two
weeks. In a blatant bid for publicity and newsstand sales, the
magazine faxed dozens of advance copies to mainstream
journalists. The cover line referred to "outing" the official,
a gay neologism for exposure of a homosexual by other
homosexuals. The author, Michelangelo Signorile, pioneered the
tactic in the defunct New York City gay magazine, OutWeek.

    Most of the people Signorile quoted had only hearsay
knowledge. Their main "evidence" was that the official had
supposedly been a regular customer in years gone by at a
predominantly gay Washington bar. The few sources who claimed
firsthand knowledge about him were generally permitted to remain
anonymous. Even some unnamed sources knew nothing themselves but
were merely quoting still more obscure acquaintances: in one
anecdote an unidentified man said an apparent one-night stand,
picked up in a bar, told him of having "dated" the official.

    Hardly any serious newspaper, magazine or network would
accept so loosely sourced a story from its own staff. Yet few
journalists tried to verify the claims in the Advocate before
repeating its main point. Syndicated columnist Anderson and his
partner Dale Van Atta compounded the damage with a claim that
the official "is considering resigning because of accusations
that he is a homosexual." Instead, Van Atta admits, the official
directly said in an interview he had no plans to quit. Asked to
explain this contradiction, Van Atta lamely contended, "I said
he was considering resigning, and that's a far cry from saying
he was seriously considering it."

    Though many major dailies declined to name the official,
countless smaller papers ran the Anderson-Van Atta column. Among
them was Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Patriot, from which the item
was in turn excerpted for a Pentagon news summary distributed
to 10,000 employees. Other dailies covered the outing debate.
The Detroit News named the official twice in news stories; the
New York Daily News identified him in a gossip column. All four
TV news networks decided not to use the official's name, but
secondary outlets used it, including cable channel CNBC, a
corporate sibling of NBC piped into nearly 44 million homes, and
New York station WPIX. Reasons ranged from sympathy with the gay
activists' arguments to CNBC program executive Andy Friendly's
observation, "Everybody's talking about this topic."

    Whether it is staking out Gary Hart's bedroom, probing the
background of an alleged rape victim or pondering the number of
months that passed between marriage and childbirth for the wives
of Ronald Reagan and televangelist Pat Robertson, the press
almost always strikes some people as having gone too far. For
others, whose political cause is being advanced either
intentionally or inadvertently, the deplorable can suddenly seem
delightful. But the real question is not just who benefits from
a media decision. Rather, it is whether the media behave
thoughtfully and ethically. If news organizations, in the zeal
to keep up with competitors, compromise their standards and let
themselves be manipulated, they imperil their credibility and
integrity -- and ultimately everybody loses.