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by
Gary Gilson
Newsworthy 1994
Why
do news people recoil from requests to honor privacy? How can the
media report news fully and accurately without compromising another
of their ethical tenets - to minimize harm to innocent people? Why
are there gaps between traditional journalistic ethics and an often
broader sense of fairness in the community at large? These questions
persistently confront the media, the public and the Minnesota News
Council.
On
August 24, the Council held a public hearing on a complaint against
a weekly newspaper in Minnesota. A 17-year-old girl said she was
suffering harm from the paper's story on her father's sentencing
for his having sexually abused her for eight years. The story identified
the victim as his minor daughter; she is his only daughter.
The
newspaper's editor said he could not imagine how else he could have
written it, without undermining the truth. The girl told the News
Council that the story damaged her recovery. She said that she started
therapy a year ago, after revealing "the secret," and
that she was finally getting the help she needed to heal: "I
then gave a statement at my dad's [sentencing] hearing and I felt
a huge weight lift off of me. I said to myself, 'I can finally move
on.' Until a week later when I saw the article on the front page.
It totally tore me apart knowing that I had gone so far, and for
what? To have the whole town know detail by detail what my father
did to me? Because of the article I feel that everybody is looking
at me and isn't seeing me... but somebody who had sex with her father...."
The
News Council's vote, an 11-2 finding that the newspaper showed a
lack of sensitivity by identifying the girl and printing details
of her abuse, is very revealing. The girl complained that the paper
invaded her privacy and showed poor taste. Several media members
of the Council said they preferred not to vote on the issue if it
involved the word privacy, and so the language was changed to "lack
of sensitivity."
But
insensitivity to what, if not to her privacy? After the hearing,
Council member Kate Stanley, a Star Tribune editorial writer, told
me why the word privacy annoyed her.
"You
are encountering the neurosis of many journalists and their allergy
to the word privacy," she said. "It exists because of
our dedication to openness and because the word privacy is often
invoked to suppress government information. To us, telling the truth
sometimes inevitably means stepping on the toes of privacy."
So
why did Stanley vote to uphold the complaint?
"This
is a very special case," she said. "Her feelings and future
were more important than any public need to know. We need to minimize
harm. This is a balancing act. She deserved special treatment. I
don't know if she has an intrinsic right, but there's no huge benefit
to be gained.
"A
hysteria is sparked in the media whenever someone talks about suppression.
We get cuckoo. Maybe we shouldn't."
"Cuckoo"
might translate as "doctrinaire." For all the media's
reluctance to adopt and publish strict ethics codes, they do adopt
unwritten behavior codes. One behavior is to publish whatever they
know, regardless of other people's values, unless they identify
a compelling reason not to. Another is to defend that practice with
a fortress mentality: "We are the professionals; you laymen
don't understand; this is our responsibility." News people
commonly see themselves as standing outside the community, observing,
keeping other institutions honest, guarding their own independence
so fiercely that they pride themselves on separateness.
Kenneth
Goodpaster, who teaches business ethics at the University of St.
Thomas, says that the professions -- law, business, police, journalism
-- act as cheerleaders for the particular value they guard in the
community's portfolio of values that need to be balanced in making
decisions.
"One
of the flaws in that picture," Goodpaster says, "is that
professional specialization in an information society leaves no
one to look after the common good. Journalists say 'My mission is
to shine flashlights and tell the truth.' Someone who accuses them
of insensitivity is saying, 'I know you're a champion of flashlights,
and we value them, but if we just let the champions in every profession
have their way, aren't we going to fragment as a society'?"
The
newspaper responded to the complaint by saying it had the right
to publish matters of public record; it stuck to the record to insure
accuracy, and if it suppresses news it will fail the public. Besides,
the editor said, the victim out to feel no shame or guilt.
That
drew a protest from a public member of the News Council, Terry Thompson,
vice president for public relations at Pillsbury:
"The
assumption [by the newspaper] that there is no shame overlooks the
pernicious and horrible part of being a sexual-abuse victim. There
is guilt and shame and psychological trauma. The paper should have
taken the details out entirely and identified the victim as 'a minor
child.' That may not be a journalistic sentiment, but it's where
my heart comes down."
That's
what Goodpaster would call a communitarian, or amateur, point of
view. "There cannot be one voice invested with the authority
of the community," he says. "But it's important to introduce
amateur judgment in a process that tests professional judgment.
Thomas Jefferson used to argue against the professional legislator;
the jury system values the experience of the ordinary citizen."
Goodpaster
cites professionals' temptations to behave as high priests, and
he encourages processes in which they allow themselves to be disciplined
by the court of public opinion. The News Council, he says, is one.
"When
you measure great journalism against broken hearts," he asks,
"how do you tell when the instinct for telling the truth is
in the public interest or in the self-interest of the newspaper?"
In
this case, the paper could not both tell the truth and minimize
harm. It calculated the values at stake and chose what it saw as
the public's and its own.
News
Council founder, Bob Shaw, points out that the media regularly and
voluntarily suppress news when they decide a "public good"
is at stake. They withhold news of troop movements in wartime; names
of juveniles charged with crimes; bids on public contracts before
all bids are in; names of rape victims. Why then, should some news
outlets be less careful with the identities of juvenile victims
of sex crimes?
An
ethics specialist, Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute for Media
Studies, in St. Petersburg, Fla., blames the media's difficulty
on what he calls society's clumsiness in dealing openly with sex.
"For
too long we didn't even cover child abuse," he says. "It
was taboo, like suicide among the elderly or among children. Can
the media cover the sexual abuse of children by leaving out the
details? Sometimes, no. The absence of specificity may [unjustifiably]
implicate other people. If you don't name dad, maybe people think
it's Uncle Harold."
What
to do? Steele says, "We need a good rabbi -- someone whose
name appears on the newsroom rolodex" -- to call for advice
on how to relate journalistic choices to community values.
The
News Council urged the newspaper to consult people outside the newsroom,
including sex-abuse therapists, to help develop a policy for such
stories. The Wabasha girl's therapist, Sandy Garry of Winona, said
news people should consider each case on its own. She said this
girl is especially vulnerable because she hasn't yet accepted the
fact that she bears no blame. But, Garry said, some abuse victims
heal faster if their names and details are disclosed -- victims
who have resolved that they bear no blame and who say, "I took
all this abuse, now I'm going to give some back," and who,
for the first time, exercise some control.
The
newspaper could have alerted the girl to the nature of its story
before it appeared, Garry said, and by that very act could have
shown it valued her enough to include her in the conversation.
Council
member Syl Jones, a playwright and columnist, said to the newspaper
editor, "The issue is power. The victim had no power. [In publishing
the story] you've taken the power away from her again."
After
the hearing, the girl, who had earlier agreed to have her name published,
changed her mind and asked the media to protect her identity. The
Star Tribune reporter said he had instructions to use her name.
She asked what the newspaper intended to do. The editor said he'd
like to talk to the family before deciding. The Star Tribune decided
an hour later not to use her name or her family's name. The Associate
Press, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and WCCO radio all made the same
decision.
On
August 30, the newspaper ran this headline: "News Council says
the newspaper should have been more sensitive." The page-one
story ran 16 column inches, and it did not name the girl or her
family.
This
process of bringing together an amateur claiming hurt and a powerful
professional defending its free-press rights produced an enviable
result: The paper distinguished itself by saying it had come to
the hearing to listen and learn. The complainant got to stand up
for herself, something that she has had little chance to do in her
short life, and she felt the support of her mother and her therapist,
who stood up with her.
And
the community, both professionals and amateurs, got to understand
each other a little better.
Sometimes,
it works.
Gary
Gilson is executive director of the Minnesota News Council.
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