(MintPress) – A French court ruled Wednesday that a ruling on whether former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn will stand trial for pimping will be delayed until Dec. 19, as reported by the BBC. The sole case remaining against Strauss-Kahn — who was scandalized after the accused rape of a hotel maid in May 2011 in New York and subsequent arrest — is being challenged for insufficient grounds to prosecute.
Strauss-Kahn has attested that he was not aware that the women involved in the Carlton affair — as the case has been referred to — were prostitutes. Prostitution has been decriminalized in France. All of the other charges against Strauss-Kahn — including the May 2011 alleged rape of a hotel maid in New York — were dropped on insignificant grounds or because key witnesses retracted essential evidence.
The ongoing legal drama has cost Strauss-Kahn his political career; he was believed to be the forerunner to be the Socialist Party’s candidate for the previous French presidential election. Strauss-Kahn now functions as a highly-paid consultant and conference speaker.
As of late, political sex scandals have been all the rage. From the David Petraeus fiasco to the John Allen soap opera, the personal lives of the famous and powerful seem to be a matter of public debate and personal criticism. This begs a very important question: Isn’t it impolite to discuss a person’s personal life?
In our everyday life, typical talk may range from the weather to current affairs to petty gossip. But, to ask someone about their sex life is regularly considered taboo, even among close friends. Yet, the popular media seemingly have no issues of tact in asking personal questions about the intimate details of a public figure’s life.
It was not so long ago when asking such questions embarrassed a journalist. John F. Kennedy had multiple affairs — one, allegedly, with a Soviet spy. Franklin D. Roosevelt not only was wheelchair-bound, but had a long-term mistress. Eleanor Roosevelt was thought to be a closeted lesbian with a long-term female companion. Warren Harding was thought to have had multiple mistresses. None of this was unknown to the journalist pool, but it was thought best to not report because it violated the privacy of the personal life of the person.
In this instant access time of Twitter, 24-hours news feeds and pundit-driven news coverage, we have allowed journalistic ethics be sacrificed because of the need to “get the story out before everyone else.” In this race to be first, the facts get muddled, privacy is intruded on, and lives are destroyed.
This race to get the scoop has turned journalism into an offensive weapon, leaving destruction and chaos in its wake; always hungry for the next big story, anxious to get more readers and ignorant to the pain and damage it tolls.
Is it fair that journalists demand that politicians lay bare their personal details? Don’t public officials have a right to their privacy? Do politicians have the right to say that their private lives are, indeed, private? And why do we even care about a politician’s personal life, anyway? Is their professional ability to do the job most important?
The gossiper’s defense
One could argue that the public has a right to know of their elected officials’ dalliances. For example, Neil Goldschmidt, the one-term former governor of Oregon, was forced to resign from the Oregon State Board of Higher Education because it was revealed that, as mayor of Portland, he molested and had sex with a 14-year-old girl. Jim West, the former mayor of Spokane, Wash., was recalled when allegations of the sexual abuse of boys emerged. Ted Kennedy, the late senator from Massachusetts, received a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident when Mary Jo Kopechne, an ex-staffer for Robert Kennedy, was killed when the car Kennedy was driving Kopechne in went off a bridge. Jerry Springer (yes, that Jerry Springer), while mayor of Cincinnati, was denied the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio because he solicited and paid for a street prostitute with a personal check.
When there is a clear-cut violation of moral or ethical judgment, the public not only has the right to know about their public officials’ actions, but the explicit obligation. Ultimately, public officials are the people’s representatives; the ability to effectively govern and lead depends on the people’s trust of those sworn to serve the people’s will and not their own. Thomas Jefferson once said that “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” The people are permanently and incurably invested in ensuring that those employed to serve them are doing exactly that.
However, in doing this, mistakes have been known to happen. Those who are anxious make public accusations that are later disproved. On Nov. 2, the BBC’s “Newsnight” ran a film that accused former Thatcher era Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine of child abuse at Welsh care homes. The accusation was found to be false, the Director-General of the BBC was forced to resign and several “Newsnight” producers were fired. The reporting of this story, before due verification of the facts was complete, happened as a knee-jerk reaction to weeks of criticism for not covering the Jimmy Saville child abuse case.
In August 2010, Irish priest Rev. Oliver Brennan was accused of sex abuse dating 30 years earlier. It took 15 months for law enforcement to find the charges baseless, but in that time, the Catholic priest was denied a return to the clergy until October of this year, in part because of the media coverage biasing the diocese’s internal investigation.
For some journalists, the need to ensure the right of the media and people to know negates a tenet most of us learned in kindergarten: Words can hurt. When a journalist files a story, that journalist is making an implicit allegation. The journalist is saying, “Hey! This is important, and I will tell you why!” In doing that, the reader assumes that the journalist knows all the facts, verified their validity and made informed conclusions. So, it would be okay to form an opinion on the journalist’s presentation.
Things fall apart when journalists run stories without doing this. The problem is that the use of false or untrue news is vehemently defended. Let’s take, for example, Shashank Tripathi. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, Tripathi went on Twitter, offering news updates, such as:
@ComfortablySmug
BREAKING: Con Edison has begun shutting down ALL power in Manhattan
@Comfortably Smug
BREAKING: Confirmed flooding on NYSE. The trading floor is flooded under more than 3 feet of water.
Many argue that this, despite being repeated on both CNN and the Weather Channel, and being refuted by the New York Stock Exchange, is still valid news. Article 19 argues that,
“First, false news laws can have a serious chilling effect on the work of reporters. In situations of rapidly developing news, or where different sources contradict each other, facts may be difficult to check. Given that reporters’ reputations depend on the quality of the information they provide, they naturally have a strong incentive only to share news which they are fairly confident is correct, and to warn their audience if a certain fact cannot be verified. If, however, journalists have the sword of a false news law hanging over their head, they might simply decide not to report news that they are not completely certain of at all, for fear of ending up in jail …
“Second, facts and opinions are not always easily separated. In many cases, opinions are expressed through superficially false statements, such as sarcastic, satirical, hyperbolic or comical remarks. For example, someone who describes someone else as a ‘gangster’ is not necessarily accusing the other of being involved in unlawful activities. A ban on false news can therefore easily become a ban on opinions not favoured by the authorities, endangering the free confrontation between different points of view which lies at the heart of democracy …
“Third, false news provisions fail to recognise that it is often far from clear what the ‘truth’ on a particular matter is. As such, false news provisions are almost by definition impermissibly vague and, therefore, violate the first part of the three-part test for restrictions on freedom of expression. Moreover, even if a particular truth is well established, it may not always remain that way. As G.B. Shaw wrote: ‘New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.’ …
“Lastly, the practice of states which still have false news provisions on the books shows the great potential for their abuse. A cogent example is the case of Lim Guan Eng, deputy leader of the opposition DAP party in Malaysia. In 1995, Lim raised concerns about the statutory rape of a 15-year old girl allegedly committed by the Chief Minister of the State of Malacca. The girl had been sentenced to 3 years ‘protective custody’ in a home for wayward girls, while the Chief Minister himself was not prosecuted. Lim questioned why the girl had been ‘imprisoned’. The Malaysian courts found that this inaccurate description of the legal nature of the girl’s detention, which was protective custody rather than imprisonment, constituted false news, and Lim was sentenced to 18 months in jail.”
The Missouri Bar rationalizes a public figure’s lack of privacy protection:
“A public figure is one who, by his accomplishments, fame, or mode of living, or by adopting a profession or calling which gives the public a legitimate interest in his doings, his affairs and his character, has become a public personage. He is a celebrity. This would include, of course, those who have achieved a reputation by appearing before the public, as in the case of the baseball player, actor, fighter or entertainer. Also included are public officers, inventors, explorers, war heroes, soldiers or anyone who has arrived at a position where public attention is focused upon him as a person.
“These people have been held to have lost, to some degree, their right to privacy. In most of the cases, courts have given three reasons for this forfeiture of a portion of the right of privacy: (1) that they had sought publicity and consented to it; (2) that their personalities and affairs had already become public, and could not be regarded as their own private business anymore; and (3) that the press has a privilege under the Constitution to inform the public about those who have become legitimate figures of public interest.
“Whether a person is a public official or public figure, the fact is that he has lost, at least to a degree, the right of privacy that most people enjoy. Such a concession, the courts have ruled, is necessary to insure that open discussion, as promised under the free speech and free press provisions of the First Amendment, continues without hindrance.”
If a public figure has no expectations of a private existence, and journalists are not bound to accurately report, where does this put journalism as an enterprise? Can it be trusted?
ABC News is infamous for filing stories with unverified and ultimately wrong details. In August, ABC reported that late film director Tony Scott had brain cancer (he didn’t); that the shooter in the Aurora, Colo. movie theater shooting was a member of the tea party (he wasn’t); and that the mother of the shooter said, “You have the right person” (she didn’t). While all journalists make errors from time to time, three fact-vetting errors in a single month represent a serious lack of commitment to quality and accurate reporting, and a desperation to out-scoop the 24-hour news channels and the other networks. This is antagonistically opposed to the inherent nature of news reporting and trivializes the enterprise to the level of tabloid entertainment.
This doesn’t justify or explain the malicious use of false news for gain. Fox News has, for years now, crafted stories to fit the established national conservative agenda, going as far as to blatantly misreport or misrepresent the facts. It is because of this that a recent survey shows that people who watch no news at all are more knowledgeable about the news than Fox News watchers.
If we cannot vouch for the accuracy of the news, is it really fair to let the news destroy a personal life? In our insatiable, data-at-all-times world, if we cannot trust the information being fed to us, who can we be expected to make correct assumptions?
An argument for the integrity of a private existence
This brings the argument to its bottom line: Politicians are people, too, and they do not deserve to be misrepresented and imposed upon.
The use of the retraction and correction by the media seems to be a magical bandage that makes faux pas — such as an incorrect name for a police suspect or a misattributed quote or jumbled identification information for a fugitive — go away. Should the hurt party press the issue further, it can always be argued that there was no malicious intent and that the report was covered under the First Amendment. The media could also give a “heartfelt apology.”
The problem is, none of this will fix a destroyed marriage. None of this will restore a shattered career. None of this will give back the lost public trust. None of this — no secondary report, retraction, correction or mea culpa — will ever take away the trauma of that first accusatory report.
“The general public, and the news media as the public’s proxy, certainly behaves as though it has a right to pry into all the nooks and crannies of government officials’ private lives. It may be a result, for some people, of a genuine desire to accurately evaluate the character of people who accept positions of responsibility for the security and prosperity of the nation. For others, it may be a result of partisan bickering and looking for any material that can be used to make an ad hominem argument against a particular candidate for office. Maybe it’s all really just a result of a prurient desire to learn the sordid details of others’ lives, treating them more as objects of entertainment in the spirit of soap operas than as human beings.”
The First Amendment right to free speech and free press does not give journalists free range to harm and impair. Ultimately, the media is an essential component of society; it is the watchdog — pointing out dangers and chasing off dangerous misconceptions and rumors.
Imagine how much society will suffer if it cannot trust the media.
The reporting of scandalous news simply for the shock value diminishes the news. While it is tempting to say that reporting about sex and politics have been with us since the beginning of the republic (one of the first American sex scandals was with Thomas Jefferson, who had a child with his 17-year-old slave, Sally Hemmings), the general distrust of politics has made issues that should be dealt with tact and a light touch instant ratings busters.
This is a fundamental indictment against our society and our industry.
First and foremost, when dealing with sensitive concerns, a journalist must ask, “Why does the reader need to know this?” before adding it to the record. While it would be nice if we knew all about a politician’s spouse, children, parents, schooling, friends, sexual habits, favorite colors, allergies and favorite “Seinfeld” character, none of this is the public’s concern unless it directly affects the public’s welfare, trust or safety.
Nobody’s life is worth beating the world to a story.