Did the press go too far?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110519/ts_yblog_thecutline/arnold-mistress-tk

Did the press go too far in identifying Arnold’s mistress? By Joe
Pompeo<http://news.yahoo.com/bloggers/joe-pompeo>

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 Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's whopping breach of marital
ethics has touched off a curious ethical dilemma in the media world: In
reporting the ongoing fallout from Schwarzenegger's affair with the former
housekeeper who gave birth to his child, has the press unduly invaded the
privacy of Schwarzenegger's one-time paramour?

Some major news organizations have exercised restraint, declining to publish
the names, photos or any other revealing details about the housekeeper and
her son. Others have confirmed the woman's identity, described her home, and
splashed her image across TV screens, front pages and web browsers. At its
most lurid, the coverage seems akin to stealing an intimate family photo
album and scattering its contents around world.

Has the press gone too far?

Some critics think so: "The housekeeper, who was recently let go by the
former California governor, did not ask to be at the center of a white-hot
political scandal,"
writes<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=136005u3u/*http://www.thedailybeast.com/spin-cycle/2011/5/18/exposing-the-housekeeper-who-had-an-affair-with-ar>Howard
Kurtz of the Daily Beast, which decided not to identify her. "She has
made no statement, filed no lawsuit, trotted out no publicist, sold nothing
to the tabloids, made no appearance on 'Oprah.'  She had an affair with her
boss and got pregnant, but she is as far from a public figure as you can
imagine. What gives the media the right to obliterate her privacy?"

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, which published the
woman's name on Wednesday, has an answer.

"Our basic job is to inform readers about news events, so we need a pretty
compelling reason NOT to give readers information we think they care about,"
Keller told the Los Angeles Times' James
Rainey<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=13k17r2l4/*http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2011/05/schwarzenegger-child-not-named-here-a-rarity-in-media.html>.
"We're sensitive to privacy issues, but in this case we don't see that
compelling reason to keep our readers in the dark ... There's nothing to
suggest that reliving the earlier experience is likely to be traumatizing in
the sense rape victims describe (she's lived with it--and worked for
him--for 10 or 15 years). And the reality is, there is not much privacy left
for us to protect."

Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times, which broke the
Schwarzenegger scandal late Monday night, sees things differently.

"In some circumstances, it might be necessary or appropriate to reveal the
identity of a politician's mistress," he told
Rainey<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=13k17r2l4/*http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2011/05/schwarzenegger-child-not-named-here-a-rarity-in-media.html>.
"In this situation, we thought it was not. We hewed to the principle of
protecting the identify of an innocent child. To have identified the mother
would, in effect, have been to identify the child. Different media companies
have different standards. We will stick by ours, regardless of what others
do."

But the Los Angeles Times appears to be in the minority. CNN made the call
to run with the woman's name--Mildred Baena, for the record, as well as her
photo<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=10r51qrvf/*http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2011/05/19/am.schwarzenegger.mistress.cnn?hpt=C1>following
the New York Times report. (Earlier, when the network had TMZ
editor Harvey Levin on as a guest, a producer asked him not to identify her,
according to Levin<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=10lctn33b/*http://twitter.com/#%21/HarveyLevinTMZ/status/71276421384912896>.)
Other television outlets, including ABC News, CBS News and Fox News, also
put Baena on display Wednesday and Thursday, as did various online sources,
including the Huffington Post and Yahoo!.

The Associated Press published Baena's name only after it had been floated
by multiple news outlets. "The AP has not independently verified that she is
the mother of Schwarzenegger's child," the wire noted in a report Thursday.

"We decided to use the name because the story did not involve a sex crime
but what appears to be a voluntary relationship with a public figure," AP
managing editor Lou Ferrara told The Cutline. "The name is an important fact
worthy of knowing."

The Cutline's decision to name Baena also was based on the volume of reports
that had already done so. As of the time of this posting, several hours
after first contacting seven mainstream news outlets for comment, we were
still awaiting statements from ABC, CBS, CNN, the Huffington Post, and the
Washington Post.

This is all to say nothing of celebrity gossip sites like Radar Online and
TMZ, which were among the first to have a field day with Baena's MySpace
photos. (Radar was the first to report her name, according to the AP.) And
then, of course, there are the ever-yellow New York tabloids, both of which
featured Baena on their Thursday covers.

"The cover of today's *Post* is lurid and mean-spirited," wrote Capital New
York's Tom McGeveran today in his daily dissection of the rival
tabs<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=1449he7di/*http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/05/2123644/reports-dominique-and-arnolds-involuntary-co-stars-follow-tmz-channe>.
"A candid photo of Baena, who is not pictured in full makeup at an Oprah
Winfrey goodbye-special taping the way Maria Shriver was, but who's instead
cutting the cake at a baby shower in a floral dress, with a wide, kind smile
across her face, holding a blue balloon, is paired with a large red callout
box with giant knockout-white type that reads 'ARNIE LOVE CHILD.' An arrow
actually points to Baena's abdomen."

That child, who is now said to be around 14, remains shielded from the
public eye--in the coverage of his mother, the adolescent's face has been
appropriately obscured.

"We don't publish names of minors and we don't show their pictures either,
without being blurred. These are children who deserve to be protected, even
if others don't," said Fox News VP Michael Clemente. (As for the network's
guidelines on Baena, Clemente concurred with the Times' Keller: "In this
case, what happened many years ago does not seem to be something anyone is
hiding from now.")

But Poynter's Julie Moos questions whether the story has nevertheless veered
into too-much-information
territory<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/yblog_thecutline/ts_yblog_thecutline/storytext/arnold-mistress-tk/41536924/SIG=14jcpjtaf/*http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/133009/from-too-little-to-too-much-information-what%E2%80%99s-relevant-in-schwarzenegger-coverage/>.
Do we really need to know that neighbors describe the child as a
well-mannered and handsome young man who likes sports and martial arts? Or
that Baena's house cost $268,000?

"As journalists, once we moved beyond the woman's name, we compensated for
starving readers of details by serving them an all-you-can-eat buffet," Moos
writes. "Surely there are options between famine and feast."


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |*
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