It’s no secret that the Chronicle‘s editorial leadership is opposed to the NSA eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls (to the point of rewriting the Constitution), and not enthusiastic about the Patriot Act, but when it comes to writing a story, the Chronicle can decide to throw an individual’s privacy out the window, apparently, to further the story.
James Campbell’s column today touches on this subject in relation to a recent Chronicle story on the death of a Bellaire student. The story included details of the family’s personal life:
Readers also learned that Finkelman occasionally hung with the wrong crowd, flirted with drugs and faced disciplinary problems at school, according to classmates. His parents are divorced and both of his older brothers have had brushes with the law and drugs.
To backstop our description of Finkelman’s comfortable upbringing, we reported that days before his death he had returned from a cruise to Belize and Cozumel with his father and brothers. We reported that his father, Alan Finkelman, heads a wholesale men’s apparel company and lives in a 4,300-square-foot home in Bellaire worth about $500,000. The home also has a spa and swimming pool.
Campbell says he has since received emails expressing concern that those kinds of details invaded the family’s privacy. He agrees in part, then adds the reasoning of day city editor Ronnie Crocker:
“I think that when you have a homicide in a part of town and involving students at one of our premier high schools that’s unusual,” Crocker explained. “And unusual is one of the definitions of news. As far [sic] the appraisal district information, his home life and background convey a fact that an adjective couldn’t. We always want to use facts in lieu of adjectives. We felt that his home life was a significant part of the story. But it’s never our intention to add to the suffering of grieving families, and we are conscientious about not sensationalizing crime or other tragedies. At the same time, we’re obligated to report on events and issues of interest to the community. We work hard to strike a balance there.”
Basically we are left to conclude that the media believes it is the final arbiter of what should or should not be private. When the media feels the need to invade someone’s privacy, then it’s a-okay! (Except for those instances where something backfires.)
Perhaps Editor Crocker should read the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics:
# Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
# Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
And after reading that, Crocker should rethink whether including some of those details was really necessary. Were they essential to the story?
Or we could put it this way: what if it was, God forbid, a Chronicle editor’s or staffer’s son who had died. Would those same details have been included? We can guess the answer is no.
