Posted on 02/06/2006 12:33:36 PM PST by presidio9
Ever since reporters took up Gary Hart's challenge to put a tail on him, then sunk his 1988 presidential candidacy with details of a tryst with an attractive model, the private sex lives of prominent politicians have been considered fair game for the press.
The journalistic rationale is that character counts and voters have a right to know about questionable personal conduct because it may tell something about how an individual will perform in office or serve the public interest without fear or favor.
Yet most mainstream news outlets continue to grant a reasonable right of privacy to public officials, depending on their notoriety, the nature of reports about their private lives and whether reporters think the sordid details are newsworthy and, therefore, worth checking out.
Supermarket tabloids operate under different rules. They take a devil-may-care approach, often basing stories about bad behavior by public figures on hearsay more than first-hand accounts or records such as a birth certificate. Lack of official confirmation is not an obstacle.
The contrast can create public confusion. If a tabloid touts a curious story about a well-known person, why does the mainstream media all but ignore it? Shouldn't there at least be a mention of the story, and an effort to press the person for a response?
Those were the types of questions asked by newspaper readers, Web bloggers and callers to talk-show programs after the National Enquirer's front-page story two weeks ago that said Sen. Ted Kennedy was the biological father of a boy born to a Cape Cod woman 21 years ago.
At the time, Kennedy was single, having divorced his first wife, Joan, in 1982. He married his second wife, Victoria Reggie, in 1992. There have been plenty of rumors about Kennedy's conduct during his bachelor days between marriages, but nothing about fathering what the National Enquirer described as a "secret love child."
The supermarket tabloid based its story on anonymous sources in the Kennedy and the woman's families | and published the identities and pictures of the woman and her adult son. It said Kennedy had urged her to get an abortion but she declined, was paid at least $15,000 "from someone in the Kennedy camp" and later married a local man who adopted the son.
A few mainstream populist papers | the Boston Herald and the New York Daily News, for example | printed stories about the National Enquirer's account. Kennedy's hometown paper, The Cape Cod Times of Hyannis, published an editor's column saying it had refused to sell a picture of the young man to the Enquirer but, strangely, never mentioned Kennedy by name, referring to him only as a "prominent politician." The paper said it had tried to authenticate the story on its own but couldn't.
Follow-up stories included a terse statement from Kennedy's office | but not the senator directly | that the Enquirer's story was "irresponsible fiction." There was also speculation by Kennedy friends that it was timed to embarrass him for his aggressive questioning of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. The woman and her son declined to comment.
No major mainstream paper or broadcast network carried the story. Ditto most of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire newspapers, including the Eagle-Tribune papers. And that befuddled some readers, mainly Kennedy's critics. If the story wasn't true, they reasoned, then why didn't Kennedy himself come out and say so, and also announce he was suing the National Enquirer for defamation. A few people suggested Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, had influenced the press to largely ignore the story.
To understand the news media's dichotomy on this story you need to know that the journalistic standards for publishing information about private lives of public figures can differ from news organization to news organization, but that most mainstream outlets publish only if they are certain the damning details are accurate and pertinent to the individual's public performance.
In Kennedy's case, the National Enquirer's reputation for rumor-mongering would automatically cause concern about the truthfulness of the story. Beyond that, journalists could legitimately question the newsworthiness of the story, given it happened two decades ago and had no apparent tie to the senator's public life.
Nearly every public figure has a skeleton or two in his or her closet. Sometimes reporters discover them while scrutinizing backgrounds, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they write about them, and sometimes they don't. There is no hard-and-fast ethical guidepost. If a story is verifiable, then many mainstream journalists tend to ask if it is something the public needs to know, and if it is so important that it eclipses a public figure's reasonable right to privacy. Public curiosity is a factor, although not usually the most important one.
The threshold for publishing or broadcasting such a story is also determined by the level of prominence. A candidate for president, for instance, will find journalists more willing to disclose the smallest intimate details. The logic goes that candidates who pursue the highest office in the land should expect total visibility of their private life. Few things are considered off-limits.
Gary Hart found that out when he tested the press to check out his reputation as a womanizer while seeking the White House more than 18 years ago. His risky behavior with model Donna Rice led him to become the first candidate to be asked in public if he was an adulterer.
Kennedy isn't running for president this year, but he is a candidate for re-election to another six-year term in the Senate. Thus far no Republican has announced plans to challenge him. Still, it would not be out of bounds for reporters to ask him during the campaign if he fathered a child out of wedlock in the mid-1980s and paid the mother to keep quiet about it.
That's a question now out there whether he likes it or not. And his answer may affect how some voters view his character and future effectiveness when casting their ballots in November.
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William B. Ketter is editor-in-chief of The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Mass.
For the life of me I don't know why everyone in Massachusetts turns a blind eye to this killer and treats him like a god.
Imagine the boy's humiliation.
All these years he thought his father was a pimp.
So9
Ask Joan.
Camelot immunity.
Yet most mainstream news outlets continue to grant a reasonable right of privacy to public officials, depending on their notoriety
depending on their party.
In New Jersey, the press not only knew about McGreevey's sex life, they also knew he appointed his grossly unqualified boy-toy as the state's director of homeland security, despite the fact that the federal intelligence services considered him ineligible to receive a security clearance.
But they let that information sit out there unprinted, until McGreevey decided to go public with his homo story to divert attention from his growing corruption story.
I really doubt such a "courtesy" would be extended to Haley Barbour or Arnold Scharzennegger.
I don't get it either. Is there anybody out there from Taxachusetts who can explain how Kennedy and Kerry have been elected and reelected?
Everythings fine Senator... she's dead.
Well, lets start with THE BIG DIG. A budget of 1 billion grows to 15 billion (or so). Follow the pork.
I promist you that not EVERYONE in Massachusetts turns a blind eye to Kennedy's appalling history.
Besides myself and my fellow Mass Freepers, I remind you that Rush, Howie Carr, Michael Graham and Jay Severin all do very well here adn have significant audiences.
P.S. Did I mention:
DISCLAIMER: This photo is FAKE but ACCURATE.
"I really doubt such a "courtesy" would be extended to Haley Barbour or Arnold Scharzennegger."
Remember Henry Hyde, Gingrich,Livingstone,and that conservative congresswoman, that the media revealed had gone out with a married man when she was a young single woman. How about the widespread coverage of that ridiculous adultery claim against Herbert Walker Bush?
pork
"Before Jacques Cousteau became Ted's chauffeur".
That's a question now out there whether he likes it or not. And his answer may affect how some voters view his character and future effectiveness when casting their ballots in November.
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune has yet to ask The Swimmer if he considers himself a murderer not.
As far as I'm concerned, Mister MSM guy, if you're searching for credibility for your line of work, you can check the dictionary.
Somewhere between "crap" and "cretin".
Er-ah, where-azh my Chevis?
Dunno. But if you find out let me in on the secret. Wonder if Mary Jo Kopechne was pregnant?
In a perfect universe, one day Fat Teddy will keel over like the grossly obese whale that he is, and he will find himself spending eternity undergoing a never ending frontal lobotomy (like his sister Rosemary did at the hands of Teddy's depraved old man Joe), sexually violated over and over (as he and others in his shameful family have done to many, many women), and all of that taking place (the lobotomy, the sexual assaults) while he is gasping for breath, as he watches a little pocket of air in the roof of his '67 Oldsmobile grow smaller and smaller, except that he never passes out from the carbon dioxide, he never loses consciousness from the water that ultimately fills his lungs, he just suffers throughout all eternity, suffering similar fates as other victims of the Kennedy family.
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