Freelance writer Caleb Hannan came across the makings for an interesting story one night while casting about YouTube. Hannan is an avid golfer, so when he came to a video clip about a revolutionary new putter, he was intrigued. He had never heard of the “Yar,” but what piqued his interest more was its inventor, a mysterious woman known as “Dr. V.” Hannan was always on the lookout for a good profile subject and quickly realized Dr. V—“Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt—was just that.
The “Yar” golf putter.
Hannan dug around and learned that Dr. V. was an unknown in the world of golf yet nevertheless had managed to gain a seat at the table at the most prominent club maker, Taylormade. Hannan learned too, that Dr. V. claimed to have had a previous life working for the U.S. Department of Defense on top secret projects, was a volunteer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and a graduate of M.I.T. The problem was none of that turned out to be true. Dr. V. wasn’t even a Vanderbilt. And Hannan also learned that she had not always been a woman. Essay Anne Vanderbilt was born a boy and lived much of her life as Stephen Krol. In the midst of reporting out the story Hannan sloppily—some say cruelly—outed Dr. V. to a Yar investor. During the course of his research, which spanned eight months, Dr. V. killed herself.
By Hannan’s own admission, her last email to him had the earmark of an unstable person. “It had her signature mix of scattered punctuation and randomly capitalized words,” Hannan wrote in his nearly 8,000-word piece for Grantland. “Once upon a time I had brushed off these grammatical quirks, but now they seemed like outward expressions of the inner chaos she struggled to contain.”
Hannan, upon reflection, recognized she had been in emotional crisis, possibly triggered by being outed. She had not revealed to Hannan that she was transgender; he discovered this on his own. But he never reassured her that the fact of her gender would be left out the story. In fact, her gender would turn out to be a key feature of the story.
Essay Anne Vanderbilt was a public figure—her new golf club had made her one—but still, what about her privacy? Dr. V. heaped a pile of lies around herself—MIT, secret government contracts. But was her gender transition just one more lie a reporter had a right to uncover? Was it a fact irrelevant to the story? Is it anybody’s business?
When the article first went online, it was lavished with praise. Quickly, though, the remarks turned ugly. Hannan received death threats. Most were in the camp that Dr. V.’s privacy had been violated. Bill Simmons, Grantland’s Editor-in-Chief at the time, ultimately concurred.
In an editor’s note, he wrote:
I don’t remember the exact moment when I realized that we definitely screwed up, but it happened sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. On Sunday, ESPN apologized on our behalf. I am apologizing on our behalf right now. My condolences to Dr. V’s friends and family for any pain our mistakes may have caused.
After Simmons penned his mea culpa editorial, he posted a guest editorial from ESPN’s Christina Kahrl, who was harshly critical. “It was not Grantland’s job to out Essay Anne Vanderbilt, but it was done, carelessly,” wrote Kahrl, who herself had come out as transgender more than a decade earlier.
Upon making the unavoidable discovery that Vanderbilt’s background didn’t stand up to scrutiny, he didn’t reassure her that her gender identity wasn’t germane to the broader problems he’d uncovered with her story. Rather, he provided this tidbit to one of the investors in her company in a gratuitous ‘gotcha’ moment that reflects how little thought he’d given the matter. ... But revealing her gender identity was ultimately as dangerous as it was thoughtless.
Most publishers have had at one time or another dealt with a story that may have gone too far. Scenarios like these raise questions that run to the heart of any journalistic enterprise. What exactly is your ethical framework? What do you prize above all? When do you publish or not publish? Are you a business or do you serve a higher authority? You in it to attract clicks and generate ad revenue? Or are you a powerful television network that exists to extend your political influence? Do you just want to beat the competition? Or are you keen to peel back skin and reveal America’s deepest, meanest secrets. Ethics. Be. Damned.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, although the field of journalism has, over time, settled on a half dozen or so industry-wide accepted practices.
A small sample of the criticism Hannon received over social media.
According to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics:
Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.
Journalists should:
Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.
Show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage. Use heightened sensitivity when dealing with juveniles, victims of sex crimes, and sources or subjects who are inexperienced or unable to give consent. Consider cultural differences in approach and treatment.
Recognize that legal access to information differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast.
Realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures and others who seek power, influence or attention. Weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information.
Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do.
Balance a suspect’s right to a fair trial with the public’s right to know. Consider the implications of identifying criminal suspects before they face legal charges.
Consider the long-term implications of the extended reach and permanence of publication. Provide updated and more complete information as appropriate.
If Hannon and Grantland had followed SPJ’s code of conduct, they would likely have made other editorial choices.
This was not the first time something like this had happened. In June 2010, Kevin Poulsen, an editor at Wired News, obtained chat logs containing conversations between Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked millions of sensitive military files to Wikileaks, and hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in. In these online conversations, Manning confessed to being a whistleblower and divulged deeply personal information dealing with his sexuality.
Wired published a portion of the logs—those were undoubtedly newsworthy—but held back the rest, stating: “The excerpts represent about 25 percent of the logs. Portions of the chats that discuss deeply personal information about Manning or that reveal apparently sensitive military information are not included.”
Even after a barrage of criticism Wired refused to budge. One particularly harsh critic was Glenn Greenwald, who sought to discredit Adrian Lamo, calling him, “a single, extremely untrustworthy source,” adding:
Wired is hiding the key evidence about what took place here, thus allowing Lamo to spout all sorts of serious claims without any check and thus drive much of the reporting about WikiLeaks.
Wired Editor Evan Hansen fired back:
We have already published substantial excerpts from the logs, but critics continue to challenge us to reveal all, ostensibly to fact-check some statements that Lamo has made in the press summarizing portions of the logs from memory (his computer hard drive was confiscated, and he no longer has a copy).
Our position has been and remains that the logs include sensitive personal information with no bearing on WikiLeaks, and it would serve no purpose to publish them at this time. That doesn't mean we'll never publish them, but before taking an irrevocable action that could harm an individual's privacy, we have to weigh that person's privacy interest against news value and relevance.
This is a standard journalistic balancing test–not one that we invented for Manning. Every experienced reporter of serious purpose recognizes this...
Forty years earlier, members of the news media outed Oliver “Billy” Sipple. Sipple, a former marine and Vietnam veteran, had been waiting in a crowd outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco hoping to get a glimpse of President Gerald Ford. Standing beside him was Sara Jane Moore. Sipple saw Moore take aim at the president with a .38 caliber pistol. Sipple grabbed the would-be assassin’s arm and swung it upward.
The gun went off, a bullet grazing a nearby taxi driver. President Ford remained unharmed.
No question Sipple was a private citizen, his sexual preference unconnected to his heroism. The news media outed him anyway. His family disowned him and he filed a $15 million lawsuit against seven newspapers for invasion of privacy. Five years later, the lawsuit was dismissed. Sipple died at 47 after receiving treatment for alcoholism and schizophrenia.
In 2013, media in the small town of Kennebunkport, Maine grappled with its own ethical dilemma. Police arrested a local Zumba instructor with operating a prostitution ring after finding a list of the woman’s clients, which included several prominent names. Editors were in a quandary. Publish the list or not?
Kelly McBride, a journalism ethicist at the Poynter Institute, advised publications to adhere to their usual practice: If a newspaper usually publishes police logs, including summonses for misdemeanors, it should publish the list. “I can’t find the justification of printing the whole list unless you [routinely] print every misdemeanor charge,” said McBride, the exception being names of prominent community members. As public officials, their actions are relevant and newsworthy.
In November 2011, two gunmen attacked the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after it published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed, an act of blasphemy under Islam. Vengeance was swift and murderous. When the smoke cleared gunmen had killed twelve and injured 11. In solidarity with Charlie Hebdo some newspapers and websites reprinted the cartoon; others, like the Financial Times, published the cartoon because of its inherent newsworthiness. During a staff discussion at Al Jazeera on whether to publish images of the Prophet Muhammed, one staffer wrote in an email: “If a large enough group ... is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization.”
Many, however, opted not to publish the images.
Dean Banquet, New York Times Editor-in-Chief, struggled with the decision. At first, he was convinced the Times should publish the images, “both because of their newsworthiness and out of a sense of solidarity with the slain journalists and the right of free expression.” But editors raised staff safety concerns and Banquet changed his mind. “We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these are gratuitous insult.”
He added: “At what point does news value override our standards?” You would have to show the most incendiary images. In the end, he deemed that unacceptable.
“All these choices, each with an ethical base, show that this is not a simple matter of black and white choice in the newsroom,” says Stefanie Chernow for Ethical Journalism Network. “It’s a deeply troubling and gray area of editorial decision-making. These choices show that journalism that aspires to be in the public interest and driven by values of mission needs to lean on its ethical codes and traditions of editorial independence if it aims to provide sensitive and careful reporting in times of high tension.”