To "Out" Or Not to "Out"

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

When the Village Voice was offered a free-lance article last month that purported to expose the homosexuality of a high Pentagon official, editors of the radical New York City weekly decided to reject the piece as an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Last week the same editors permitted a Voice columnist to summarize the allegations, complete with the official's name. The rationale for the turnaround: the man's identity had been so widely circulated by other news organizations that continued restraint would have been "a futile exercise."

But at the Washington Post, editors chose to cover the controversy without citing the official by name. Explained Karen DeYoung, the Post's assistant managing editor for national news: "Our policy is that we don't write about personal lives of public officials unless the personal aspects begin influencing the way they perform their jobs." The paper canceled a Jack Anderson column, normally a featured item, because it named the man, even though editors assumed many of Anderson's 700-plus clients would run the story, making the Post's discretion largely symbolic.

The hottest ethical issue for journalists these days is where to draw the line between two colliding rights, the individual's right to privacy and the public's right to know -- and then, having drawn the line, how to avoid being pulled across it by cunning manipulators or by the competitive urge on a breaking story. In the case of the Pentagon official, the press coverage was not prompted by any crime, scandal or even news event. It was entirely brought about by gay activists pursuing a political agenda. They had no grudge against the official. Many professed to admire him. But they were determined to embarrass the Pentagon about its exclusion of gays from the armed services. To them, it was hypocritical for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to retain a high civilian official, knowing -- or at least not caring -- that he was gay, while continuing to enforce antigay rules that apply to the uniformed ranks.

The activists had an arguable point about the apparent double standard within the Pentagon. But their tactics are controversial, and the readiness of much of the nation's news media to carry the story about the official raised serious questions about journalistic ethics and quality control. The article exposing the official was printed last week by the Advocate, a Los Angeles- based gay magazine published every two weeks. In a blatant bid for publicity and newsstand sales, the magazine faxed dozens of advance copies to mainstream journalists. The cover line referred to "outing" the official, a ( gay neologism for exposure of a homosexual by other homosexuals. The author, Michelangelo Signorile, pioneered the tactic in the defunct New York City gay magazine, OutWeek.

Most of the people Signorile quoted had only hearsay knowledge. Their main "evidence" was that the official had supposedly been a regular customer in years gone by at a predominantly gay Washington bar. The few sources who claimed firsthand knowledge about him were generally permitted to remain anonymous. Even some unnamed sources knew nothing themselves but were merely quoting still more obscure acquaintances: in one anecdote an unidentified man said an apparent one-night stand, picked up in a bar, told him of having "dated" the official.

Hardly any serious newspaper, magazine or network would accept so loosely sourced a story from its own staff. Yet few journalists tried to verify the claims in the Advocate before repeating its main point. Syndicated columnist Anderson and his partner Dale Van Atta compounded the damage with a claim that the official "is considering resigning because of accusations that he is a homosexual." Instead, Van Atta admits, the official directly said in an interview he had no plans to quit. Asked to explain this contradiction, Van Atta lamely contended, "I said he was considering resigning, and that's a far cry from saying he was seriously considering it."

Though many major dailies declined to name the official, countless smaller papers ran the Anderson-Van Atta column. Among them was Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Patriot, from which the item was in turn excerpted for a Pentagon news summary distributed to 10,000 employees. Other dailies covered the outing debate. The Detroit News named the official twice in news stories; the New York Daily News identified him in a gossip column. All four TV news networks decided not to use the official's name, but secondary outlets used it, including cable channel CNBC, a corporate sibling of NBC piped into nearly 44 million homes, and New York station WPIX. Reasons ranged from sympathy with the gay activists' arguments to CNBC program executive Andy Friendly's observation, "Everybody's talking about this topic."

Whether it is staking out Gary Hart's bedroom, probing the background of an alleged rape victim or pondering the number of months that passed between marriage and childbirth for the wives of Ronald Reagan and televangelist Pat Robertson, the press almost always strikes some people as having gone too far. For others, whose political cause is being advanced either intentionally or inadvertently, the deplorable can suddenly seem delightful. But the real question is not just who benefits from a media decision. Rather, it is whether the media behave thoughtfully and ethically. If news organizations, in the zeal to keep up with competitors, compromise their standards and let themselves be manipulated, they imperil their credibility and integrity -- and ultimately everybody loses.

With reporting by Linda Williams/New York