Virginian-Pilot


DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9709020010

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LYNN FEIGENBAUM, VIRGINIAN-PILOT PUBLIC EDITOR 

                                            LENGTH:   82 lines




PUBLIC EDITOR: NEWS MEDIA TRY TO DEFINE ETHICAL LINES

`AREN'T YOU SICK of stories about Princess Di?''

That question was put to me only last week by a Portsmouth reader. My answer, I think, took the man by surprise.

``Not at all,'' I said, explaining that I enjoy following the royal soap opera. That it makes great reading. Harmless fun, was what I meant.

Today we know it was not quite so harmless. And that maybe all of us who enjoy our peek at celebs - in People magazine, the Pilot's people column or wherever else - share some measure of guilt. Or at least responsibility.

Princess Diana, she of the fairy-tale royal wedding, charmed the world even through less-than-charming accounts of her bouts of bulimia and her misfit marriage. She was young, pretty, vivacious, charitable - a caring mom.

That makes it all the more discomfitting to read accusations that she was figuratively, if not literally, killed by the press. ``I always believed the press would kill her in the end,'' we heard the princess' brother, Charles Spencer, say Monday on television. A pretty tough indictment.

Of course, celebs bear their share of guilt. They bask in the media limelight with as much enjoyment as Princess Di basked in the sun. They often manipulate and use the press.

One Pilot reader blamed Princess Diana directly. ``Had she been with her family, it wouldn't have happened,'' he said of the fatal car accident Saturday in a Paris traffic tunnel.

And then there's the public's lust for celebrity peekaboo. It's this lust that creates a market niche for the paparazzi, that exotic but grating term for celeb photogs. The paparazzi seem to have no problem selling their wares to the highest tabloid bid, print or TV.

That aspect of ``journalism'' is a stigma to journalists like Bob Lynn, who retired last week as the Pilot's director of photography.

``All of us, in our profession, are revulsed by what these paparazzi photographers do, and the publications that pay them enormous sums for these stupid pictures,'' Lynn said.

Indeed, we're all revulsed. The wretched excesses of these celeb stalkers sometimes spill over into daily newspapers because there's a demand for them. Or because the press perceives or cultivates that demand.

We saw this during the O.J. Simpson trial. Readers everywhere complained, ``Too much!'' yet those papers sold like hot cakes, and the trial sent TV ratings into the stratosphere. Likewise, the public can't get enough of the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder case. And we've feasted for decades on the Kennedy family; Jackie O. was sort of a dry run for Princess Di.

The question is: Where do you draw the line?

``It's always a balancing act,'' said Pilot editor Kay Tucker Addis, ``between what people want to know and our responsibility not to go too far.''

As Addis points out, the Pilot's content is tame compared to other publications. But it's troubling to think that, even unknowingly, we might run a celeb photo taken under some paparazzi-type circumstance.

Recently, we found out that a wire-service feature, used occasionally in compiling the Pilot's people column, contained tabloid items. We learned about it when actor Harrison Ford's lawyer threatened to sue every newspaper that reprinted a falsehood about his client unless they ran a retraction.

I can't recall any paparazzi-style photo in the Pilot - at least nothing like a princess getting her royal toes nibbled or, heaven forbid, lying topless on a beach.

Alex Burrows, the new director of photography, doesn't see the Pilot being a customer for the paparazzi.

For one thing, the newspaper's primary focus is local. And most wire photos, including those of celebs, are ``authorized'' - taken at press conferences by movie studios. Dull stuff, maybe. But it beats a motorcycle brigade chasing someone's car or a telephoto lens pointed in someone's bedroom.

In fact, the closest to ``paparazzi'' fare Burrows could come up with is the annual picture-fest at the Academy Awards. Sorry, not sleazy enough. Besides, those people are all posing and preening in their designer finery.

Like others in the press, Burrows is concerned about the effect the Princess Di tragedy could have on legitimate photojournalism. But it might, like all tragedies, raise the collective consciousness on journalistic standards.

``Maybe,'' said editor Addis, ``it will focus more attention on the issues and help draw the line between what's inappropriate, an invasion of privacy, and what's newsworthy.''

Former photo director Lynn had a similar idea. ``If we can learn anything from this,'' said Lynn, ``perhaps we should make it a policy of our newspaper not to run pictures acquired in a way that serves no public need to know, that KEYWORDS: PRINCESS DIANA



[home] [ETDs] [Image Base] [journals] [VA News] [VTDL] [Online Course Materials] [Publications]

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu
by CNB