Editorials
Sunday, June 3, 2001
Bush’s daughters
face media scrutiny
The issue: The president's children are
thrust into the debate about what's
private and what's not.
WHEN President Bush's daughters were charged with violating the liquor laws of Texas earlier this week, the issue of what is appropriate for public examination once again became a matter for troubled discourse. The boundaries of privacy are prickly points of contention, particularly when incidents involve family members of public figures rather than the public figures themselves.For news organizations, there are no clear rules, only the responsibility to think carefully through each situation before deciding whether the information should be disseminated. In this case, coverage ranged from the screaming New York Post banner headline "JENNA AND TONIC" to the sedate New York Times' 12 paragraphs on the bottom of page A-16.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in chiding reporters who besieged him with questions, declared the incident private. Yet he acknowledged that "there's a question of law" involved and that is the strongest element in what makes the incident newsworthy.
There are other factors. Although the young women may be reluctant celebrities, they are the president's daughters and cannot expect that their conduct will not be subject to scrutiny. They are 19 years old, adults able to make decisions about their behavior. They are well aware of the law. Jenna Bush just two weeks previously had pleaded no contest to underage possession of alcohol, which heightens interest in the more recent episode because she tried to buy a drink using false identification.How the president and his wife deal with their daughters clearly is a family matter and not for public consumption. This episode, however, does revive the issue of the president's own experience with alcohol abuse and an arrest for drunken driving. During his campaign, he said he would not provide detailed information to his daughters about whether he had used drugs or been arrested.
Journalists walk a tightrope in deciding what information the public should be exposed to in cases involving relatives of public figures. One guideline some news people employ is whether a politician uses his family to gain public favor. In her younger years, Chelsea Clinton, who enjoyed rare coverage, wasn't routinely trotted out on stage, either during political campaigns or in the White House. Amy Carter, however, was a constant presence in her family's political pictures as a child and was in the limelight throughout her father's occupancy of the White House.
President Bush seldom puts his daughters in the public eye, but he often referred to them in his speeches touting family values. The line in this case is blurred but the president cannot expect that his daughters are off limits just because they are his daughters. Public figures can pick and choose which scenes of family they want exposed, but not all of the time.
That said, determining what's news and what's not will always be debatable. Because journalists in America have an incomparable freedom, they must balance that right under the First Amendment with fairness and responsibility. Even as they assert the public's right to know, they should ask themselves what does the public need to know.
Harassment
on campus cannot
be toleratedThe issue: Human Rights Watch has
issued a report on what it calls the failure
of American schools to protect gay and
lesbian students from harassment.
CHILDREN can be cruel to each other, and school officials need to be on the lookout for incidents of harassment. Any form of harassment is contemptible, but scorn based on a child's very essence -- race, national origin, religion, sex, disability -- is especially hurtful. The state Board of Education in November added sexual orientation to that list, a decision that is consistent with a new report about youthful torment but one that should not create open season on children outside those categories.Human Rights Watch, an advocacy and research organization, found in a study of schools that intimidation rising to violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual children too often is tolerated because of "entrenched societal prejudice" against them. In some cases, school officials condone the harassment as they consider some children to be "undeserving of respect" because of their sexual orientation. In an Iowa school, gay students reported hearing anti-gay epithets an average of every seven minutes.
The organization reports that discrimination exists not only against homosexual students but within gay communities at the school level. Boys feel superior to girls in many schools, so lesbian girls "not only face harassment and abuse from their heterosexual peers but may also face discrimination from their gay male peers," the report says.
"When adults fail to model and teach respect for youth, and indeed for all human beings, they send a message that is acceptable to demean, attack and discriminate against others because they are or are perceived to be different," the report says. "It is a message that can only hurt its recipients."
In adopting a rule against the harassment of gay and lesbian students, the Hawaii school board narrowly rejected a proposal by board member Denise Matsumoto to ban harassment regardless of the motive, in effect eliminating all the protected categories.
Matsumoto's concern was interpreted as anti-homosexual sentiment, but the message she tried to convey should be heeded. The board's action should not give license for children to harass each other on the basis of weight, height, economic status, length of residency or any of a number of other traits that give diversity to the classroom and prepare children for adulthood.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.com The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (USPS 249460) is published daily by
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