Mike Jenner: Relevance guides our coverage
JENNER: The bar is purposely high
| Saturday, Mar 06 2010 09:36 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Mar 06 2010 09:54 PM
For years, we got the Christmas cards with the official family portrait -- Roy Ashburn, his wife, kids and golden retriever, smiling for the camera. Political reporters tacked them up on their cubicle walls with the cards from other local politicians.
When the Ashburns divorced, the cards stopped coming. Life went on, and so did Ashburn's political career as a legislator. But as the years rolled by, we heard rumors he was gay.
We didn't report them for two important reasons. First, we didn't know it was true. Even if it was, we didn't see the relevance. I didn't believe it was news.
Things changed after news of his arrest came out Thursday. A highway patrolman arrested Ashburn in the early hours of Wednesday morning for allegedly driving drunk in a state-owned vehicle in Sacramento.
His DUI was newsworthy. But there was more.
A Sacramento television station, citing no named source, reported Thursday that Ashburn had been at a gay nightclub before his arrest. Even though an online news site later reported that the bar's manager said that wasn't the case, bloggers jumped on the story. Leading the charge were gay websites and bloggers who "out" closeted gay public officials, especially politicians who've taken positions seen as anti-gay.
Ultimately the story went national, with blog posts or stories on The Huffington Post and Fox News. And the question of Ashburn's sexual orientation was shoved into the national spotlight.
In Friday's Californian, we reported the blogosphere's feeding frenzy. Lois Henry also recounted an on-the-record interview she had last summer with Ashburn, in which she asked him about the rumors. He didn't directly answer her question, but instead challenged the relevance of the topic.
Ashburn said his votes represented the conservative nature of his constituency on those issues. It's hard to find fault with that argument.
While some bloggers and anonymous online commenters have ferociously attacked him for hypocrisy, he's been nothing if not consistent. He's taken a conservative stance for years, pre-dating his recent life as a single man.
Beyond the question of relevance, there was the not-so-insignificant matter of the truth and our ability to ascertain it. Rumors may work for anonymous bloggers, but not for us. If he wouldn't admit it, and we had no evidence to the contrary, no inside knowledge from a credible source, we had no story.
Still, when we published the account of his exchange with Lois, it immediately sparked accusations of a cover-up by the newspaper. Users of "Twitter" issued tweets accusing us of "collusion" with Ashburn.
One gay website, Queerty.com (motto: "Free of an agenda. Except that gay one.") wrote this about our decision not to pursue the story:
"To some, it's curious that Henry and the paper wouldn't report their suspicions about an anti-gay lawmaker to its readers, but we can understand how that went unreported. When the information gets back to editors, their concern is accuracy, and having substantiated information. Rumors are just that: rumors. And while this website and many readers might support public outings of anti-gay politics, print media hasn't necessarily caught up with that manifesto."
Well put.
Despite Friday's coverage, we haven't bought that manifesto.
From time to time we hear rumors about affairs and other indiscretions of public officials. And there certainly are times when news organizations should report on the private lives of public officials. When their relationships involve conflicts of interest that may compromise their decision-making, for example. When they break the law. When their private activities interfere with their ability to carry out their duties.
In recent years we've reported stories that fall into all of those categories -- and we won't shy away from doing so again in the future.
But the bar is high -- and it should be. If the story has no relevance and we can't establish the facts to support it, you won't see it here.
