If "Everyone Knows," Should the News Media Tell?

If “everyone knows” spicy details about a public official, should the news media report it?
Idaho Republican Sen. Larry E. Craig, arrested for alleged sexual overtures in an airport men’s room, apparently was widely known, or suspected, to be gay, which he still denies. It was the arrest that brought it out.
Former Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley, who apparently liked male pages, had long been rumored to be gay. The scandal that forced him from office got it in the news media.
Former New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevy was long suspected of being gay, but little was made of it until he resigned.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy liked the ladies, but it didn’t make print.
New York Times columnist Abby Goodnough recently quoted journalism professor Jeff Jarvis asking about all these secrets kept, “Does it mean journalists are doing a good job, or does it mean they are doing a bad job?”
Some journalists, factoring in the reliability of the topic and the importance it might play in the elected official’s performance, would add the hypocrisy factor. There is probably nothing journalists would rather expose than hypocrisy. Craig had voted against pro-gay legislation at every opportunity.
The Internet may be changing the equation. It is unfiltered. Anything goes in the blogs, social networks, etc. If they don’t want to say it themselves, according to Jarvis, they can just offer a link to someone that does.
What should the mainstream media do and, further, exactly what is the mainstream any more?

Two Reptiles and Adolph Hitler

Which of these is true?
A man in Los Angeles was charged with smuggling three valuable, endangered iguanas into the U.S. inside his prosthetic leg.
A man in Oregon put his pet diamondback rattlesnake in his mouth; it promptly bit him and shot enough venom in him to kill a dozen people. Doctors saved his life.
A federal judge in Newark overruled the Bayonne school board and said two students could wear buttons featuring a picture of the Hitler Youth to protest a school uniform policy.
Actually, they’re all true.
But can you imagine kids wearing Hitler Youth buttons?
I’d not only have banned the buttons but assigned the historically-challenged kids to watch all 15 hours of Ken Burns’ documentary “The War.”
It covers World War II, started by the Nazi leader and German dictator. More than 50 million Europeans died. Hitler did his best to eliminate the Jewish race from the face of the earth.
To many, Hitler was and will always be the personification of evil.
But U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr., citing a 1969 case in Iowa in which students were permitted to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam war, ruled for the Hitler Youth buttons as freedom of expression under the First Amendment.
A black armband opposing a war used to justify buttons showing the young followers and soon-to-be soldiers of Adolph Hitler. That seems like a stretch to me.

Suspend Belichick?

Not a good time for professional sports.
Use of performance enhancing drugs would be problem enough.
But this year, in rapid order, a cheating, point-shaving NBA referee, a dog-killing NFL quarterback, and now a thieving top coach of a top team, Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots.
The Patriots were found stealing, via video camera, the defensive signals of the New York Jets Sept. 9.
Say it isn’t so, Bill.
Sad to say, Bill didn’t deny it. He did accept responsibility and apologize.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick the maximum half-million dollars (he makes five or 10 times that) and fined the team $250,000 and loss of some important draft choices.
Many think Belichick got off way too easy, that he should have been suspended, as happens to players caught cheating by using drugs.
How long and how much have the Patriots used stolen signals? Did they come into play when the Patriots defeated the Eagles by three points in the 2005 Super Bowl?
“The cheaters win; the straight guys lose,” commented the business-minded Wall Street Journal in calling for a four-week suspension.
What are your thoughts on sports scandals, the Patriots’ perfidy and Belichick’s punishment?

(Sore) Back to School

Well, the kids are back in school, sore backs and all.
Their book bags are so jammed with material — much of it probably never even removed at home — that the children are all hunched over. I predict back problems in later years.
But it’s no longer just book bags.
Don’t forget the laptop.
Back-to-school shoppers looked particularly stressed this year, trying to match their children’s requests with available funds.
Maybe they took seriously the direct mail advertisement from Hewitt Packard that said: “Stop resisting. Give in to what your kids really want.”
And, “You will buy it for your kids and become the cool parent on the block.”
And, “Repeat three times: I want what’s best for my kid.”
I guess the cool parent will get the Notebook PC for $1,030 and add Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition plus a wireless mouse and a TV tuner and remote for a total of $1,320.
These kids are not only smarter than we were but more skilled at manipulating mom and dad.
My advice: Also get the three-year accidental damage protection for $350.

NOTE: During the spring and summer, I commented several times here on corruption in the college-student loan industry in which colleges and/or their officials received various forms of compensation (kickbacks) from lenders for pushing their companies.
The Press of Atlantic City joined in Sunday, Sept. 9, with an editorial welcoming a code of ethics issued by this state’s attorney general, but a call for “real solutions...at the federal level.”

Trade Places with Andy Reid?

Would you want to trade places with Andy Reid?
Sure, the Eagles head coach makes like a million bucks a year.
Yes, McNabb looks ready.
And the pre-season? Well, that doesn’t really mean anything (knock wood).
But then there are Garrett and Britt Reid, Andy’s sons.
In case you were shipwrecked on Champagne Island the last six months, Garrett, 24, awaits sentencing on Jan. 30 drug and traffic charges to which he pled guilty July 26.
And Britt, 22, apparently is trying to do his brother one better. Already out on bail for a Jan. 30 road-rage incident that included illegal drugs and waving a hand gun, he was arrested Aug. 24 after a shop keeper called police to report Britt looked unable to drive,
He was trying to navigate out of a shopping center when the police got to him, possibly saving others who could have been in his path.
The charges were driving under the influence and possession of drugs.
Leaving his arraignment Aug. 29, Britt Reid had a comment for the news media — TV, radio and print — as he exited court.
“Hi Mom and Dad,” he said, reportedly with a half-smile.
Hi Mom and Dad.
Most of us spend our lives trying to make our parents proud. Britt Reid apparently prefers to hurt the parents who raised him.
We will never know what problems — real and imagined — the Reid boys have had with their parents. Good upbringing, bad upbringing, why speculate?
Many young people like to see how bad they can be and still get away with it.
But this sounds like more. These privileged young men are to be pitied, especially if either, or both, are addicts.
But not as much as the parent who raised a child only to see and him saying into the camera after his arraignment, “Hi Mom and Dad.”