Presswatch/Against Her Will

...She had "a little wild streak," one anonymous source told the Times, whose reporters made like peeping Toms to report the books on the shelves of the woman's two-year-old daughter, a child born out of wedlock...

...NBC ain't Des Moines or Louisville, and once a rape victim appears on his screen, any doctrine of federalism is, for practicalpurposes, undermined...

...she was paralyzed, a quadriplegic...

...W ho'da thunk I'd ever end a column by praising the National Enquirer, but the tabloid did not follow the lead of NBC and the Times and print the alleged victim's name: "It never really entered our minds to print it without her permission:' said executive editor Dan Schwartz...

...Another benefit of the no-names policy is that it does not plunge editors and producers into the kind of "balancing" inquiries that have long vexed judges, leading to indeterminate law and lack of respect for the courts...

...the Times, once the nation's most prestigious newspaper, simply played the role of a toddler imitating the bad example of an older brother, commenting: "NBC's nationwide broadcast took the matter of privacy out of [our] hands...

...Those were the words of a man willing to balance all factors he thinks relevant...

...The next morning the woman awoke to learn that the New York Times had also identified her...

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...He once worked for the Wall Street Journal, and was editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Des Moines Register, which in early April won a Pulitzer Prize for articles in which a rape victim who described her ordeal was identified—at her request...

...and better than his colleagues in picture-land because he still writes opeds and book reviews...

...ECS, Ilion, NY...

...This program saved my neck when faced with teaching two new courses and only two months to prepare...

...Or is it...

...The nature of the broadcast suggests that Gartner was more interested in setting a precedent—in making new law, so to speak—than in reporting news...

...Magazine's Editor's Choice Award UnionSquareware 27 S t Mary's Court, Brookline, MA02146 Telephone 617-277-9222 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1991 29...

...Naming the woman didn't do much to help the viewer to, as Gartner said, "make up his or her own mind about what's going on...

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...Following consultation with family, friends, and hospital counselors, she agreed...

...With the Palm Beach story in mind, the editors in Boston debated whether or not the woman should be identified in media accounts, and, more generally, whether their long-standing policies against naming names should be changed...

...For various reasons Cannon thought her story should be told with her name in it...

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...The NBC story was about whether the media should name rape victims, not about the Palm Beach case as such...

...In practice, the policy against naming names has been followed as a hard-and-fast rule...

...Some editors',' reported Alex S. Jones, a media writer for the New York Times, "said the Palm Beach case was a suitable moment to break the taboo...

...A spokesman for the Times told me the failure to identify her by name did not suggest a change in the policy, that naming the names of rape victims will continue to be done on a "case-by-case basis" in terms of whether it's "necessary and appropriate for that story...

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...In a memo to his staff, later reprinted in USA Today, Gartner listed four reasons why "journalistically it is usually right to name rape victims": (1) the news media is "in the business of disseminating news, not suppressing it," and names add credibility, round out the story, and give the viewer or reader the information needed to understand the 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1991 issues...

...have held that naming a rape victim would violate her privacy...

...Few news organizations have cast these policies in stone...

...First Amendment pieties aside, the case-bycase approach to naming rape victims' names could become a policy of naming names only when nationally known figures stand to be accused...

...Most agree with women's groups and law enforcement officials that naming names would discourage rape victims from notifying authorities of the crime, said to be the most underreported in the nation...

...M ichael Gartner attended the an- nual meeting of the American by Terry Eastland Society of Newspaper Editors held in Boston the week before his network identified the Palm Beach woman alleging rape...

...His third argument shows why...

...Knight-Ridder's Carl Cannon, when a police reporter in 1979 for the San Diego Union, wrote a front-page feature (with photo) identifying a woman who had been brutally gang-raped and repeatedly shot...

...Squarenote gathered all the research, organized it, and even printed outmy lecture notes...

...she's been everywhere, thanks to Justice Gartner of NBC...

...Gartner wants "the option" all to himself...

...Rapists are the most likely beneficiaries of the Gartner policy...

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...M edia policies of not naming the rape victim's name have had various justifications...

...What the Times did was more damaging than NBC's report because a network newscast is not nearly as easily retrievable as a newspaper story...

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...This last argument has force, but can also serve as an argument for less disclosure: withholding the names of both the accused and the accuser...

...On that day, NBC News, acting as arrogantly as the most activist court, named and showed a photograph of the woman who has accused William Kennedy Smith (or William K. Smith, as the New York Times protectively puts it) of raping her on the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach...

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...In regard to the Times's decision to name the Palm Beach woman, the because-they-did-it-we'll-do-it-too was a poor excuse for thought...

...That the Times should have proceeded in such a fashion is surprising...

...But most cases are not like that...

...In no other category of news do we give the newsmaker the option of being named...

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...1:3 Allows you to print out all your notes, or justa selected group of them, to carry with you or send to colleagues...

...It has held firm even though (1) journalists generally do not print anonymous criminal accusations, (2) they generally feel obliged to print what they know as soon as they can...

...Smith...

...whether she consented is an outstanding question in the criminal case now pending against Smith...

...Like many judges, he is anxious to use his discretion to further his own policy, even if the short-term consequences, as he told Newsweek, will be "extraordinarily difficult for this generation...

...Identifying the woman wasn't even the worst the Times did, as it turned out...

...Most would probably break them to identify, say, a well-known woman who accuses her husband of rape...

...Moreover, it does not discourage women from reporting rapes...

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...Editor Max Frankel later admitted the article "did not live up to our standards...

...Gartner buys the view recently advanced by some feminists that publicity will usher in a new era in which rape victims feel no shame...

...From time to time, major newspapers have been moved by one or more of these considerations to print the name of a woman alleging rape, althoughnone, until April 1991, had ever done so without the woman's consent...

...Of course, deference is, among other things, what's wrong with the policy, in Justice Gartner's view...

...The Palm Beach woman cannot move to a new place confident she will not be recognized...

...In seconds, you can select out certain notes, orderthem in fourdifferentways...

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...Gartner said, announcing network policy: "We will consider the naming of rape victims or alleged rape victims on a case-by-case basis...

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...In the Palm Beach case, the celebrity of the Kennedy family clearly influenced both NBC and the New York Times...

...The fact that Gartner has a national position is not irrelevant to his purposes...

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...2) producers and editors should cede no decision to anyone, not even a rape victim...

...Gartner has the air of a man who thinks himself extra-special...

...Leonard Downie, Jr., managing editor of the Washington Post, had no trouble instantly articulating the conclusion the Times should have drawn, even if after a thousand editorial sessions: "We don't see any reason to change our policy in this case just because other people have named her...

...Gartner also happens to be editor of a small Iowa newspaper...

...and (4) it's not fair to name the accused but not the accuser...

...After a while, no celebrity or politician or anyone well known to the national media might be accused of rape, though such people may indeed have committed it...

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...And what would be the impact of that...

...Not content to defer to the judgments of individual rape victims, Gartner thinks he knows better than they—or at least knows what's best for society in general...

...No—unless she consents to her identification—was the policy followed by all news organizations above the level of the man-eats-trailer-truck Globe until April 16...

...Editors at the Times expected other national news organizations to follow suit, but fortunately for the Palm Beach woman, not to mention victims of rape everywhere, only one—Reuters—did so...

...I wouldn't have wanted to heap any more trauma upon her...

...Gartner's second argument, about editorial decision-making, reveals what really bothers him...

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...Her only consolation lies in the hope that it will be referred to by students of journalism looking for examples of media malpractice...

...And in general, it's not true that you have to name a woman in order to know about a rape case...

...like the index card files you have used for years, but simple to cross-reference, and each card holds twenty times [1.] more information...

...the 34-inch story left the unmistakable impression of a woman who liked to party and probably asked for whatever she got from William Kennedy Smith...

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...Over the past two decades, most news organizations Terry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...

...On April 7, the newspaper ran a front-page piece by Maureen Dowd detailing many of the sensational stories about Nancy Reagan in Kitty Kelley's book without trying to assess either their truth or the author's credibility...

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...He does not want the media to voluntarily give away its "right" to decide...

...To identify a rape victim only with her consent is plainly the wiser course because it does not set the news business above the rest of society...

...No editor, that is, but the editor-television executive Gartner...

...Michael Gartner, president of NBC and the de facto Chief Justice of American journalism in this case, had at least offered some arguments for what NBC had done...

...Gartner, a First Amendment absolutist of liberal political views, acts like a man bent on using his national seat at NBC to change the face of American journalism...

...Fr he New York Times deserves con-1 tempt for piggybacking on NBC instead of offering any arguments—even bad arguments—for identifying the Palm Beach woman...

...Does he regard himself as better than mere editors because he has crossed over into the high-salaried executive suites of television...

...That 91 percent of the American public disagree with him, according to a USA Today poll, is beside the point...

...Which editors...

...Gives you instant access to any bit of information on any index card...

...and (3) they have been advised by a new school of feminists that identifying rape victims will somehow help overcome the unfair stigma long associated with rape...

...his good deed "may perhaps help [our] daughters and granddaughters...

...It's for researchers and writers, not just computer experts...

...It is not outstanding in the case of NBC's journalism: she was named without her consent...

...Starting in early May, the newspaper's stories on the Palm Beach incident, including a lengthy profile of William Kennedy Smith, did not refer to his accuser by name...

...The Times regrets its failure to include such a clear statement of the article's limits and intent...

...The Palm Beach woman reportedly would not have notified the police if she had known her name would be broadcast nationwide...

...Consider the case of the Central Park jogger, which the media, largely sticking to the no-name policy, reported in depth and detail...

...it does not impute superior knowledge or competence to the media...

...Gartner's first argument didn't apply in the case at hand...

...H ere we reach the heart of Justice Gartner's activist opinion...

...the Palm Beach woman will always be in the Nexis database of every journalist and lawyer in the country...

...Earlier in this century it was common to maintain that, dishonor and defilement being the victim's lot, naming the woman would cruelly add to her shame...

...Smith, the scion of the late Stephen Smith and nephew of the Senator of Chappaquiddick fame, does not deny having sex with her...

...But Cannon says, "I would never have identified her without her consent...

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...The policy is one of journalistic deference: to the unique character of the crime, to law enforcement concerns, and, most of all, to the rape victims themselves...

...Perhaps as a result of the widespread criticism generated by its action—including a meeting of 300 staffers with the paper's editors—the Times has since published an apology of sorts: The article should have explicitly asserted that nothing in the woman's known background could resolve the disputed testimony about her encounter with Mr...

...it's worth noting that not until three weeks later, when William Kennedy Smith was actually charged, did NBC run another piece involving the Palm Beach incident...

...He wants to name names, as he puts it, to "destroy incorrect impressions and stereotypes...

...Among others, editors at Gartner's old papers, Geneva Overholser of the Des Moines Register and Irene Nolan of the Louisville CourierJournal No editor in Boston wanted to be the first, however, to identify the woman...

...3) by not naming rape victims the media are part of "a conspiracy of silence" that reinforces the idea that somehow there is something shameful about being raped...

...It comes as no surprise that his former papers in Des Moines and Louisville also printed the Palm Beach woman's name once he directed NBC to "break the taboo...