Mainstream media avoids Crist gay angle
Local editors and journalism experts disagree on ethics of story
By PHIL LAPADULA
Friday, October 27, 2006
It may be the loudest “whisper campaign” in Florida history. The internet blogs have been blazing for months with unverified rumors that Charlie Crist, the state’s attorney general and Republican candidate for governor, is gay.
Crist has been asked if he is gay at public forums, including radio shows and political gatherings, and he has repeatedly denied it. But the whispering has just grown louder.
Finally, Max Linn, the Reform Party candidate for governor, went on an Orlando radio show in September and blurted it out loud: He said he would “swear on a stack of Bibles that Crist is gay.” Linn followed up that appearance by going on WFTL radio on Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day, and urging Crist to come out of the closet.
Linn said Crist told him he preferred men when the two participated in a political leadership program in St. Petersburg together in the 1980s. He said it is “common knowledge” in Tallahassee that Crist is gay or bisexual. By hiding his sexual orientation, Crist is putting himself at risk for extortion plots, Linn asserted.
A candidate making such a claim about his opponent in a public forum is sure to grab headlines, right? Wrong.
For the most part, the mainstream media have avoided the Crist-might-be-gay story.
Linn’s “outing” of Crist received a brief mention in “the Buzz,” a political column in the St. Petersburg Times. But the state’s major dailies, including the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post, did not even mention Linn’s on-air remarks. Nor have the cable news stations.
At this week’s televised debate between Crist and his Democratic opponent, Jim Davis, no one asked about the “g” question.
Is it newsworthy?
Eric Hegedus, national president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, said he doesn’t understand why the big media outlets aren’t picking up the Crist story.
“Any time a politician talks about his or her opponent, that information can be relevant from a news standpoint,” Hegedus said. “He made the comments on the public airways. And in the current political climate — in the wake of the Foley scandal — it is big news if you have a political candidate ‘outing’ another candidate.”
Hegedus said he thinks reporters should question Linn about his motives in “outing” Crist and ask him what evidence he has to support his assertions that Crist is gay. After all, Linn is running against Crist.
But Hegedus sees no reason why the mainstream media should be squeamish about confronting Crist with his sexual orientation.
“There’s nothing wrong with asking a candidate if he’s gay,” Hegedus said. “It’s just like asking him if he’s married, dating anyone or has children. There’s nothing shameful about being gay.”
But if he says he’s not gay and there’s no definitive proof that he is, where do you go from there? It’s an issue that editors and reporters have struggling with throughout the country, according to Kelly McBride, ethics group leader for the Poynter Institute, a journalism school and think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Ethics expert: merely being
gay not a story
“I’m not surprised that the daily newspapers aren’t covering it,” McBride said. “If someone comes forward and says I worked with him and he gave me perks because I was having an affair with him, or he molested me, or he abused me in a relationship, that’s a different story. But the mere accusation that someone is gay is a non-story.”
McBride pointed out that in the cases of former Congressman Mark Foley, former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey and former Spokane Mayor Jim West, “it was not the fact that they were gay that brought them down; it was the fact that they abused their power. If they had done that in a heterosexual relationship it would still be a story.”
McBride said exposing hypocrisy might be a legitimate reason for a newspaper to out a politician.
“But if you’re going to use the hypocrisy threshold, first you have to prove that he’s gay,” she said. “Secondly, I think you have to demonstrate an anti-gay agenda, including a voting history and a clear anti-gay platform.”
Crist has taken some anti-gay positions, including signing a petition for an anti-gay marriage amendment and opposing the repeal of a law that prohibits gay men and lesbians from adopting children. But McBride said she didn’t think Crist’s overall record on gay issues met the “outing” threshold.
Dave Wilson, managing editor for news at the Miami Herald, defended his paper’s decision not to cover Linn’s outing of Crist. He noted that the Herald included information about Crist’s seven-month marriage and speculation about his sexual orientation in the first of a series of candidate profile pieces that the paper ran on Oct. 15. But the gay issue received only two lines in a lengthy story about Crist’s life.
“Crist did not remarry and has faced widespread speculation about his sexuality,” Herald reporter Noah Bierman wrote. “He has said on several occasions that he is not gay.”
Wilson said Herald reporter Steve Rothaus, who is gay, has also addressed questions about Crist’s sexuality in his blog. But Wilson said he didn’t see any reason to devote much ink to the Crist gay angle.
“We think we’ve done what’s appropriate in terms of our coverage,” Wilson said. “We think we’ve dealt with it. It’s just not something we view as important to the issues at this time. I want to know what kind of governor he’s going to be.”
Asked if he thought it was appropriate for reporters to ask a candidate if he’s gay, Wilson replied, “No, I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask if he’s gay any more than I think it’s appropriate to ask a job candidate or a tenant if he or she is gay.”
Wilson said if something surfaced about a candidate’s private life that was illegal, “that would be worthy of investigation.”
Scott Montgomery, political editor for the St. Petersburg Times, said the speculation about Crist’s sexual orientation “has been mentioned in our coverage here and there.”
“We’ve never done a separate story on it because it never seems to go anywhere,” Montgomery said. “None of the rumors you hear actually involve him dating anybody. Crist is not spending a lot of time gay bashing on the campaign trial. So do you spend a lot of time chasing a ghost? How much time do you spend on a whisper campaign?” |
