NOT NEWS TO ME

Purves's private life should have stayed that way

Journalists all over Nova Scotia are buzzing about the Jane Purves
addiction story. We're buzzing with questions for ourselves. What is a
news story? Is there a line that journalism should not cross? Is every
aspect of a politician's life fit to print?

Most journalists believe that everything of interest to readers,
viewers, and listeners is up for grabs. That means just about
everything. And there's no denying a cabinet minister who used to
shoot up with needles is a fascinating story.

But I fall on the side who say it's not a news story, because it's not
relevant to Purves doing her job as education minister. The addiction
was 20 years ago.

Out-of-whack standards

For two decades she's proven she can handle responsibility and
pressure.

There's an insane war on drugs in this country, and this old news
could have caused terrible damage to her personal life and political
career.

The standards to which media hold public officials are out of whack.
Every newsmaker is a target, and all information is fair to publish,
while at the same time politicians must attain an unreachable standard
of behaviour. This is both ridiculous and dangerous.

Not respecting our leaders is fine and good if they don't deserve our
respect; let's not lose respect for all the wrong reasons.

Not running the story, however, would have created a new, interesting
problem. A generation ago, journalists knew all kinds of scuttlebutt
about newsmakers' personal lives, and kept much of it to themselves.

Often too much: politicians and reporters sometimes seemed cut from
the same cloth. The pendulum swung too far toward privacy then, and is
too far toward disclosure now. Where is the balance?

Like several other journalists in town, I knew of Purves's addiction a
few months ago. A friend of hers from the '70s, now a friend of mine,
told me the story in some detail. I didn't run it because I didn't
believe it relevant. I still don't.

During the summer election campaign I also heard a rumour that a Tory
candidate was gay. I didn't use that, either: sexual preference
doesn't affect job performance. When a prominent Liberal discouraged a
would-be candidate from running because he was black, however - that
was put in the paper.

Hopefully my concern for journalistic ethics (or the lack of them)
will prove to be over-sensitive. Most Nova Scotians appear to have
responded to the Purves news with kindness. Could it be we are growing
up, and accepting that our politicians are people, too?

Honesty cheered

Purves was being cheered for her honesty yesterday. (To be accurate,
her honesty was served with a side of spin-doctoring. She removed her
funky glasses for the press conference, and referred to shooting
street drugs with a medical euphemism, "intravenous.") Luckily for
her, she learned from Robert Chisholm's mistake of bobbing and weaving
and thus getting clobbered.

Yesterday, on the same day Purves was surviving so well, John Chataway
was forced to resign as housing minister. Thanks to some excellent
journalism (led by Catherine Morse of CBC-TV), Chataway's activities -
and lack of activities - as a landlord proved he was unfit to head
that department. Now, he's gone.

So it was a day of political maturity. Maybe we as journalists learned
something, too.