THE BEST POLICY

Jane Purves told the truth, and deserves our respect for it

The story of how Education Minister Jane Purves's brave, blunt
acknowledgement of her long-past intravenous-drug abuse got into the public
prints this week could serve as a case study in dealing with difficult
issues, not only for aspiring politicians but also for would-be journalists.

The rumours that Purves, 50, had once been addicted to heroin have been
circulating in political, social and media circles for months. I heard them
second-hand during this summer's provincial-election campaign from one of
her former colleagues at The Herald. Other reporters picked up on the buzz
of the political gossip mill, and still others from the tight little circle
of Halifax's south-end cocktail party circuit, where Purves's addiction had
been accepted as fact for years.

But did any of that make it newsworthy?

Daily News legislature reporter David Rodenhiser concedes he didn't think of
the gossip in the grand context of any esoteric debate over the public's
right to know. "I don't think there is necessarily an overwhelming public
interest in this story," he offers candidly, saying it's simply a
"compelling," uplifting tale of someone overcoming the odds.

If the rumors were true and if Purves was prepared to talk about her
problems, he thought it might be worthwhile to write about how she had come
back from a serious addiction and made a success of her life, first as
managing editor of The Herald for a decade and now as a provincial
politician and cabinet minister.

And given that rumours were still swirling and growing daily, Daily News
editor Bill Turpin believed his newspaper had an obligation to its readers
to at least find out if any of it was true.

The many-handed ethical debate over how to deal with the private life of a
public figure is always complicated. It was even more so in the Purves case.

Purves is clearly a public figure. But shouldn't even public figures retain
some right to privacy? Where are the boundaries? Her drug use happened a
long time ago. Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on youthful
indiscretions?

How many of us - reporters and editors included - would want to account
publicly now for dumb, even dangerous, things we might have done in our
teens and 20s?

Responsible for our children

And yet, as minister of education, some people see Purves as a role model
whose past is relevant. After all, she is responsible for the education of
our children, including approving provincial policies on drug-abuse
education in our schools. Others would say, so what?

And what if all the gossip wasn't even true? What if Purves - like plenty of
other politicians over the years - was simply the victim of a smear
campaign. If reporters don't ask politicians difficult questions, what can
they do: call a press conference to announce they're not drug addicts? Or
gay? Or wife-beaters?

By asking Purves the question directly, the newspaper was also be giving her
the opportunity to deny it.

Overlaying those debates, of course, were personal considerations. In her
pre-political life, Purves had been the managing editor of The Herald.
(Ironically, as an editor, Purves was no stranger to such debates; several
years ago, she made the controversial decision to expose civil-rights'
leader Darryl Gray's youthful drug and marital indiscretions in her own
newspaper.) Within the journalism community, Purves was not only respected
professionally for her frankness, but she was also well liked. Even though
she had gone over to the "other side," no one was keen to launch what many
would see as a personal attack on her.

In the end, however, The Daily News decided it had a responsibility to at
least ask Purves the question.

Shortly after she was appointed to the cabinet, Rodenhiser called to arrange
an interview to talk about "some rumours" the paper was looking into. After
a number of delays and postponements, Rodenhiser finally met face to face
with Purves at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

Before he turned on his tape recorder or picked up his pen, Rodenhiser says
he told Purves what he'd heard and explained his interest was in writing a
feature story about how she'd managed to turn her life around. But, he added
quickly, he wasn't there to write an expose. "Even if it's true," he told
her, "and you don't want to talk about it, I'm done."

But Purves did want - though "want" is clearly not the right word - to talk.
She'd heard the rumours, too - "some true, some not." And painful as it was,
she said she had decided to deal with them head on. She sounded almost
relieved to finally be able to confront the gossip.

And she did. Though "touchy on some family issues" and unwilling to
catalogue the drugs she'd actually used, Rodenhiser says Purves was
generally candid about what had happened and what it all meant to her
Rodenhiser's plan was to follow up his interview with Purves with
conversations with addiction counsellors and others so he could put Purves's
remarkable recovery in perspective in a feature he was planning to write for
this Sunday.

He never got the chance.

She wanted to keep control

Within a half hour of their interview, Purves and her political advisers
decided she couldn't leave it up to Rodenhiser to reveal the story of her
addiction in a way she couldn't control. So she called a news conference
that afternoon to tell her story her way.

While that decision, not surprisingly, upset many of my colleagues - and
probably would have upset Jane Purves, newspaper editor, too, if she'd
suddenly seen her paper's hard-earned exclusive disappear in a politician's
pre-emptive news conference - it was probably still the right decision for
her.

Her political future - and her personal reputation - hung in the balance
this week. Having decided to do the difficult but honourable thing and tell
the truth about a painful episode in her life, Jane Purves had earned the
right to do it her way.

For those of us all too used to obfuscating politicians, her way was
refreshing.