Most Of Press Declines To "Out" DOD Official   

The exposure of a Pentagon assistant secretary of defense as a closeted homosexual by a gay magazine in August could have been bait that drove the media into a feeding frenzy. But, with a few exceptions, news outlets didn't bite – most newspapers and TV stations ran stories about the outing without using the official's name. They say they did so out of respect for the official's right to privacy. The few that did identify him say his exposure as a gay man working for the anti-gay Pentagon was justified and that their more reluctant colleagues wimped out.

Decision-making time came when the Los Angeles-based Advocate published a cover story outing the official, claiming the action was justified because of the Pentagon's policy of booting gays from military service. The official has refused to discuss the outing with reporters. Of the TV networks, ABC and CBS covered the story, omitting the name. NBC and CNN did not report on the outing. A smattering of local TV stations did identify the official, including WPIX-TV in New York.

"The Pentagon has a harsh policy toward gays, and here's a gay man in a high-ranking position," says John Corporon, WPIX's news director. "You put those facts together and you've got a story. Some of the media used the Palm Beach rape victim's name and ran stories about her background, but they didn't use [the DOD official's] name. I find this curious."

Most big city dailies backed away from naming the official in their stories about the outing. The Oakland Tribune was one of the few papers to run a Jack Anderson column identifying the outing target. The Washington Post nixed the column, also declining to run a story by staff writer Howard Kurtz about the media's reaction to the outing. The Detroit News identified the official in a story by its media critic; the New York Daily News named him in a gossip column but referred to him in its news pages only as a "high-level Cheney aide."

Oakland Tribune Managing Editor Eric Newton says he identified the DOD official because he felt the official "must have known the consequences of taking a job in the public eye." Newton says it was necessary to use the name if the issue of gays in the military was to be covered at all. "I was surprised that some papers made a very large deal about the story but then omitted the name. If it's that important, then it deserves full disclosure."

The San Francisco Examiner reported extensively on the outing and the plight of gays in the military without identifying the official. "Outing is a political statement, and we don't put political statements on the news pages," says Examiner Managing Editor Phil Bronstein. "The story was not that the official is gay – the story is how the presence of a gay official affects the military's policy on gays. The story didn't lose anything by not using the name."

The same theory operated at the city's NBC affiliate, KRON-TV, which also covered the outing but omitted the name. Executive Producer Anne Peterson says media outlets that did identify the official are playing politics instead of reporting news. "Organizations that judge there is enough evidence to name a person who is the target of an outing are deciding to out that person themselves."

Not so, says Hank Plante, a reporter for CBS affiliate KPIX-TV in San Francisco, who identified the official in his reports. "To run a huge story and then not use the name is chickenshit." As for the network's decision not to use the name, Plante doesn't think it confused viewers. "People expect more from the local news. The networks are stodgy – they're 20 years behind the times."

Was it really sensitivity to the official's right to privacy that kept the media from identifying him? Detroit News critic Michael McWilliams, who named the Pentagon official in his story about the outing, suggests it's really a lingering squeamishness about reporting on the gay community. "We know everything about heterosexuals – every affair, every gynecological fact. But you won't see anything in print about homosexuality, and that suggests that it's the worst thing in the world." WPIX's Corporon wonders if reporters feared losing access to the Pentagon if they identified the official. Advocate News Feature Editor G. Luther Whitington attributes the media's reticence to homophobia, and says he's disappointed and surprised that more news outlets didn't identify the official. "If it had been [the official] having an affair with a Russian woman, we would have known all about it."

Editors and producers who used the name braced themselves for angry calls from readers and viewers, but on the whole response was muted. The Tribune