The story breaks no confidences of the support group except for outing the hypocritical persecuting piece of scum for what he is.
Clearly in the public interest to break this story.
What do you think the second A stands for in AA?
Regards,
Shodan
Look all you want. The ethical position for the reporter is clear. By joining a confidential group he accepted a tacit ‘off the record’ position for all members. By violating that he has damaged himself, the group, it’s members, and the trust that people can place in journalism. The only response from his employer should have been ‘how’d you get this info? Oh, too bad we can’t use it then.’
The fact that they went ahead and published indicates to me that the magazine in questions places their own ideology above any personal ethics they might have and therefore speaks very poorly of their point of view/ideology/what have you.
The steps the reporter should have taken (which I don’t know if he did or did not)…
- Join the group while informing the group leader that he was a reporter and was working on a story for publication X.
- Ask the group leader to inform the other members of the group of his status and ask under what conditions they would be comfortable with him there. Not unlike a doctor asking whether a patient would mind a student joining them in the exam room the choice needs to remain with the people involved.
- Abide by the wishes of the MOST nervous of the group. If one person in the group said ‘off the record’ then the discussions in the group are off the record and cannot be used, or even alluded to, in publication.
Look, hate speech happens, hypocrisy happens, people are NO damn good. But that’s why journalists have ethics. To make certain that things that can go right do go right.
As it is how can anyone trust that magazine again knowing that they’re willing to lie for a story? With that how can you know they won’t lie IN a story? Or about a story? You can’t. You simply can’t.
And that, my friends, is perilously close to evil.
The answer to the first question has been well covered here: it is wrong to publish information taken from a support group, on all sorts of levels.
The more interesting question is the second: is it right to out a person who has gay urges but denounces the gay “lifestyle”? I personally think it’s never a good idea to out anyone. It’s a personal matter, and up to the person to decide who he wants to know his or her orientation. Is it hypocritical to denounce gays when you have gay urges yourself? Not necessarily. If you’re fighting against them, then it’s not illogical to think that others who have them can control them, too. It’s only hypocritical if you actually having gay sex (and like it) but condemned others for it.
Anonymous. Just like the support group remained throughout the article.
What did you think it meant?
No confidences were broken except for the hypocrite and there is undoubtedly a public interest defence for that.
As someone explained in the other thread, Brock is a sad loser, but he’s not a hypocrite. He was acting in accordance with his own beliefs.
Note that the reporter may be a liar, depending upon how he represented himself to the group.
Getting back to my question above, all of the people in this support group are there presumably because they think there’s something wrong with being gay, and they want to fight against being that way. That’s the point of this group. Would you out them all for holding this attitude?
What hypocrite? It is not hypocritical to be anti-gay while trying to suppress your own gay desires. any more than it is hypocritical for an alcoholic to support Prohibition.
Presumably the views of homosexuality he expresses in the support group (being gay is bad, I don’t want to be gay, if I’m gay I don’t want to act on it) are not contrary to what he says in public (being gay is bad, you don’t want to be gay, if you’re gay don’t act on it).
Now, if he were in a support group for people who just can’t relax enough to really enjoy the gloryholes at the local public bath then that might be a different story.
But more important than whether it is fair to the anti-gay guy is whether it is fair to the other people in the group, or even other people who know they need help and are considering trying to get it from other types of anonymous support groups.
And that doesn’t even tough on the journalistic ethics surrounding the use of information only obtained through a promise of confidentiality.
No, actually it did not. The reporter violated the confidence of the support group and its members. This is hghly unethical, as Jonathan Chance has ably explained.
Cite.
Regards,
Shodan
I would change that to “life or physical safety,” but yeah.
Yes I would. And it is rather limited that you simply refer to those anti-gay bigots as people with different opinions. Their opinion is wrong, evil, and hurts people. If they were born in another country, I’ve no doubt that they’d be part of the mobs that kill gays, rape lesbians, or unearth the grave of a gay person because they are offended by where he was buried.
They don’t simply disagree with me. That would be like saying murderers simply disagree with my view of the law. These people are evil and deserve to be outed, then humiliated, and disowned by their equally bigoted families until they accept who they are and start sucking cock in public
Absolutely not okay. Outing self-hating gay preachers in general, quite alright.
Imagine a support group for people who have had abortions. Imagine a pro-life reporter outing one of the members because the member was a prominent advocate for abortion rights and has been struggling with the emotional aftermath of her own abortion. Still in the public interest? She is a baby killer after all.
I just wanted to emphasize this for the logically challenged. The man may be misguided, but he is not a hypocrite.
It’s both bad and good. You don’t get to wipe out a negative with a greater positive, or vice-versa, in this kind of situation; you have to accept both.
In this situation I think the potential results are uncertain enough that I would be uncomfortable saying how much of each the outer has earned.
Which, I point out, also applies to journalistic ethics.
An off the record comment from someone who says ‘You know? I bought a gun and at noon I’m going on a shooting spree’ would be grounds for safely violating the off the record nature and reporting it to the authorities.
It is *never *ok to out a support group or support group member (except when human life is in peril, as olivesmarch4th and Skald pointed out).
You may disagree with the support group, or the members thereof, but outing them is one of the wrongest wrongy things that’s been wrong. People who need support should not have to fear backlash. Given the article linked in the OP names *the St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in St. Anthony, a suburb northeast of Minneapolis *I’m sure it won’t be hard for bigots who live in Reverend Tom Brock’s town to figure out which night the group met. Members of other groups such as AA who also meet at that church are going to suffer from bigotry and fear their privacy is going to be similarly violated.
Okay, what if it was that they were very anti black in their speech and they seemed white but had some hidden black heritage. Would that be okay to out? I guess you can’t really compare it, since again with the behavior versus the feelings…
Also, would it be possible to out the person without betraying the whole group? Like just out the one guy, but no one else?
I’m a co-leader of a support group for anxiety sufferers in real life, and I don’t even share personal details with my husband (I sometimes tell him things in general terms). If there was someone in my group who was vocally against anxiety disorders in real life, I suppose I’d have a chat with them in the group to find out why they were acting two different ways, and possibly kick them out of the group, but I wouldn’t be writing a news story on them (okay, imagine this is something actually newsworthy).
So did the author (John Townsend) out any of the other men at the meeting? Is it common for him to out gay men in his articles or is it saved only for those he thinks are betraying the gay community? This was a meeting of men struggling with chastity so all of them have some secret they are quietly working to overcome. It would be easy to shame any one of them with the information they revealed there.
Brock sounds like a royal asshole, no question there, and he has a radio show to sound off on. So I don’t have any sympathy for him. But if the gay community is going to use outing as a form of punishment for those who don’t toe the line, as Townsend seems to believe is OK, then I’m glad I’m not a member.
There’s a defense, but it’s myopic and unconvincing. It’s possible that outing this particular type of self-loathing closet-case is beneficial in a vacuum (though that’s hardly a slam dunk, in my opinion), but you’re ignoring half of the ledger by not considering the means by which he was outed.
Ah, yes, “I’m special because I’m right.” The blindingly obvious problem with your stance – i.e., that it’s ok to violate this ethic and to break this trust because the subject here is a bad man and he doesn’t deserve to be treated ethically – is that it grants implicit licence for people to use these sorts of methods to advance causes which you and I may find repugnant.
Look, when we arrest someone who is obviously guilty of murder, we don’t beat confessions out of him or deny him his chance to waste everyone’s time with a jury trial and multiple appeals. We grant him these rights not for his sake, but for ours, so it doesn’t matter one whit that the murderer doesn’t “deserve” them.
Complete asshole. This wasn’t the case of some guy being caught with his pants down in some gay bar, but a member of a support group. I’m not in aggreement with the purpose of said group, but for someone struggling to reconcile their beliefs with their feelings, it provides a purpose.
And perhaps, as some of the comments to the article mentioned, it actually might be “the first step to liberation”. And even if not, at least they’re coming to terms with their feelings, and finding a way to deal with it, in a way that works for them. Do I agree with it? No. Do they have a right to do so? Absolutely.
Do you think anyone is going to join any OTHER group supported by the church (I’m guessing they may have AA meetings there, perhaps?), and such?
Townsend’s no better than Brock. If he had seen the guy at a gay bar, or soliciting a rent boy, that’s one thing. But a therapy group? That’s just low.